037 - Deep Dive into Routines: Leveraging Evening and Morning Rituals for Success

In this episode of De-Escalation Conversations, Kerry Mensior delves into the powerful impact of evening and morning routines, with a focus on the practice of journaling.

Kerry emphasizes the importance of reflection and introspection through journaling, detailing the "WLAG's" approach to capturing Wins, Losses, Aha's, and Goals.

He explores the significance of journaling in personal growth and trauma healing, providing insights into the neuroscience behind its effectiveness.

With practical tips and techniques, Kerry guides listeners through establishing their own journaling routine and integrating it with mindfulness and meditation practices.

Furthermore, he shares his personal morning routine, highlighting the pivotal role of consistency and exercise in his healing journey.

Tune in for valuable insights on using routines and journaling as transformative tools for personal growth and healing.

The Power of Gratitude: 
"Your brain does not allow you to be in gratitude and in survival state at the same time, what will happen is if you go into gratitude, your brain will go, oh, I'm safe, and you'll shift into executive state."

— [00:07:13 → 00:07:25]

The Power of Journaling:
"When we write, especially by hand, we engage multiple areas of our brain, including those are involved in thinking language and working memory."

— [00:11:07 → 00:11:15]

Goal-setting and Journaling:
"A journal can be your road map and a companion in this journey."

— [00:11:52 → 00:11:55]

The Importance of Introspection: 
"At the end of each day or sometimes maybe even a week, you can write about what you learned, what you struggled with, and how you can improve."

— [00:12:48 → 00:12:55]

The Power of Journaling for Trauma Healing: 
"It definitely increases your positivity, and it opens your mind up to more opportunities for success."

— [00:13:39 → 00:13:46]

journaling, introspection, personal growth, trauma healing, morning routine, evening routine, goal setting, reverse engineering, sleep, rest, gratitude journaling, mindfulness, meditation, self reflection, emotional healing, accountability, resilience, success, consistency, prompts, meditation practice, exercise, workout, 75 hard, sunlight, vitamin D, lifestyle design, self-discovery, healing journey, conflict resolution, communication techniques

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Transcript

Kerry Mensior: 0:07

At the end of each day, or sometimes maybe even a week, you can write about what you learned what you struggled with and how you can improve the we legs, the wins, the losses, the A has the things that you will learn the things that you realized. And the goals, this habit of doing this. They call it introspection in you inspecting you on the inside, it's crucial for your personal growth that helps you I don't know, if I patterns in your behavior, you start to be able to see, you know, every time I do this, this happens, good or bad. It allows you to adjust your strategies, it allows you to make more informed decisions moving forward. To come right away, there's a man with a gun getting emergency signals. When the paramedics are available units will code that way, and welcome to the de escalation conversations podcast where we delve into the transformative power today of simple tools in our journey toward healing those wounds those traumas that you've had, just on a day to day basis, maybe some big ones in your past. And the biggest thing, your journey toward success. I'm Kerry Mensior. And in today's episode, we're focusing on one of the most accessible yet. So powerful tools we've have at our disposal, our morning routines and our evening routines. And we're going to be focusing on one part of those routines that whether you do it in the morning or at night, that's super important, and that's on journaling. Now, let's talk about our evening routine because our evening routine sets us up for success the next day. Here's what I recommend that you do on everything in life. Last episode, we talked about goal setting. And I talked about reverse engineering your goals, so that you decide on a big goal B hag, a big, hairy, amazing goal, you need to be able to reverse engineer it and come up with benchmarks along the way that you want to be able to meet. If I say I'm going to lose 40 pounds in the next year. And I wait until December of next year. To see if I've achieved that goal or gotten any way toward it, I'll probably have lost like two pounds, or maybe even gained weight. But if I go okay, I lose 40 pounds, I got 12 months to do it. Let's say I do four pounds a month, that's a pound a week. That's pretty significant. It's doable. But it's pretty significant. I need to benchmark that. And I need to be watching certain things along the way. So I don't go off the rails and only end up losing 10 pounds instead of what I wanted, which was 40. So you got to reverse engineer stuff, talking about our evening routines. Sleep is critical no matter what occupation and especially if you're a school teacher or flight attendant, if you're a first responder, your business person, you need your rest. We all know that the research is out there that shows the rest that we need. And ideally, it's seven to nine hours somewhere in there, of course aid be in the sweet spot. Some people are going Yeah, I can get four or five, here's the thing, it's going to catch up to you. So let's let's do some reverse engineering. And I want you to think about something you get to do what you choose to do, and you might go carry i i don't have any control over my life, my life is what I'm given. Well, that means you're living by default instead of by design, live your life by design. So I'll give you an example of a morning routine that that I have. So I'm up at 4am. I'll tell you why. When we talk about my morning routine, I'm up at 4am. Now, that means if I want 78 hours sleep, I got to be in bed by 8pm to 9pm at the latest. Now, with knowing that, then I reverse engineer. Let's say I'm going to accept seven hours of sleep. And I'm going to be in bed at 9pm Now we're going to practice something called three to one works like this. If I'm in bed at nine, three hours before I stop eating so I am done eating by 6pm to two hours before I stopped work, so by 7pm, I'm done working for the day, no matter what's going on, I'm done working one, one hour before I go to sleep. So at 8pm, no electronics, three hours, no food, two hours, no work, one hour, no electronics, you got to be able to give your brain the ability to step away from the electronics. Step away from that blue light that comes off your devices. You want to read read a book, like a hardcopy book, a real book, not a Kindle book, not a not a knocker, if any of that stuff, not the news on your on your phone or on your iPad or on a TV not no I, I fall asleep to the TV horrible. It's a horrible way to do it. Three to one, three hours, no eating two hours, no sleep, one hour, no electronics. In that last hour. If you want to do some journaling, or meditation, you can or you can do it in the morning, you can do it both places. I'm gonna talk about journaling in just a little bit and talk about meditation in a little bit. But that evening, wind down routine can be as simple as reading 10 pages of something that's not affection, not something that's going to jack you up and get you all excited, we're going to read some, you know, Lone Survivor, some special forces novel or some some other book that's it's going to start making your mind, start torlon Something in the self development areas perfect for this time of day, you can also do journaling to capture what happened during that day. Going into even just a couple of minutes of meditation. When I talk about meditation, I'm talking about just clearing your mind. And just thinking, what am I grateful for today, we'll talk a lot about executive state and survival state survival state being fight flight or freeze. Your brain does not allow you to be in gratitude. And in survival state at same time, what will happen is if you go into gratitude, your brain will go, Oh, I'm safe. And you'll shift into executive state. It's a very, very powerful way of getting out of fight flight or freeze getting out of survival state, calming the fear center of your brain by going into gratitude. What are you grateful for, it might be something as you don't want to get a roof over my head. I got I got food in my refrigerator, I got gas in the gas tank of the car, it might be a crappy ass car. But it runs it gets me from point A to point B may not look great, and may have a different color driver's door than the rest of the car. But it gets me from point A to point B and I'm grateful for that. It might be the relationship that you're in. Maybe you're grateful for the relationship you're no longer in. Finding that those things to be grateful for is super, super powerful, especially as you're getting ready to go to sleep. Now, let's talk about journaling. Keeping a journal I journal at night and I journal in the morning, I journal at night with the express purpose of capturing my day. And I use something called we legs. We legs are super simple W L A G wins, losses, a has and goals, wins losses a Ha's and goals. Last episode we talked about setting goals. And in the goals of my journaling. My evening journaling is a great way to track my progress on that just make little notes about it. What am I doing right? Where did I slip? Where do I want to concentrate on moving forward, it resets my brain. It's like watering that little seed that you planted in your garden. Now journaling has been lauded for centuries is a pathway to self discovery, a means to success and a healing balm, you know like a salve or a lotion that you put on for your soul. So, I'd like you do is think about your favorite notebook. If not, you can hop on Amazon or you can go to a stationery store, find your find a really nice journal that you like to write in in your favorite pen. And we're going to talk about how the humble act of writing can unlock doors to personal triumph and emotional healing. Now journaling it's more than putting pen to paper. It's an act of self communication. It's a dialogue with our inner selves. When we journal we create a space for our thoughts and our feelings to be acknowledged and put processed. If you've heard me talk about de escalation, you've heard me use the term labeling, emotional labeling, this is a great opportunity to be able to do that for yourself. And when we label that automatically sets us into executive state neuroscience proves that. Now the simple act of journaling can have profound effects on our mental health and on our personal growth. In the realm of personal success, journaling needs and goal setting, tracking progress, reflecting on experiences becomes a tool for accountability and a record of our journey. It really anchors our learning. In terms of trauma healing, journaling provides a safe space to express our emotions, unpack traumatic experiences, and once again, track progress in this case is tracking healing progress. It's a private arena where we can confront and comfort, just those thoughts that are our innermost thoughts, and we can do it without judgment or fear. The question is, why does it work? Neuroscience provides some answers when we write especially by hand, we engage multiple areas of our brain, including those are involved in thinking language and working memory. This process helps us to organize and understand our thoughts and emotions. more clearly, it moves our thoughts from one portion of our brain to other portions. It's not just about venting, or listing our grand achievements. It's about making sense of our inner world and how it relates to the world around us. So let's dive a little bit into journaling for personal success. Success, whether it's in your career, personal life or relationships requires clarity of purpose, and it requires consistent effort. A journal can be your roadmap and a companion in this journey. So start by writing down those goals we talked about in the in the last episode, and you can break the goals down into those smaller actionable steps that reverse engineering refigure out, Okay, I gotta meet this one than this one than this one, you get those little dopamine hits along the way. And regular journaling about your progress helps you to maintain your focus, and motivation, like what we talked about last week, during the goals episode. It allows you to celebrate your achievements in your journal. Even if they're small ones, even if they seem kind of insignificant, you still get to celebrate them. And this practice reinforces that positive mindset. And it also, it boosts your confidence because you're seeing that you are moving towards your goals. And if you're not, it allows you to do that little two millimeter shift to be able to stay on track for it. You can also use your journal for self reflection. At the end of each day, or sometimes maybe even a week you can write about what you learned what you struggled with and how you can improve the we legs, the wins, the losses, the A has the things that you will learn the things that you realized and the goals, this habit of doing this. They call it introspection in you inspecting you on the inside, it's crucial for your personal growth that helps you I don't know if I patterns in your behavior, you start to be able to see, you know, every time I do this, this happens, good or bad. It allows you to gesture strategies that allows you to make more informed decisions moving forward. Now, gratitude journaling we've talked about, it's really important to write down a few things that you're grateful for it. And just doing that it can shift your perspective, it definitely increases your positivity, and it opens your mind up to more opportunities for success. So let's talk about how journaling can help with trauma healing, trauma, whether it's from a single event or ongoing stress, especially for for teachers and first responders and shoot flight attendants you're dealing with just stress on a regular basis. It can leave deep imprints on us. And journaling can be a powerful tool, healing those deep imprints when you're journaling for for trauma healing that benefit. It's essential. It create a safe and a private space. You need to be able to write freely and honestly about your feelings, your experiences related to what's been happening. I know for me in my career in law enforcement for 30 years and prior to that when I was a an ER technician and an ambulance crew member and prior to that a firefighter for seven years and been an EMT for 35 years. I've witnessed a lot of trout trauma. So when I write about that when these thoughts come up and I write about him I don't worry about grammar I don't worry about style. I don't worry about spelling. It's For My Eyes Only I'm not I'm not writing this for somebody else. I my words sometimes comes out jumbled sometimes they come out with cuss words. Sometimes I skip words, because my mind is racing faster than my pen can write. But the act of writing helps bring out what's inside in it. The cool thing is, it's less overwhelming. Now, it's important to pace yourself, especially if you find certain topics really hard. You know, there's some now be really blunt about it, there's some dead baby calls that that pop up in my head. And when I try to write about him, sometimes I'm like, I've written enough for tonight, I'm done. I'll do something about it later. And then I'll make sure I come back to that. It's okay to step back and come back to them later when you feel ready. And over time, what you can start to do is identify patterns in your thoughts and behaviors are linked to these things that you are remembering. Let me give you a quick analogy. This analogy was so powerful. guy by the name of de Beltran gave this to me, when I was a brand new police officer. He said, carry your memories. Talking about shooting fatal Oh is you said, that's an like picture like a shoebox full of photographs. And put the lid on, you put it up on the top shelf in your closet, you walk past the closet, and that box like jumps out at you and falls on the ground. And all these photographs spill all over, you kneel down, you start picking them up and you look at a few of them, you put them in the box, and you put the lid back on, you put it up there. What's happened is part of your life forever. But it doesn't mean you have to experience it every single day. And what's really cool is this. Not long after the event happens, a that box is jumping out at you maybe a couple times a day, maybe several, maybe a couple times an hour. But what happens over time is as you look at these pictures, as you watch these videos in your brain, what happens is there becomes more and more and more time between the times that that box jumps out at you. The box is always there. It's always part of you. But it doesn't jump out in hitches much that that the insight that you get out of journaling the Inside Out of that analogy, it can be invaluable to understanding and overcoming what's replaying repeatedly looping through your head. celebrate the small victories in your journal a day when you felt more at peace. Or a moment when you handle the trigger. Well, you didn't lose your cool you didn't yell or shout or slam things around or break things or just sulk by yourself. Write about coping strategies that work for you and write about the ones that don't wins. Losses are Ha's and goals. Remember, healing is it's not linear. Your journal is a testament to your resilience and strength and helps remind you sometimes I know I go back and I look at journals from when I was on submarines. I was Navy for nine years. And I kept several journals. While I was out on patrol on deployments, I did eight deployments, long ones. And I kept journals from them. And I look back over my go, wow, it's wild the coping tools I have now that I didn't have back then. So let me give you some practical tips and techniques. Because I want to, again, I want to talk about exactly how to put all this evening routine into practice. Now for your journaling. Here's some tips. Make journaling a regular practice, whether it's daily or weekly, find something that works for you. For me, in the in the evening. It's about gratitude. It's about capturing the day, it's about my weak legs. And in the morning, it's about what do I want to accomplish that day? What do I get to look forward to? What do I get to do not what do I have to do? Find your own rhythm, whatever works for you. Maybe you're only going to do it once a week. That's cool. Let's stick to it be consistent prompts. If you're stuck, use some prompts for success journaling prompts like what are my top three goals this week? Or what did I learn today though, that can be helpful. Remember, wins losses Ahaziah goals those are prompts. If you're dealing with a lot of trauma, you've been through some tough stuff, tough times you're going through tough times in your relationship or maybe your relationship ended and you're having troubles processing all that and you're feeling down on that. Prompts as simple as how am I feeling right now? What's a memory that's been on my mind so emotionally? I believe in that can help guide your writing. Mindfulness Meditation. Combining your journaling with a mindfulness practice, aim. In other words before you write, take a few minutes to meditate or practice deep breathing, do the box breathing for seconds and hold for four seconds, four seconds out, hold for four seconds, four seconds in, hold for four seconds, four seconds out. Hold for four seconds, four seconds in, hold for four seconds, four seconds out, hold for four second box breathing, maybe you want to do six, we want to do eight. The slower you breathe. The more centered you become, the more your para sympathetic nervous system kicks in, it slows all the heartbeat, the respiration, the faster you breathe, your sympathetic nervous system kicks in. That's the That's it, that's the go switch the parasympathetic is the brakes. Now, periodically, go back and read your previous entries. Because this is going to give you some great insights into your growth and your your healing journey. One thing I think is really important. And the last tip is keep it private and true your journals in a safe private space. This freedom from judgment encourages honesty and deep reflection. Get the commitment from the people that are in your living space. That your journal is off limits. Regardless of anything you need to you can buy a small gun safe and stick your journal in it along with your nine millimeter or 40 or 45. Whatever you carry in now. I want to tell you a little bit more about the we covered the evening routines, we talked about journaling. Now I want to talk about the morning routines. So I'm up at 4am. From 4am Until about 445 I do journaling. I do reading and I do meditation, I try to break that all up into 15 minute blocks. I'll journal for 15 minutes, I'll read for 15 minutes, and then I'm ready to meditate for 15 minutes. I don't meditate right when I first wake up, otherwise, I'll call it sleeping. Or most people call it sleeping night call meditating. But most people call it sleeping an extra 15 minutes. I need um, I wake up slow. I prefer to because too many years of my law enforcement career. And when I was on the fire department, and then the ambulance I was always on call. So I had to jump up and go go go. And I just like being able to do that a little bit more slowly now. So what I do is I get up, I begin by journaling, it helps me start kickstart. And then I do some reading. And then I do the meditation. Now, the meditation I do, it's called the persona. And all I do is I literally as close my eyes, and I concentrate on the air going in and out if I feel the tip of my nose as the air goes in and out. Thought comes in. Yep, I have that thought. Let it go back concentrating on my slow breathing in and out. Now that's maybe not a perfect explanation of upasana meditation. But it's it's it's Kerry's version of what I learned during a 10 day silent retreat and in the UK, back in 2018 when I did that, and that that retreat was amazing. If you ever want to hear more about it reach out to me, I'd be happy to tell you about it. But this meditation that I do settles me and then I head for the gym. I do a 5am grind gym class. It's hardcore. It's it's Go, go go for an hour. Then afterwards, I'll do one of three things, either come home, get showered, get ready for work. Or I'll do the six to 6:30am Cardio class, or I'll do a hill run where I'm doing cardio work. Now it just depends on where I'm at during that week. And I do that Monday through Friday. On Saturdays we have a boot camp which is like ultimate frisbee is football Frisbee. And so it's an hour an hour of hardcore running. And I'm i That's That's why I'm recovering from my cancer journey from all the effects that chemo had on my body and that the cancer had on my body. That's how I heal. Now, I am not the best guy at the gym. But I'm consistent. And I'm always there and I'm cheering other people on because that helps me. I am not I like I'm not the fastest playing Ultimate Frisbee by any He means, but I'm consistent. And I'm there. That's the thing. So the morning routine reading, maybe or maybe not journaling, a little bit of meditation, a little bit of gratitude, some exercise. Now, the question becomes in the afternoon, if you want to do a second workout, and one of the apps that you can check out, it's called 75. I think it's called 75. Heart, I just forgot the name of it. I'm pretty sure that's the name of it, though. If you Google 75 heart, he'll come up. And that's two workouts at least 45 minutes each, at least one of them is outside. Now, depending where you live time of year, getting outside might be a little bit harder. But getting some sunlight on you is is really, really important. Getting that vitamin D going. So those are some practical examples of an evening routine, and a morning routine. And as we wrap things up today, I hope that these ideas can lead you toward a brighter, more fulfilled life. And I hope today's discussion inspires you to pick up a journal and start your own journey of self discovery and healing, to pick up a book to have by your nightstand so you're not on your electronics to practice the three to one so you get the best sleep possible. Don't forget to subscribe for more insights into personal growth, healing, de escalation, conflict resolution, negotiating and communicating until next time, keep writing, keep reflecting, keep growing, keep doing 321 Keep reverse engineering your day for success. Keep living your life by design, not by default. And most of all, stay safe. I hope you found a lot of great value in this episode of the deescalation conversations podcast. Please be sure to go to our website the idea dot world th e ID e a dot world on that website. Just click on the link that resonates with you most of your K through 12 educator if you're a firefighter, medical services, law enforcement, flight attendants, what ever end up industry you're in. We have specialized training for you. So check that training out because literally it can save your life. It can save your relationship it can save your career. So check out the idea that world and I look forward to seeing you soon. Take care