EP 903- Detoxify Your Life

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to Heels in the Courtroom, a podcast about successfully navigating law and life featuring the women trial attorneys at the Simon Law Firm.

Liz Lenivy:

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Heels in the Courtroom. This is Liz Levy, and today I’m joined by Mary Simon, Elizabeth McNulty and Amy Gunn. Hello ladies. Hey, hello. Also, happy New year to all of you. I know for our listeners, it might be a couple of weeks into 2025 already, but for us recording right now, this is the first time that we’ve all been back together since the holidays. And during that time I had a great break. But obviously with a new year, I think a lot of us are focusing on, alright, it’s a fresh start. What are things that maybe I can improve upon myself? And so with January, I think a lot of us are doing sort of maybe dry January, maybe we’re dieting, especially after hitting the holidays pretty hard. And so this idea of detoxing or detoxifying our lives, especially our diets, has been sort of front and center in my brain.

And so I thought about that in terms of, well, how can I take that idea of healthy eating, clean eating, whatever, and spin that into maybe improving other aspects of my life? So that’s what we’re talking about today is just detoxifying our lives. And there’s lots of different aspects that we can detoxify. But I thought the best place to start would be from just what does the word detoxify actually mean? So looking at Merriam Webster, they define it as to remove a harmful substance such as a poison or toxin or the effect of such from or to render a harmful substance harmless. And I really liked that second half of that definition to render a harmful substance, harmless, because I think that sometimes we talk about bad habits and how we get those out of our lives, but how can we maybe make that just not as present in our lives, maybe a little bit of a step easier.

So then this took me down a bit of a rabbit hole about why is it that bad habits are so hard to break? Is there a scientific reason for it? Are we all just lazy? Do we all just lack the willpower to change? Because I think that that’s oftentimes, especially amongst this room, the attitude that we have is that we can just power through anything. If we want to change something about ourselves, we can just power through it. But it did make me think, is there some type of or sort of biological reason that bad habits are just so hard to break? And I found this article from NIH News and Health. So this is from the National Institute of Health. It’s a couple years old, but they focused on this idea of how our brains respond to just habits in general. And what they explore is this idea that habits are basically just, it’s repetition.

It is something that we have just become so used to, so part of our lives that it allows our brain to go on autopilot so we don’t have to think about it. And there’s so many decisions that we have to make in a day. So if there’s something that you can just let your body and your mind take over and you don’t really have to put much effort into focusing on this particular task and you just do it, then that’s what creates a habit. It’s just something that we repeatedly do. In addition to that habits, whether they’re good or bad habits, that repetition also kind of gives us a hit of dopamine, which makes our brains feel good. So it’s this idea that our brains have been conditioned to form habits and then to continue those habits. And I don’t know, maybe I like that explanation a little bit because then it makes me think, well, I’m not breaking into the snacks late at night because I lack willpower, but because this is millions of years of evolution just telling me that this is good for me right now.

So that while that is a nice little excuse that I’ve created for myself, and I’ll keep that in my back pocket on the bad nights, but I do want to focus on how I can try to take a bad habit, make it a good habit, or at least eliminate that bad habit. And this then led me down a different rabbit hole of, well, what are these experts tips on changing or detoxing these bad habits from your life? And I’ll give credit where I found some of these tips, and I’ve sort of formed my own list based on it. But the American Heart Association has a list obviously, for improving our health. Harvard Medical School also produced a list and an article a couple of years ago that I thought laid out some pretty good tips. And they’re all kind of the same. And they all start with the first one, which is identifying your problem and why you want to change. And I really like that second half about why you want to change. I don’t think it’s enough to just say, well, I have this problem. I think it’s important to find a motivation, a reason why. And so I have given all of you here the really fun task of identifying what’s your bad habit and why do you want to change? So Elizabeth, I’ll start with you. Terrific.

Elizabeth McNulty:

Okay. My first bad habit that I will be discussing with our audience today is I am not a morning person, so I haven’t ever been a morning person, but I feel like a school kind of broke me of that as you had to be there at 7:00 AM or whatever. But as we make our own schedule here, I’ve kind of devolved from that and I hit snooze a lot. So I would like to stop hitting snooze, and I would like to change that. It makes the workday a little bit harder because obviously we work in a pretty traditional eight to at least five environment. It doesn’t have to be like that, but my life would certainly be easier if I conformed to the normal working hours, especially when some folks here definitely start at 5:00 AM and I would always strive to be a morning person. So I obviously set my alarm for 6:00 AM but I do not get out of bed at 6:00 AM and that just makes my life a lot harder. So I would like to stop hitting the snooze button because I think I’d be more productive. And the next step in this list is to disrupt my problem. And so I have a few options with that. I don’t use an alarm clock. I use my phone probably some other people here, and you can put your phone across the room and then you’re forced to get out of bed. So I’m going to start doing that and hopefully that will be a greater impact on my life.

Mary Simon:

But see in my head, if you’re not a morning person, you’re not a morning person, why do you want to strive to get up at six or five? Why do you want to do that?

Elizabeth McNulty:

Because I feel like that’s just when the day starts for everyone. And those are actually, it’s because in winter those are the light hours.

Mary Simon:

So in the summer you don’t need to do it then, right?

Elizabeth McNulty:

No, because then I’ll be adjusted to it by then.

Mary Simon:

I just feel like people who are morning people or night people, maybe it’s because you think there might be a negative connotation with someone who’s not a morning person because you could not pay me to be a night owl. I couldn’t do it. It would destroy my, I’d be so tired. And I’d imagine it’s the same thing if you’re a morning person and you’re getting up earlier than you want to do, you also have to go to bed earlier.

Elizabeth McNulty:

Oh, well, I don’t even go to bed late. I go to bed at like 10 30.

Mary Simon:

But don’t you feel like it’s just going to make you more lethargic? I feel like a bad habit is not being a morning person or a night person. And I think you’re doing great. Thank

Elizabeth McNulty:

You. Okay, we’ll move on to my second identified bad habit as fairly. That one,

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Elizabeth, here’s what I wrote. I’m the exact opposite. I think I go to bed too early. I do get up at five because I am a morning person and I have a very strict routine habit of getting up and doing the things I do and blah, blah, blah. But I mean, I think this is kind of embarrassing, but if I’m not in my pajamas in my home comfortable by 7:00 PM then I’m starting to get feeling out of whack. I don’t have to be asleep yet. But dinner, we went to dinner last night for Connor’s birthday, and we didn’t get home until nine o’clock Now. We had a good time, and I didn’t realize how late it was, but I got home and I started panicking because the alarm’s going off at five o’clock. Now still, okay, do the math. I go to bed at nine o’clock and get up at five.

That’s eight hours of sleep. Any normal human being is doing great and eight hours of sleep. But if I don’t get eight hours, I don’t know if it’s in my mind if this, we’re talking about brain science here a little bit. I don’t know if that’s in my mind or if it’s physical or all the above, but I wrote down, I don’t want to feel like at seven o’clock if I’m not already at home in bed or getting ready for bed, that I’m going to be a disaster the next day. So I can’t fix that by putting my phone across the room. So how do I fix that?

Mary Simon:

That’s how I am I the same way. It’s like I’m half functioning around those hours later at night. Amy, you said you set your alarm at five. There’s your little routine that you do

Amy Collignon Gunn:

At that time. Yeah, I pop out of bed. I’m excited about getting up at five.

Mary Simon:

And for me, I’m also a morning person, and that’s my time. That’s my reserved Mary Simon time. That’s just mine. No one’s in my space. I’m not taking phone calls, not taking care of anyone. The motivation for a morning person from my perspective is not just like I want to wake up and sit in my bed and stare at the ceiling and I’m wide awake. It’s because I am waking up, anticipating this period of time that I enjoy. And so in my head, I’m thinking for being a morning person, when I asked you kind of why do you want to do it? I don’t know that I had be a morning person. If I didn’t have that little routine that I have for myself, that is enjoyable. So if you’re just because you initially said that’s kind of when everyone starts their day. I don’t know if I would start my day then if I didn’t have the things that come with the kid and whatever comes after seven o’clock. So in my head, maybe if I had that time window at 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM or whatever it was, I don’t know if I would choose to do it in the morning or if my body would anticipate that. I don’t know.

Liz Lenivy:

I just find it really interesting that the two morning people don’t understand because I’m also not a morning person. So you said that and I went exactly, exactly that. Oh really? Yeah. And I think part of it may be because we are ascribing some moral value

Mary Simon:

To

Liz Lenivy:

Being a morning person, right? Well,

Mary Simon:

That’s how my husband is. Yeah. My husband’s not a morning person. And there’s been random periods of time where he’ll be like, I’m going to work out in the morning. And then he does that and he’s so tired by nine or 10 because his body stays up later. His brain is just more activated later in the day. And my head, I’m like, no, you don’t need to do that. You can just do what works for you.

Liz Lenivy:

So what I’ll say is as a non morning person who on occasion will get up early, whether it’s because I’m being forced to, maybe I have a 7:00 AM call or something dumb like that, or just because I just feel like getting out of bed, which is a very rare occasion. My bed is my favorite place in the world. But I do find that those mornings though, where I can get to work a little bit earlier and I’m sort of there the rest, before the rest of the working world, I actually get quite a bit done because nobody’s bothering me. And then once 5:00 PM rolls around, I feel good about leaving. I’ve had a good day, but it’s not uncommon because I have that same problem, Elizabeth, where I roll into work pretty late and then I justify it by working late into the evening. That’s how I get all of my work done.

But then sometimes when I’m leaving work at six or six 30, that means my entire night’s gone. And I’m not a morning workout person. My brain is not functioning where I want it to be when I’m physically active, something about trying to move and make my brain work, it’s just it’s not hit and the same. It’s too much. So I only work out in the evening. So then by the time I get home, I go to the gym, I come home, I get showered. But by the time I get all of that done, eating dinner, whatever, maybe chores or other things I wanted to finish up around the house, I’m like, that’s my entire day. That’s a full day. I feel like I don’t really have any time to do anything else that maybe I wanted to journal or draw or do some type of hobby. I don’t know, something other than just being person who goes to work, goes to the gym, goes

Mary Simon:

Home. Oh, yeah.

Liz Lenivy:

Which is truly just, there’s not a whole lot of personality in that.

Mary Simon:

Everything gets bumped back is what you’re saying,

Liz Lenivy:

Right? Yeah. So I think the thing is it’s not just identifying something that you want to change about yourself, but providing the why. I think for you, Mary and Amy, there’s no why to it because you like what you’re doing. It’s a system that works for you. But Elizabeth, you have a why, and I understand your why as the other night owl, so to

Mary Simon:

Speak. Yeah.

Liz Lenivy:

So I don’t know. I think you can do it. I’m really curious about the alarm clock one. Let me know how that works. I’m just so afraid that if it’s far away from me, I’m not going to hear it.

Mary Simon:

Or haven’t you also heard about you can set your alarm just 10 minutes earlier and then another 10 minute, do that for a week and then do a gradual type thing? Yeah, I’ve read about doing that. Mary, I would

Liz Lenivy:

Like you to look at my alarm clocks.

Elizabeth McNulty:

Mine like

Mary Simon:

4 30, 4 35 5, 5 35 45 6.

Liz Lenivy:

Well, I get up at 5:00 AM every day to make sure my cats aren’t fighting when their automatic feeder goes off, but then I go back to bed. That’s why that’s, doesn’t it feel like it’d be so easy to get up with them too? They’re already up.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

They do. Yeah, they do.

Liz Lenivy:

Okay. Elizabeth, I like the problem that you’ve identified. I like your solution for disrupting your problem. The third item that I’ve listed here is replacing old habits with new or similar ones. So that I think even the morning person one was an example that I read in one of the articles, and something that they said was, find a habit that you will do at whatever time you wake up. So Amy, your habit is you jump out of bed and hop

Amy Collignon Gunn:

On the treadmill and I feed the cat and hop on the treadmill, and then I make a smoothie for myself. And then I’m in the shower and I have a three hour morning routine. If I get up at five o’clock, I’m usually ready to walk out the door by eight o’clock. That’s crazy. That’s a long time.

Mary Simon:

But you get a lot of stuff done in that time.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

I do. And often I find myself saying to myself, this is a weird thing. Look what you’ve done in the last hour. I mean, I recite this stuff to myself. I’ve checked my email, I’ve fed the cad, I’ve unloaded the dishwasher, I’ve been on the treadmill, I’ve checked my other email. I have

Mary Simon:

Ate breakfast,

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Got ready. Yeah, fixed breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen, took out the trash. Everything that’s left over from the night before and did all that. I mean, I literally, I’ve changed the laundry or I’ve started the laundry as I’m doing them, I’m listing them. Why am I doing that?

Mary Simon:

Maybe that’s the habit, but that’s not a bad habit.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

I think it’s

Mary Simon:

Accomplishment.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

I think it’s a way. It’s the dopamine hit, I guess. So yeah, I guess it also just a way of feeling like it’s worth it. Look at you, pat myself on the back. You’ve done all these things today and it’s not even 8:00 AM. I don’t know. But I think I could also do those things, Mary, to your point, I could do all those things. Just shift it three hours. So maybe not three hours, but shift it two hours. And if your day allows it, so then you just go to bed instead of seven or eight, go to bed, get all this stuff, get all those. I can do all those things in the evening. I could do the treadmill, unload the dishwasher, do the laundry. I can do a lot of those things in the evening. But I don’t know. My routine and my habit is the morning, and I don’t know, I just do it. To me, that’s the absolute definition of habit, getting up the same time every day, doing the same exact thing.

Liz Lenivy:

And it’s something you don’t even have to think about now.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

And I think that makes it so efficient.

Liz Lenivy:

It’s your brain on autopilot.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Yes,

Liz Lenivy:

The science holds up.

Mary Simon:

It does,

Liz Lenivy:

Mary, we know you’re a morning person, so good for you, great

Mary Simon:

Patronizing. But I also love people who are not morning people. And I want people who are not morning people to embrace it. But the way that you’re describing it of then, by the time the workday ends, especially if it’s dark out,

Elizabeth McNulty:

It

Mary Simon:

Feels like the day’s done and you’re like, I worked.

Elizabeth McNulty:

Yeah, I feel like I can’t go outside when it’s dark. And so just the day’s over. So I dunno. I feel like I have no time of the day where I am at peak, Elizabeth,

Mary Simon:

And it’s all yours that you actually can enjoy. Right? And it’s hard when your body naturally doesn’t want to be a morning person. It’s just hard.

Elizabeth McNulty:

Well, and that’s why I forced myself to try to get up so early because I need so many hours to assimilate to the world. That

Mary Simon:

Makes sense.

Elizabeth McNulty:

I used to get up early in high school so I could watch a full episode of reality TV before Covid.

Mary Simon:

Yeah. See, I still could do that. I could still do that before starting my day.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

I do that on the treadmill. That’s my favorite part of the treadmill is I get to

Mary Simon:

Watch your shows

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Multitask. Yeah.

Mary Simon:

I’m constantly thinking about how nowadays we’re constantly just inundated with information, whether it’s, we’ve talked about this before of the notification cycle that we’re in. I love listening to books or podcasts or music or something. I mean, always listening to something. I’ll wake up in the morning and I’ll listen to something about the news when I’m getting ready to even walk Billy to walk my dog. I don’t remember the last time. I was just still in silence. There’s input constantly into my brain. And when there isn’t, I have to actually be present and think about the fact that I’m not taking in any sort of information, which I think is probably a little bit a DHD, like stimulation, needing some sort of background noise, probably addiction of screens or whatever we’ve gotten to or phones or things like that. But it’s also a little bit, when I was thinking about why it almost is a scarcity mindset of if I don’t get to watch my show for this 45 minutes, I’m not going to finish this episode and then I won’t get to see it later.

So I’m going to do it now. But we have so much time, and sometimes I’ll be in the kitchen, even if I’m getting Nora’s dinner ready, if she’s in the other room playing, or if mark’s with her, I will listen to an audiobook or a podcast in one headphone while I’m doing stuff in the kitchen. And Mark’s like, Hey. And then he’ll look at me and go, oh wait, are you listening to something? And I hate that he even has to ask that. It makes me feel like I’m not really present. And so the bad habit is kind of wrapped up in always having some sort of input, whether it’s a show or background noise or a podcast, whatever. So I do want to work on that

Amy Collignon Gunn:

One thing on that, Mary, because I’m identifying. I mean, we’re very

Mary Simon:

Similar.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

So I find myself doing the same thing listening. Again, it is multitasking. It’s efficiency. I’m learning the news at the same time, I’m putting on my makeup and hooray for me. And I wonder though sometimes if it’s also avoidance. So am I listening to every podcast that I can to avoid being alone? My thoughts to avoid having a conversation with myself or thinking about my future or what I really need to do to improve myself or what it means to detoxify? I mean, I wonder that. I think I have just recently realized that my podcast listening and other screens have affected my ability to have internal monologue and to think about planning and even conversations with my spouse or my family

Mary Simon:

Working

Amy Collignon Gunn:

On it.

Mary Simon:

Even the other day, this just reminded me of it. The other day, I was taking Billy for a walk, and that’s normally when I’ll listen to an audiobook or a podcast. And I couldn’t find my headphones. And I was so annoyed that I couldn’t find them. And I’m like, oh, I’ll take Billy out as soon as I can find my headphones. And Mark was like, or you can just go join nature because Mark will go on walks with, he’ll run even when he runs or exercises, he doesn’t wear any headphones. And I kind of looked at him and I was like, but that’s my thing. I like doing that. And it’s funny because in my head, I knew what he was saying and I was so stubborn to be the way that to a podcast is a good thing. That’s what I felt like explaining, learning things I wanted to double down of.

Like, no, that’s for me. I get to do that. But it really is because you just are looking around and you’re just still with your own thoughts. And one thing that helped me with the screen, just screen time in general habits is I don’t know if you guys have heard of that app Opal, if you’ve ever heard of it again, mark is much better at just being present than I am. But it’s an app that you can pick whatever applications you want and it blocks them for a certain time period. So I have Facebook and TikTok blocked from eight to eight every day, 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM every day. And even if you go right, I, I’m a morning person, not a night person, but if I go to click on it, it will not allow me to, it’s grayed out on my phone. Those applications are,

Liz Lenivy:

Wait, so can you still get into the application? But can you still get into the app? But it will appear great. I had that app for a while where you can open up the app, but the color is all gone. And for some reason that triggers our brains to be not interested. Our dumb lizard brains are like, I guess we’re not interested

Mary Simon:

On TikTok on my phone. See how it’s grayed out? And if I click on it,

Liz Lenivy:

It will, it says, you found a secret gem.

Mary Simon:

What does that mean? Yeah, it gives you little, it’ll tell you you did this many times without actually going into it. And then that’s your hit of

Liz Lenivy:

Dopamine.

Mary Simon:

It says, TikTok blocked two times today, which means I went and clicked on, if someone texted me a video, I just automatically click on it and then it opens up and I’m like, oh, I’m not going to do that.

Elizabeth McNulty:

She’s being punished. Her Opal app is punishing her.

Mary Simon:

But yeah, it’s just another way to force me to just be still. And I do think it’s probably some type of avoidant, whatever, but maybe even sitting here thinking about James Clear’s book on Atomic Habits. Have you guys heard of that book? So he talks about, I listened to it on a walk, so I’m saying that’s not a bad thing that I listened to it. But he talks about not having a goal of like, I’m going to run a marathon, but just make your habit instead, at 6:00 AM every day I’m going to put on my sneakers. And just, that’s the habit. Because once you do that, you’re already out. You’ve got your shoes on. It gives you the extra push to go do the thing you want to do. But even sitting here thinking, maybe I’ll try to implement one of the walks that I do during a whole week. I don’t bring my headphones or something, which makes me cringe thinking about it.

Elizabeth McNulty:

I had a friend in high school who gave up her car radio every year for lint. And I was always very impressed by that. Could also be something to try in the car. Just silence.

Mary Simon:

And I can’t. And sometimes Nora, sometimes my three and a half year old, she’ll say, I don’t want any music. I just want silence in the car. So we will turn off her frozen soundtrack and then I’ll just sit in the car and she won’t say a word. I’m like, how you doing? She’s like, no, I’m good. She doesn’t want to talk. And I’m like, she knows how to be still and Mark knows how to be still. And I’m just sitting in the car. Alright, so I’m so antsy. But yeah, I didn’t realize this would be such a deep dive into such a terrible habit of mine.

Liz Lenivy:

Yeah, I realized that this topic was maybe a mistake feeling kind of personally attacked both. Not a morning person need to work on it and cannot be left alone with my thoughts. We bought special sleeping earbuds, they’re called sleep buds. And I wear them every night before I go to bed because I cannot fall asleep now unless there is a podcast on. I’ve got a bunch of podcasts in my rotation that I just need something talking to me so I can focus on it. And then my body is tired, so I want to go to sleep, but I need my mind to get to that level as well. And this particular app for the sleep Buds, it comes with various noises. So instead of listening to a podcast, you can listen to a babbling brook or maybe a nice rainstorm, something to just sort of create white noise almost, or white noise. I think white noise is an option on it. And I tried to do that one night and I laid in bed staring up in my ceiling eyes wide open, I’m never going to sleep again. How does anybody fall asleep like this? And it’s a problem. We’re messed up. But it’s also the nights I get the best sleep are the nights that I’ve fallen asleep listening to a podcast.

So that’s an interesting one and one that I did not think about how bad of a habit it may be that I can’t find quiet in myself.

Mary Simon:

It is the same. Your description, it’s like it’s autopilot. That’s your routine. You do it all the time. It’s helpful, but we don’t really know if it’s the best. It’s probably, I don’t know if it’s the healthiest thing that we’re always listening to something. Yeah, maybe our brains weren’t meant to

Liz Lenivy:

Be constantly intaking information. Alright, Amy, can you please tell us if you have a habit or anything that you would like to change about yourself that I don’t have to apply to myself to that we

Mary Simon:

Haven’t already talked about?

Amy Collignon Gunn:

I have found this very interesting because my first reaction, probably not a surprise, anybody who knows me well is I don’t have any bad habits. I’m such a strong-willed person that if I ever had one, I’d get rid of it in five seconds. It’s already gone. I mean, I’ve never had one if you don’t allow it. So I mean, I think it’s been just listening and writing down notes here. I’m identifying, I’m still having a hard time calling it a bad habit. Identifying habits that maybe aren’t the best one for me. One of course is I am thinking about getting anxious if I’m not ready for bed at a certain time in the evening. That is so old lady. That’s so old lady that’s so boring. And I let it happen because I tell myself I’ve got to get up early and be ready to go.

My life is so full and so busy and I have to be top of my game every day. But I’m not sure that’s all of it. I’m pretty sure most people can function just fine on seven and a half hours of sleep and not nine or whenever I end up getting a lot of times. But I don’t want to just stay up just to stay up. So I’m thinking of ways that I could extend that just even a half an hour. But again, I don’t want to just watch another half an hour of some stupid show. I need to fill that half an hour with something productive, which maybe that’s a bad habit too. Always feeling like time has to be spent productively and efficiently or I’m going to fail. So maybe just pulling back from that and spending that extra half an hour. I mean, I don’t read for pleasure, period. I, I tell myself I don’t have time for it. I have magazines. I might be able to get through a magazine. I just put three legal magazines in my bag like Whoopty. Woo. I’m going to what? I mean, that’s terrible.

Mary Simon:

That’s not reading for pleasure.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Terrible

Mary Simon:

Here to tell you.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Right?

Mary Simon:

That’s reading for pain. Yeah, I

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Know,

Mary Simon:

But I can’t anxiety,

Amy Collignon Gunn:

I cannot throw away a legal magazine without at least flipping through it. It might be something I need to know. So I think I’m really going to try to do something extra in that half an hour. Give myself a half an hour,

Elizabeth McNulty:

Even if it’s 10 minutes. What if just being less rigid about it?

Amy Collignon Gunn:

I don’t know. That even means, and in my head I’m like,

Mary Simon:

Not 30 minutes, 10, just let’s focus 10. What way I do for 10 minutes? Well, what’s interesting is that even this or aren’t they time increment? We have to be regimented. I know. But what’s also interesting that I, mark always tells me the same thing. Why does everything have to be so rigid and logistics about, I have lists about lists. That’s also probably a bad habit. But I saw on TikTok, have you guys ever seen junk journaling

Liz Lenivy:

From 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM you saw on TikTok?

Mary Simon:

Yeah, it was about, yeah, I saw it at night at like three 30. No, you’re sleeping. I don’t

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Understand.

Mary Simon:

No, you did TikTok at five o’clock, 8:00 AM it gets blocked until 8:00 PM Right. That’s what I’m saying.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

So when do you watch it?

Liz Lenivy:

8:01 PM Mary’s got that

Mary Simon:

TikTok. They do it because then I don’t have time to sit on it. Right? Because at 8:00 PM I’m going to bed and I’m not.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Well, as long as you’re not staying up till midnight scrolling through,

Mary Simon:

Hell no, I would never do that. I’m not a night person.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Thank you for that clarification.

Mary Simon:

Wow. I did not know. That was such a point of confusion. But wait a second. So I saw junk journaling on TikTok and I was like, this is a genius idea for me because it’s a space that has absolutely no rhyme or reason and all you’re doing is like scrapbooking but mindlessly. So I have a notebook that I will take any, I mean it can be anything. It can be part of a cereal box or Nora got some wristband at a aquarium we went to that I still had in my purse. It’s any sort of random piece of paper. I did it with a magazine that we get sent to our house that we never read and is an old subscription. I’ll just rip the pages out. I’ll just put things together. There’s no rhyme or reason to do it, but it’s just a journal now that I have filled with pages of random scrapbooks of just random things I’ve pulled.

But it’s something that I can do with my hands when I’m sitting down, if Nora’s watching TV or something and Mark and I are just hanging out if he’s on his phone or whatever, I can just sit there and do something. And it’s not productive. I’m not doing it to be productive, but it’s just something to fill a little bit of time that’s not listening to something. It’s not me on my phone. I can still talk to other people. I don’t give a shit what it looks like. Mark was like, oh, what’s that page about? And I was like, it’s about nothing. There’s no plan. There’s nothing about it. And okay, yes, I was like, this is the one thing that I get that has zero organization. He was like, oh my God, I’m sorry. It looks great. And I was like, it doesn’t even need to look great. Just walk away. And I just get those that maybe that’s the industrial

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Tape thing you talk about.

Mary Simon:

Totally.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

It definitely

Mary Simon:

Is. But that thick, clear tape, I just tape shit down on the piece of paper, turn to the next page. Anywhere I literally have had, whether it’s like a cereal box or this, I could literally just take this things around my house that can be taped down to a piece of paper. I will just grab them and do it. And it’s just

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Then do you keep it for a long time or you

Mary Simon:

After? Yeah, just I’m about halfway through the first one.

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Okay. So it’s something physical. You buy something called the junk journal.

Mary Simon:

I just used a journal at my house that I had and it was halfway through filled with arbitrary list about things that I’ve planned on doing for the last five years. And I ripped those out and threw them away. It was called Mary’s Dreams. Yes. I just threw those away. And then I did junk journaling.

Liz Lenivy:

I’m sorry. I’m envisioning this as an art exhibit right now where we see the pages in chronological order where it goes from to-do list, grocery list and then eventually devolves into the creation.

Mary Simon:

I like that concept though. It’s so great and I think it’s great for a group like us where there is a lot of productivity mindset, scheduling mindset, and this is just a mindless, non-technological way of write it

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Down.

Mary Simon:

And in six months I’m going to ask everyone to bring their junk journal to the office so we can see that none of

Amy Collignon Gunn:

Us will remember ever having this conversation.

Mary Simon:

That’s exactly right.

Liz Lenivy:

But luckily you’ll have this as evidence, right? In this podcast.

Mary Simon:

Yeah.

Liz Lenivy:

I guess now is the time that I have to say what my bad habit is in addition to changing every other aspect of my life that you all have made me aware of about myself. I mean, the thing that I do want to take into 2025 work-wise, because that’s really what I was focusing on when I thought about this topic,

Is the fact that I don’t procrastinate. I don’t think I’m a procrastinator. I think that’s actually something that I’m proud about myself except in situations where I am not excited about something and I have a tendency to put it off and I’ll put it off until the last minute and then I find myself under a lot of stress to get it done and get it done quickly. And that is not a good way to operate. And so I’m wondering kind of just listening to you all talk and some of the strategies you’ve come up with. What if I got up earlier in the morning and I took care of some of those things I didn’t like early in the morning and that was the habit I created. Or maybe if I did that and I put less stress and pressure and constantly thinking about how I’m running late on things, maybe I wouldn’t need that podcast to fall asleep at night.

Maybe I could have a little bit more calm. So that’s something that I’m going to try to do in 2025. I do want to finish out this list because we’ve talked about steps one through three. So you’ve identified your problem and why you want to change. Two, you are finding ways to disrupt your problem or stay away from those things that maybe feed that bad habits. Step three, you’re replacing old habits with new similar ones. And sort of the sub parts to that I think we’ve hit on is you want to keep it simple. You want to think long-term. So you’re not going to make a huge change overnight, but maybe that 10 minutes is what’s going to let you get into 20 minutes is what’s going to let you get into 30 minutes of view time of not needing to feel productive all the time.

So starting off small, keeping it simple, and then thinking long-term and how you can improve upon whatever your goal is gradually over time. Step four that I think is really important is that you have to accept that there will be setbacks and that sort of leads also into step five, which is be patient with yourself, which I think is something that everyone in this room can also probably work on. I think that we are a room of real go-getters. Got to get ’em done, got to get it done now. Got to get it done fast, let’s go, let’s go. And sometimes maybe having a little bit of patience, taking a moment to breathe, taking a moment to just be in the moment is something we can all benefit from. And I really look at these things of why do I want to do this? It’s because I want to be a better person.

I want to be a better spouse at home. I want to be a better daughter. I want to be a better attorney. And I think that when we have people who are happy and healthy, honestly, that makes for the best lawyers, right? If you are someone who feels good and is excited about what you’re doing and you don’t feel bogged down by everything that makes for a better work product. So ultimately I’m bringing it all back to what can we do for our clients. I know that we got a little bit all over the place with this conversation, but I had a lot of fun talking to you all about this. I know that this was kind of a bit of a curve ball that I threw. So I appreciate you all humoring me in this conversation. I appreciate all of our listeners for sticking through to the end of this episode. If you want to reach out to us, you can contact us at comments at heels in the Courtroom law. Remember, new episodes drop every other Wednesday. And until next time. Bye guys.

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