Getting a bird’s eye view on our life, noticing patterns and perhaps making different choices can help not only our mental health and emotions, but our physical health too.
Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart.  Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests.
Today’s clip is from episode 263 of the podcast with Dr Julie Smith, a clinical psychologist, and author of the number one bestseller ‘Why Has No One Told Me This Before?’
Julie is passionate about making the tools of therapy accessible to all, and, as with all of Julie’s tools and teachings, the common theme is self-awareness.
In this clip, we discuss how to start developing this important skill, and Julie shares a powerful tool to help us look after our happiness and mental wellbeing.
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DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. 

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Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend.

Today's bite size is brought to you by AG1, 1 of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've come across and I myself have been drinking it regularly for over 5 years.

It contains vitamins, minerals, probiotics, prebiotics, digestive enzymes and so much more and can help with energy, focus, gut health, digestion and support a healthy immune system.

If you go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more, they are giving my listeners a very special offer, a free 1 year supply of vitamin D and 5 free AG1 travel packs with your first order.

See all details at drinkag1.com forward slash live more.

Today's clip is from episode 263 of the podcast with Dr.

Julie Smith, a clinical psychologist and author of the best-selling book, Why Has No 1 Told Me This Before?

Julie is passionate about making the tools of therapy accessible to all.

And as with all the Julie's tools and teachings, the common theme is self-awareness.

In this clip, we discuss how to start developing this important skill and Julie shares a powerful tool to help us look after our happiness and mental well-being.

There's a kind of rich tapestry of emotions and feelings that are part of normal life.

So this idea that we don't always have to act on those feelings, this seems to be a key idea that I see in a lot of your work that thoughts and feelings, they come and go don't they?

They're not fat, we don't have to act on them.

Yeah, and you know, we have a feeling that and it'll come with an urge.

So you'll have an urge to do something or do a certain act, but you don't have to go with it.

So I don't know if you wake up in the morning and it all feels too much and you have that urge to just pull the duvet over, go back to sleep and switch your phone off, hide away from the world.

You could go with that urge and you're likely to kind of feel terrible at the end of the day.

Or you could act opposite to that urge and push through that moment with the possibility that once you were up and about, you could feel a bit better or a bit different.

And often in therapy, we'll play around with that idea that, okay, so when you went with that urge, what happened?

And when you went opposite to it in another situation, What did that lead to?

And so you can kind of learn as you go by just reflecting on these sorts of experiences.

So, you know, you have all of these different aspects of your experience, but they're really like weaves in a basket and

don't experience each weave, we experience the basket.

In therapy, what we do is we start taking it apart and we look at the different aspects and the sort of minute detail of different experiences so that we can see where we can make different choices.

We don't wanna get up, so we just stay in bed.

We feel like some sugar, so we go and open the cookie jar.

But a lot of your work is helping us understand that actually you don't have to act on that urge.

How can people, I guess, train themselves or teach themselves that they don't have to?

Because I think for some people, that's like a deep realization that I feel this way and I don't have to do it.

And I mean, that's taught in dialectical behavior therapy, so DBT, but that's a very specific therapy that's for people who perhaps have unsafe coping strategies and things like that.

So it's not really freely available to lots of people, but it is 1 of the skills that is taught in that therapy is to build your awareness of urges and practice not going with that urge, but doing something that's based on your values instead of the feeling.

So, you can play around with that in lighthearted ways.

In the book I talk about, you know, when we were kids, my sisters and I used to get a packet of Polo mints and the trick was, you know, you hold it in your mouth and who's gonna crunch it first, you've got to not crunch the Polo.

And there's this incredible urge to kind of crunch the mint And really it's just a lighthearted way of demonstrating that you can have this urge to do something.

Sometimes it's excruciating not to go with it.

It's really hard and other times it's easier.

But you can kind of really play around with it in terms of building your awareness with those lighthearted things.

You know, you fast forward to today and I was saying to you earlier, you know, just got back from holiday and I've had a lifelong fear of heights.

And because I live in a small town, there's no built up areas and I don't get the chance to challenge it on a regular basis.

So whenever I do, the feeling always comes back.

And we went on holiday and we are going up these really high buildings, we went up the frame in Dubai, and it's so high.

And I'm determined not to pass on that fear to my children.

So I did a huge practice of acting opposite to the urge because my urge is to say, no way am I doing that.

I had to kind of hold onto that, not go with that urge and go along with it.

But also when we're in that situation and we go up in this lift and we come out and there's a glass floor and oh God, you know, and just the stress is high.

And my kids are running around on this glass floor and enjoying it, not a fear in sight.

And So my urge to quickly get to the other end, get in the other lift and go down again, I had to hold back, hold back, hold back.

And you practice with those lighthearted, don't quench the mint exercises.

And they do start to translate into, hang on, I know I can do this.

And I know that I don't have to go with it.

And so I was determined in that situation not to be the person to say, let's go, let's go.

But just to hold on to that fear, practice my breathing and stuff like that.

I guess the key thing for me there is that you don't practice this for the first time when you're at the top of a building, right?

It's kind of, what are the kind of low risk activities in day to day life that you can practice so that in that real life scenario, you can now implement in a different way?

So apart from sucking a Polo Mint, what are some other ways that people can try and practise?

And is this what you talk about in the book, as there's a term I'm not familiar with, metacognition?

So that metacognition is the sort of core sort of method used in psychological therapies, really.

So, you know, your brain has the ability to think and have thoughts, but it also has this incredible ability to think about the thoughts that we're having.

So we can be in this conversation talking to each other, and there can also be this other part of your mind that's kind of watching the conversation and thinking about the things that are being said and that's the sort of ability that we really tap into in therapy so that we can reflect on experiences, look at them with a bit of a bird's eye view, then you get this this degree of sort of diffusion from your thoughts so you can kind of see them for what they are.

I talk in the book about, you remember the movie The Mask with Jim Carrey and he kind of he has finds this old wooden mask it doesn't look like anything and when he puts it on it kind of grips him on the back of the head it affects everything he does everything he thinks but when he takes it off and he holds it just at arm's length, it's just a mask again.

You know, when it's here and it's all you're looking at, then it's really hard to have any degree of kind of control over that.

Instead, it will control you, so it will impact on how you feel and how you act.

But when you get a bit of distance from your thoughts, you go, oh yeah, gosh, that's a lot of self-criticism right there.

It takes some of the power out of it, just by holding it on its length.

So you don't have to not have negative thoughts, you just have to give yourself a bit of perspective on them and hold them back and see them for what they are.

1 of the funnest parts of the book for me was when you described you as a trainee clinical psychologist and you guys were being taught mindfulness.

And I think you were talking about how skeptical you were.

You thought, there's no way I could do this.

There's no way I'm gonna talk about this with people who come to see me and help.

And then you explained how you once went running and how it completely changed your perspective on it.

Tell us about that run and how is it useful for people?

Because it seems to fit in here, which is this idea of you can observe those thoughts and not necessarily act on them.

I think mindfulness helps with that, doesn't it?

Mindfulness is that process of staying in the present, so observing the thoughts that come into your mind, not trying to stop having any.

A lot of people think that mindfulness is the ultimate in concentration.

And if you, I don't know, if you're trying to be mindful of this glass, that the minute your attention is not on that glass, you've failed and you've got mindfulness wrong.

It's, you know, your mind will wander to this thought and that thought and it'll bring up stories and memories and it'll hear the car outside or that kind of thing.

Mindfulness is noticing that your mind has gone somewhere and then guiding your attention back.

So I love to think of mindfulness as a spotlight.

So if you say, you know, your mind is a theatre and actors are, you know, your thoughts.

You can't control who's coming on stage or how long they're going to be there.

And you can choose which ones you're gonna focus on and for how long.

And so mindfulness is that process of choosing what you're gonna focus your attention on and allowing everything else to come and go.

And yeah, when we were trainees, and it's almost embarrassing now to even think that we behave like that, you know, we were supposed to be so open minded, but it really makes you think this is really difficult stuff to teach people because it does give you that sense of, well, this sounds really weird and not helpful at all.

And I absolutely had those judgements in the beginning and it was only once I started using it that I had that, oh, right, yeah, this is helpful moment.

Before that run, which you speak about in the book where it really seemed to showcase to you what mindfulness was, had you planned before that run, right okay I'm going to have a mindful run now?

Or was it just I've gone for a run because that's how I unwind and oh I get it, oh this is what they taught you.

Tell me a little bit about that experience.

Yeah so it was exam season, stress was high, I was just full of kind of, oh should we be doing this, oh I've got to do that when I get back and I could feel the stress and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to try, I'm just going to see if this will help, I'm just going to, you know, try and be mindful.

So I focused my mind on the sound of my feet on the gravel path, which is that crunching, crunching, crunch sound as I went along And my mind left that sound a thousand times.

You know, I would think, oh, that email I've got to reply to, or I need to do more original than that and haven't added that to my, whatever.

You know, my mind went off to lots of stressful things and each time I just brought it back and because I was moving my body and I was outdoors and there was lots to bring me to the present and the sound as well of my feet on the gravel, I was able to keep doing that And then by the time I got back, I noticed that I had spent that run focusing on the present.

You know, obviously there were these little moments where my mind would go off, but actually I had more time feeling calmer and focused on the here and now than I would have done if I'd have just gone through my to-do list while I was running.

And that's when I thought, oh yes, I had these little micro moments of peace.

And actually, mindfulness isn't about making you feel calm and peaceful.

It's practicing that sort of mental muscle, if you like, to be able to choose which thoughts you're gonna pay attention to and which ones you're gonna let pass.

And that is an incredible skill to be able to utilize.

I've heard you say that if there was 1 practice you could prescribe to everyone in the world, it would be journaling.

What is it you like so much about journaling and are there some universal practices that yes, we're all unique, we've all got different preferences, but are there some things that you found time and time again that always seem to work with people and I guess is journaling 1 of them.

Yeah and I guess for people who are able to access things like therapy or counselling and go to see someone and and see that as something that's possible to them it's fantastic and there is so much potential in that.

But there are also this huge group of people that don't see that as an option for them.

Maybe they're just not able to talk about things.

And so that's really where the idea of, you know, for everyone, actually journaling is an option.

And even when I think about back when I was really young, anytime that I felt kind of full of emotion or something that I wasn't really clear on or able to understand, I would write stuff down and I would always have that experience of, you write for long enough and you get this kind of, oh yeah, a bit of clarity on it.

And actually the process of just putting something down on paper is a helpful way to sort of diffuse from the thoughts.

You know, we talked about kind of taking the mask off and just holding it at arm's length.

If you kind of, you know, get your thoughts out onto a page.

You can see them for what they are sometimes and just that process is helpful in itself.

If someone's thinking, okay, I want a journal, how can they start?

Have you got any sort of helpful ideas for people in terms of what are they gonna start writing?

Yeah, well, do you know something that we often kind of talk about in therapy when we're getting people to sort of reflect on experiences is we just start by, you know, talking in hindsight about what happened, what happened yesterday, And then we begin to tease it apart.

So that might start with a he said, she said, or I did this and I felt that.

And a therapist will always try to get you to distinguish between what you thought, so the kind of words or pictures in your head and how you felt and where you felt that feeling in your body and the physical sensation of that.

And what that's doing is sort of teasing apart, we talked about the weaves in the basket and you experience something as a whole, and then it's really hard to see the wood for the trees and think about, well, you know, I don't know why I then did that thing that I did next.

And so you kind of trace it back and look at What did I feel?

And did I go with that or did I go against that?

So really just kind of teasing apart the different aspects of your experience to look at which parts influenced each other.

So when my mind is focused on the worst thing that could happen, how do I tend to feel?

And when I'm focused on feeling excited about something that I'm going to enjoy, how does that impact how I feel?

There's no kind of set specific thing that is gonna make journaling a success and make you do it right.

I would say just reflecting on experience and trying to break it down to detail will begin that process of seeing connections between things.

This episode was the last Bite Size of the season.

If you are a long-time listener of my show, you'll know that every summer I take a break from the podcast for 6 weeks.

I spend a lot of time researching and having these conversations.

And over the summer, it's really important for us as a family to take some time off so we can really spend some quality, undistracted time with our children over their summer break.

There is 1 more long form conversations come next Wednesday.

We finish off the season with a very special episode.

Of course, I'll be back at the very start of September with the Wednesday full-length conversations and the Friday bite-sized ones.

If you have enjoyed my podcast, if you've enjoyed these bite-sized episodes, I'd really appreciate your help in spreading the words.

My request to you this summer is if you found my podcast useful, if you found it valuable in your own life, would you consider sharing an episode of this podcast with 5 different people?

My goal with the information on the show each week is to inspire and empower as many people as I possibly can and you guys can help me do that.

If you help me spread the word together we can help spread this message of positivity, compassion and health.

Thank you so much for your support this season.

I hope you have a good summer and I will see


Speaker 0: Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's bite size is brought to you by AG1, 1 of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've come across and I myself have been drinking it regularly for over 5 years. It contains vitamins, minerals, probiotics, prebiotics, digestive enzymes and so much more and can help with energy, focus, gut health, digestion and support a healthy immune system. If you go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more, they are giving my listeners a very special offer, a free 1 year supply of vitamin D and 5 free AG1 travel packs with your first order. See all details at drinkag1.com forward slash live more.

Today's clip is from episode 263 of the podcast with Dr. Julie Smith, a clinical psychologist and author of the best-selling book, Why Has No 1 Told Me This Before? Julie is passionate about making the tools of therapy accessible to all. And as with all the Julie's tools and teachings, the common theme is self-awareness. In this clip, we discuss how to start developing this important skill and Julie shares a powerful tool to help us look after our happiness and mental well-being.

There's a kind of rich tapestry of emotions and feelings that are part of normal life. So this idea that we don't always have to act on those feelings, this seems to be a key idea that I see in a lot of your work that thoughts and feelings, they come and go don't they? They're not fat, we don't have to act on them.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, we have a feeling that and it'll come with an urge. So you'll have an urge to do something or do a certain act, but you don't have to go with it. So I don't know if you wake up in the morning and it all feels too much and you have that urge to just pull the duvet over, go back to sleep and switch your phone off, hide away from the world. You could go with that urge and you're likely to kind of feel terrible at the end of the day. Or you could act opposite to that urge and push through that moment with the possibility that once you were up and about, you could feel a bit better or a bit different.

And often in therapy, we'll play around with that idea that, okay, so when you went with that urge, what happened? How did you feel after that? And when you went opposite to it in another situation, What did that lead to? And so you can kind of learn as you go by just reflecting on these sorts of experiences. I love the idea of a kind of a basket.

So, you know, you have all of these different aspects of your experience, but they're really like weaves in a basket and

Speaker 0: we

Speaker 1: don't experience each weave, we experience the basket. In therapy, what we do is we start taking it apart and we look at the different aspects and the sort of minute detail of different experiences so that we can see where we can make different choices.

Speaker 0: A lot of us, We act on our urges. We don't wanna get up, so we just stay in bed. We feel like some sugar, so we go and open the cookie jar. But a lot of your work is helping us understand that actually you don't have to act on that urge. How can people, I guess, train themselves or teach themselves that they don't have to?

Because I think for some people, that's like a deep realization that I feel this way and I don't have to do it.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that's taught in dialectical behavior therapy, so DBT, but that's a very specific therapy that's for people who perhaps have unsafe coping strategies and things like that. So it's not really freely available to lots of people, but it is 1 of the skills that is taught in that therapy is to build your awareness of urges and practice not going with that urge, but doing something that's based on your values instead of the feeling. So, you can play around with that in lighthearted ways. In the book I talk about, you know, when we were kids, my sisters and I used to get a packet of Polo mints and the trick was, you know, you hold it in your mouth and who's gonna crunch it first, you've got to not crunch the Polo.

And there's this incredible urge to kind of crunch the mint And really it's just a lighthearted way of demonstrating that you can have this urge to do something. Sometimes it's excruciating not to go with it. It's really hard and other times it's easier. But you can kind of really play around with it in terms of building your awareness with those lighthearted things. You know, you fast forward to today and I was saying to you earlier, you know, just got back from holiday and I've had a lifelong fear of heights.

And because I live in a small town, there's no built up areas and I don't get the chance to challenge it on a regular basis. So whenever I do, the feeling always comes back. And we went on holiday and we are going up these really high buildings, we went up the frame in Dubai, and it's so high. And I'm determined not to pass on that fear to my children. So I did a huge practice of acting opposite to the urge because my urge is to say, no way am I doing that.

I am not going up there. I am gonna die. I had to kind of hold onto that, not go with that urge and go along with it. But also when we're in that situation and we go up in this lift and we come out and there's a glass floor and oh God, you know, and just the stress is high. And my kids are running around on this glass floor and enjoying it, not a fear in sight.

And So my urge to quickly get to the other end, get in the other lift and go down again, I had to hold back, hold back, hold back. And you practice with those lighthearted, don't quench the mint exercises. And they do start to translate into, hang on, I know I can do this. I know this is an urge. And I know that I don't have to go with it.

And so I was determined in that situation not to be the person to say, let's go, let's go. But just to hold on to that fear, practice my breathing and stuff like that. Yeah. And to keep my stress response down. And it worked.

It helped hugely.

Speaker 0: That's a very powerful example. I guess the key thing for me there is that you don't practice this for the first time when you're at the top of a building, right? In that fear states. It's kind of, what are the kind of low risk activities in day to day life that you can practice so that in that real life scenario, you can now implement in a different way? So apart from sucking a Polo Mint, what are some other ways that people can try and practise?

And is this what you talk about in the book, as there's a term I'm not familiar with, metacognition? Does this sort of fit in here?

Speaker 1: So that metacognition is the sort of core sort of method used in psychological therapies, really. So, you know, your brain has the ability to think and have thoughts, but it also has this incredible ability to think about the thoughts that we're having. So we can be in this conversation talking to each other, and there can also be this other part of your mind that's kind of watching the conversation and thinking about the things that are being said and that's the sort of ability that we really tap into in therapy so that we can reflect on experiences, look at them with a bit of a bird's eye view, then you get this this degree of sort of diffusion from your thoughts so you can kind of see them for what they are. I talk in the book about, you remember the movie The Mask with Jim Carrey and he kind of he has finds this old wooden mask it doesn't look like anything and when he puts it on it kind of grips him on the back of the head it affects everything he does everything he thinks but when he takes it off and he holds it just at arm's length, it's just a mask again.

And I think of thoughts as like that. You know, when it's here and it's all you're looking at, then it's really hard to have any degree of kind of control over that. Instead, it will control you, so it will impact on how you feel and how you act. But when you get a bit of distance from your thoughts, you go, oh yeah, gosh, that's a lot of self-criticism right there. It takes some of the power out of it, just by holding it on its length.

So you don't have to not have negative thoughts, you just have to give yourself a bit of perspective on them and hold them back and see them for what they are.

Speaker 0: Yeah, I love that. 1 of the funnest parts of the book for me was when you described you as a trainee clinical psychologist and you guys were being taught mindfulness. And I think you were talking about how skeptical you were. You thought, there's no way I could do this. There's no way I'm gonna talk about this with people who come to see me and help.

And then you explained how you once went running and how it completely changed your perspective on it. So maybe let's dive into mindfulness. What is it? Why were you so sceptical? Tell us about that run and how is it useful for people?

Because it seems to fit in here, which is this idea of you can observe those thoughts and not necessarily act on them. I think mindfulness helps with that, doesn't it?

Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Mindfulness is that process of staying in the present, so observing the thoughts that come into your mind, not trying to stop having any. A lot of people think that mindfulness is the ultimate in concentration. And if you, I don't know, if you're trying to be mindful of this glass, that the minute your attention is not on that glass, you've failed and you've got mindfulness wrong. And It's really not that.

It's, you know, your mind will wander to this thought and that thought and it'll bring up stories and memories and it'll hear the car outside or that kind of thing. Mindfulness is noticing that your mind has gone somewhere and then guiding your attention back. So I love to think of mindfulness as a spotlight. So if you say, you know, your mind is a theatre and actors are, you know, your thoughts. So different actors will come on stage.

You can't control who's coming on stage or how long they're going to be there. But all you have is the spotlight. And you can choose which ones you're gonna focus on and for how long. And so mindfulness is that process of choosing what you're gonna focus your attention on and allowing everything else to come and go. And yeah, when we were trainees, and it's almost embarrassing now to even think that we behave like that, you know, we were supposed to be so open minded, but it really makes you think this is really difficult stuff to teach people because it does give you that sense of, well, this sounds really weird and not helpful at all.

And I absolutely had those judgements in the beginning and it was only once I started using it that I had that, oh, right, yeah, this is helpful moment.

Speaker 0: Before that run, which you speak about in the book where it really seemed to showcase to you what mindfulness was, had you planned before that run, right okay I'm going to have a mindful run now? Or was it just I've gone for a run because that's how I unwind and oh I get it, oh this is what they taught you. Tell me a little bit about that experience.

Speaker 1: Yeah so it was exam season, stress was high, I was just full of kind of, oh should we be doing this, oh I've got to do that when I get back and I could feel the stress and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to try, I'm just going to see if this will help, I'm just going to, you know, try and be mindful. So I focused my mind on the sound of my feet on the gravel path, which is that crunching, crunching, crunch sound as I went along And my mind left that sound a thousand times. You know, I would think, oh, that email I've got to reply to, or I need to do more original than that and haven't added that to my, whatever. You know, my mind went off to lots of stressful things and each time I just brought it back and because I was moving my body and I was outdoors and there was lots to bring me to the present and the sound as well of my feet on the gravel, I was able to keep doing that And then by the time I got back, I noticed that I had spent that run focusing on the present.

You know, obviously there were these little moments where my mind would go off, but actually I had more time feeling calmer and focused on the here and now than I would have done if I'd have just gone through my to-do list while I was running. And that's when I thought, oh yes, I had these little micro moments of peace. And actually, mindfulness isn't about making you feel calm and peaceful. It's not a relaxation exercise. It's practicing that sort of mental muscle, if you like, to be able to choose which thoughts you're gonna pay attention to and which ones you're gonna let pass.

And that is an incredible skill to be able to utilize.

Speaker 0: I've heard you say that if there was 1 practice you could prescribe to everyone in the world, it would be journaling. What is it you like so much about journaling and are there some universal practices that yes, we're all unique, we've all got different preferences, but are there some things that you found time and time again that always seem to work with people and I guess is journaling 1 of them.

Speaker 1: Yeah and I guess for people who are able to access things like therapy or counselling and go to see someone and and see that as something that's possible to them it's fantastic and there is so much potential in that. But there are also this huge group of people that don't see that as an option for them. Maybe they're just not able to talk about things. And so that's really where the idea of, you know, for everyone, actually journaling is an option. And even when I think about back when I was really young, anytime that I felt kind of full of emotion or something that I wasn't really clear on or able to understand, I would write stuff down and I would always have that experience of, you write for long enough and you get this kind of, oh yeah, a bit of clarity on it.

And actually the process of just putting something down on paper is a helpful way to sort of diffuse from the thoughts. You know, we talked about kind of taking the mask off and just holding it at arm's length. If you kind of, you know, get your thoughts out onto a page. You can see them for what they are sometimes and just that process is helpful in itself.

Speaker 0: If someone's thinking, okay, I want a journal, how can they start? Have you got any sort of helpful ideas for people in terms of what are they gonna start writing?

Speaker 1: Yeah, well, do you know something that we often kind of talk about in therapy when we're getting people to sort of reflect on experiences is we just start by, you know, talking in hindsight about what happened, what happened yesterday, And then we begin to tease it apart. So that might start with a he said, she said, or I did this and I felt that. And a therapist will always try to get you to distinguish between what you thought, so the kind of words or pictures in your head and how you felt and where you felt that feeling in your body and the physical sensation of that. And what that's doing is sort of teasing apart, we talked about the weaves in the basket and you experience something as a whole, and then it's really hard to see the wood for the trees and think about, well, you know, I don't know why I then did that thing that I did next. And so you kind of trace it back and look at What did I feel?

What did I think? What were the urges? And did I go with that or did I go against that? And what was the impact of that? So really just kind of teasing apart the different aspects of your experience to look at which parts influenced each other.

So when my mind is focused on the worst thing that could happen, how do I tend to feel? And when I'm focused on feeling excited about something that I'm going to enjoy, how does that impact how I feel? There's no kind of set specific thing that is gonna make journaling a success and make you do it right. I would say just reflecting on experience and trying to break it down to detail will begin that process of seeing connections between things. Yeah.

Speaker 0: Thank you so much for listening. This episode was the last Bite Size of the season. If you are a long-time listener of my show, you'll know that every summer I take a break from the podcast for 6 weeks. Why do I do that? Well, my wife produces each week's show.

I spend a lot of time researching and having these conversations. And over the summer, it's really important for us as a family to take some time off so we can really spend some quality, undistracted time with our children over their summer break. There is 1 more long form conversations come next Wednesday. We finish off the season with a very special episode. Of course, I'll be back at the very start of September with the Wednesday full-length conversations and the Friday bite-sized ones.

If you have enjoyed my podcast, if you've enjoyed these bite-sized episodes, I'd really appreciate your help in spreading the words. My request to you this summer is if you found my podcast useful, if you found it valuable in your own life, would you consider sharing an episode of this podcast with 5 different people? My goal with the information on the show each week is to inspire and empower as many people as I possibly can and you guys can help me do that. If you help me spread the word together we can help spread this message of positivity, compassion and health. Thank you so much for your support this season.

I hope you have a good summer and I will see

Speaker 1: you

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#379 BITESIZE | How to Be Your Own Therapist | Dr Julie Smith