Transcript
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Speaker: Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the work-life balance podcast from Abysida, where we don't tell you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Speaker: I'm your host, Michael Millward. Today, I'm speaking to Alicia Murray about how we can organize our lives better and learn from what we have done today.
Speaker: Elisa is a psychologist based in Washington State in the United States. I think I've visited Washington State. I was flying from Hong Kong to New York. The plane stopped to refuel in Seattle, but I can't claim that I visited because I cannot remember whether I stepped off the plane or not.
Speaker: If I ever get the chance to really visit Washington State, I will make all of my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because as a member of the Ultimate Travel Club, I get to travel at trade prices, which means I save a lot of money.
Speaker: I'd like you to be able to do the same. So there is a link in the description, which has a built in discount on membership fees so that just like me, you can travel at trade prices. Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of Rest and Recreation that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to, as well as also worth sharing with your friends, family and work colleagues.
Speaker: Now it's time to say hello, Elisa. How are you today? i am doing great. How are you? I'm brilliant. Thank you very much. Please, could we start by you just explaining a little bit about how you got into being a psychologist and the sort of work that you specialize in? I mean, the funny thing is that I was interested in becoming a psychologist from elementary school.
Speaker: Yeah, for those people who are not from the United States, we are talking about primary school in the United Kingdom, yeah which means from about the age of five. Yeah. And I think that I was perhaps ah nine years old, you know, but we had a magazine drive at school and I i talked my mother into subscribing to psychology today. And I probably drove her crazy asking her, you know, what different words meant, but I was just really intrigued why we feel what we feel and think what we think and how, you know, we can help people and so forth. So,
Speaker: Once I got to be ah a teenager, I thought, well, it's ridiculous to go to school that long, so I'm not going to do that. But then I quickly realized when I was in school that I was absolutely electrified with everything I was learning about psychology in my minor, my my lesser studies. And so I said, all right, I'm going to bite the bullet and become a psychologist. And absolutely no regrets. Completely love it. good And so I specialize in working with folks who with ADHD and other what we call executive function challenges, ah difficulties being able to plan, start, reflect, make adjustments, that sort of thing is so really my favorite thing to do. I also work a lot with people who are highly sensitive, who have sensory processing sensitivities. So sensitive to sensory input, sensitive emotionally, very empathic. And oftentimes folks have both of those things going on. So they can be very sensitive to things which have been said to them, for example, but also very empathetic with people who say those nasty things to them. Yeah. Yes, i I am actually highly sensitive myself and being able, I hear over and over where they're just like, oh my goodness, you know, that is exactly how I'm feeling that put it into words what I was feeling. So it's it's a gift and a challenge, a challenge that can be worked with. most of us do not really have enough knowledge about psychology to understand ourselves.
Speaker: There's an awful lot of language that we hear that we think we know what it means, whereas we actually don't. There's like the acronyms, the ADHD acronym. What does it stand for and what does it mean?
Speaker: Well, it's, it's an unfortunate name. It's a, ADHD stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There used to be ADD and ADHD. Now there's ADHD with or without hyperactivity. so But the more unfortunate thing is that the idea of attention deficit, that it sounds like people with have
Speaker: can't pay attention and that is absolutely not true. the difficulty is being able to direct attention where it is needed or wanted.
Speaker: ah that That's where the challenge is that many folks with this condition tend, you know, can focus extraordinarily well on something that really captures their interest. But You know, if they have to do something that is tedious, that is just not lighting them up because they have difficulty with dopamine in the brain, they just struggle mightily with being able to do that. And there are other things that accompany that, but, so but yeah, so it's like the attention, but it's directing the attention to the tax return, for instance, when, you know, rather than the fascinating movie or whatever. You see, this is one of those things.
Speaker: When you talk to someone like yourself, a psychologist, and you start explaining these things, you sort of think like, yeah, okay, that's a little bit me. It's a little bit me. It's like, I know I need to write this report. I'll just go on to one of those channels for a little while. And before you know where you are, half an hour has passed and he's looking at rubbish. It's human nature. It is. But it's definitely more, ah you know, where it's causing problems.
Speaker: profound difficulties in functioning across different realms of your life. That's when it's more like, okay, this is a clinical condition that, you know, somebody can really benefit from being addressed professionally. But yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, we're not machines. So of course, we're going to struggle with certain things and feel like, oh my gosh, I have zero interest in doing that.
Speaker: And yet I have to, that sort of thing. And i i have to stop doing this in order to do that. it's It's difficult. Yeah. Yeah, but it's human nature. doesn't necessarily mean there's a clinical diagnosis. It just is part of human nature as well. But the the tools that we're talking about today are the things that can help anyone to be a little bit more focused. So tell me a little bit more, well, tell me lots about these tools that you've you've got.
Speaker: Yeah, well, specifically, i mean, there there are a lot of different things that I use to help the folks that I work with, but specifically, just wanted to focus our conversation around bullet journaling. It doesn't have to be, i'm using that term broadly, it does not have to be using a book with little dots in it. The way that I approach bullet journaling It can be used very flexibly and that's what makes it really helpful for, ah particularly for folks with problems with executive functions, as I mentioned, planning, getting started with things, ah being able to direct your attention at will because it is so flexible. It's not like you're getting out a pre-printed book and you have to conform to the way that planner is laid out you create as you go this yeah with journaling there is expert expectation like you're keeping a diary you're journaling there's almost like an expectation that you'll be writing prose and it'll be perfect as it goes onto the page Yes. Just as Dickens and Shakespeare and all the others, every word that went onto the page was perfect. The first time that they did it like not, but the bullet journaling is a lot more flexible than prose type journaling. And I suppose is also a lot more personal and individual because you almost must need to when you go back to it, you almost need to have lived it, I suppose, in order to understand it because it's just the bullet points. What it is, as I say, is it's really the first step is really thinking about what do I want to accomplish with this?
Speaker: I always ask, or I try to ask early on my folks, what is your planning routine like? Because if they're coming to me with challenges, then oftentimes they say don't I don't really have a planning routine. i you know, my workplace uses teams and they just tell me what I need to do and then I do it. And so what happens when you don't have a planning routine is that it feels like other people's priorities are the center of what you do.
Speaker: You're not centering on your own priorities and thinking about What do I want my life to look like, for instance, in three months? What do i want to focus my energy on? And so that can really contribute to anxiety, depression, just general dissatisfaction with life.
Speaker: So with having a planning practice, you can really think about not only the things that are coming my way and making sure that those things get done and I'm not, no balls are getting dropped, but also taking step back and thinking about, but what is truly important here?
Speaker: We have a lot of digital tools and the digital tools make it very, very easy to add tasks to our list. But it's so easy that, you know, we're just like clicking a little flag or we're dragging and dropping something. And we're not really thinking about what's the big picture here. It's really two things that can take very little time day to day.
Speaker: There's planning, which, you know, can take less than five minutes and there's a When journaling, which W-I-N, you know, what worked well, W-I, what could be improved upon, and N, what next steps do I want to take? You know, that kind of thing can take very, very little time, but it helps you to really avoid just getting into a space of feeling like, why is it that I never seem to get to the gym? Why is it that, ah you know, I'm not connected with my kids or whatever you would really like to put your energy toward, including work things. Why am I struggling to get reports done? um You can see as you go and make these adjustments as you go, rather than kind of getting to a point where you feel like it's overwhelming, right? Because overwhelm comes from not having a clear sense of priorities that helps you to filter.
Speaker: Everything feels important. Everything feels like I need to do it right now. So it's really important to be able to have these little bits of time to reflect.
Speaker: So bullet journaling can be really useful with that. um But as I mentioned, it's also... flexible The way that I use it personally is I've started, I've done this since 2019, just creating my bullet journal as I go. And so the beauty of it is with the planning part, I can change the layout according to what is fun for me, what is interesting to me, what my life looks like so that I don't have to conform to fitting everything into a little space or whatever. i can allow that space for journaling. Currently i have the wind journaling space. Then I have a longer open journaling space in case I want to do more depth.
Speaker: And I also have pages that I set aside for, um, it's almost like a mini scrapbook so that, uh, when, for instance, we just got back from a trip, that trip was, you know two weeks. I'm going to use a separate book for that more like a, you know, a travel journal, but for little things, you know, like, uh, like I did a camping weekend recently. uh,
Speaker: I stick photos right in there and I do a little bit of a little bit of captioning, but then, you know, it refers back to the journaling that I've done about how the camping trip went, you know, what I particularly enjoyed. And so it becomes, it's, it's like a planner, it's a journal, it's a scrapbook, it's a,
Speaker: And I love doing that because it's a small little book. It's not a huge scrapbook. So it's not a big project. I started doing this when i was waiting for my kid, my son or my daughter, both of them did wrestling, for example, waiting for them to compete.
Speaker: And there there's a lot of time when you're sitting in the bleachers And I would just bring my pans. It's very portable. And I would sit and I would sketch. I would, you know, do different things, you know, in my book, according to my whim, write, draw. And then during busier periods, I would kind of skip the artsy stuff and I would just keep it down to brass tacks. And so that's what I mean by flexible.
Speaker: So it's wonderful. Yeah, it can adapt to where you are in in life. It will adapt to the way in which you work. Yes. I'm wondering about the challenges that people face, though, if they're if they've never done this sort of thing before and they do have problems with attention, what sort of challenges do people face when they're trying to do this?
Speaker: Well, I think that sometimes people can they can tie themselves up in knots with their expectations. Instead of viewing this as this is a tool that is entirely mine and i can adjust as I go.
Speaker: ah In fact, bullet journaling was invented by writer Carroll. He used it to help himself with his ADHD. ah He needed something flexible. So it's all about flexibility. but But I have a lot of folks who are worried about making mistakes. They're worried about being able to keep up with it. You know writer started with a spiral notebook and a pen, you know nothing fancy at all.
Speaker: think sometimes we get sort of caught up in like looking at Instagram. You look at bullet journaling, you see all these beautiful spreads. You're like, oh, wow, you know, I can't keep up with that. It's like, no, it doesn't have to be like that. It can be whatever you want it to be. But that is a really interesting point that you make there. It's great. I get the whole bullet bullet journaling idea and the flexibility of it. But when you mentioned the social media things there in the posts, that is a form of bullet journaling. it is It's a journal.
Speaker: But the important thing is saying, you know, do I have five minutes to be able to you know plan and five minutes to be able to reflect each day?
Speaker: And then once a week, a half hour, you know, or 20 minutes ah to be able to kind of think what's coming up in the upcoming week. It is people that are sharing their life with other people, strangers all around the planet.
Speaker: The difference is though, I suppose that when people are doing the Instagrams, they're very often sharing what they want their life to be like, or this is how I want you to think I live. Whereas what you're talking about with journaling that's for you is like it's time to be really honest with yourself, isn't it?
Speaker: Yes. When I mentioned that I, currently like in my layout, I have the little space for the wind journaling, the WI and, and I also have the longer freeform space.
Speaker: The people get caught up with the freeform space, you know, if they decide to do that, i I don't think it's necessary, but they feel like, oh, I need to be writing every day. I need to be writing about certain things. You know, it feels overwhelming. And I always say, think of it as like a really good friend that you've known for a long time where you know that, um I can, you know, I can talk with this person and it could be just a very, very brief check-in, send a little text, Hey, how's it going? Or I could, you know, hang out with them for the whole afternoon. We could talk for hours and, you know, a lot of time could go by in between.
Speaker: time getting together with this friend, but it's like we pick up where we left off and it's great. i mean, that's the way that I view, you know, journaling ah at its essence is that it's really, it's a way of being mindful and listening to yourself. And so if that means I don't do it for a while, that's okay. If it means ah it's just a very brief, I just want to mention that, you know, I'm ready to stop oversleeping and I want to give this some thought about what to do differently. And that's all you write.
Speaker: That's fine. um And sometimes you might feel like it's really cathartic to just sit and write page after page. Great. You know, ah so just that flexibility is really important.
Speaker: Very much so. One of the things I've read is that if you want to have an objective and you want to improve your chances of achieving that objective, one of the best things to do is to write that objective down.
Speaker: Yes. If you really, really want to achieve that objective, you improve your chances of doing so by telling someone else about the objective that you've got. That's right. How would that sort of approach fit in with this bullet journaling approach?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely true. I mean, some people say I'm not really excited about sharing this aspiration with somebody else. And that's fine. And I can relate to that. I mean, when I worked in a hospital setting, I thought I have this colleague who's a physician. I'll just share with him this little goal that I have for fitness. And, and it it just failed miserably because I just felt like don't want to tell this doctor whether I worked out or not. You know, yes I just, I thought I want this to be my own thing.
Speaker: The beauty of holding yourself accountable, just thinking about what is helpful for you, but you're absolutely right. In my clinical practice with my clients, I send out a little questionnaire every three months and I just say, how are you feeling about these different areas of your life?
Speaker: What would you like to focus your energy around over the next three months? And they send that to me. And some people say they never look at it again yeah until three months later. I say, Hey, let's, let's look at this, you know, and see how things went. And it's not like a a report card, but, but they're astonished, you know, where they say, wow, I just, I actually, I didn't do anything further, but it's like the seed was planted. You know, when you write down and you say, yeah I want to walk,
Speaker: you know, more often than they say, wow, I have been walking more often. And so, so that's great. Just writing down what you want to accomplish, but you're right that yes, you can tell other people if you choose, but also, you know, you can hold yourself accountable through planning.
Speaker: You can say, if I want to walk more often, when will I do it? You know, what would be some good times to do it? You know, maybe I could do it after my morning coffee. I think I'll write that down, you know, specifically so I remember tomorrow. I'll look at my book and I'll, oh yeah, that's right. I'm going to walk after coffee. So it just makes it more likely to happen.
Speaker: Sometimes people worry that, you know, it's going to become a shaming exercise, but I just really emphasize, you know, the whole thing. When you do the daily check-in, then,
Speaker: you're absolutely going to have some days where like, yeah, that didn't go so well, but it's, but it's like, so what are my thoughts about what I could try tomorrow? You know, instead of it being this big, you know, i check the box or I don't, it's more like listening to yourself and yeah, you know, maybe that was overly ambitious. How about if I try this tomorrow?
Speaker: I'm thinking about being in the gym and thinking, well, actually, yeah, we're going to lift that weight. And of course, the the weight doesn't want to be lifted. You could, in some ways, just go like, right, fine, I failed, walk away from it. But invariably, the trainer person will say, No, no, no, just take those ones off and put these smaller ones on and lift. And I think you're describing is that sort of process of reflecting on something that's gone well, reflecting on something that hasn't gone so well, and then sort of recalibrating your strategy for getting to the point where you really want to be.
Speaker: Yes, I'm also a yoga teacher and yoga is entirely centered around being curious about your experience. So instead of judging it, being like, wow, you know, normally I can do this pose and today I can't. It's more like, you know, being curious and learning to listen in and to adjust. And so this is similar. This is mindfulness, you know, being curious and open and not judgmental. So it's it's really incremental learning. you know What am I noticing? What can I try? Oh, that worked well. And yeah, and I can relate to the weightlifting example because I just went to the gym after ah not going to the gym while i was on vacation. And yeah, I was definitely taking weights off. i was like, oh, yep.
Speaker: The other so like lesson between this and going to the gym is like you say, you know, you take a break for a while and you can't go back and be as strong as you were two weeks ago.
Speaker: It takes a little while to get back into the swing of things. That's exactly the same sort of thing that happens in life in general. It's like you're trying something. And then you'd get distracted by something else. And that goes on for a couple of weeks. And then you go back, whatever it is, you're not going to be quite as good as you were when you stopped. It will be things that you need to relearn.
Speaker: Yeah, sometimes. I mean, sometimes when you take a break and you come back, it actually works better because you've been putting too much pressure on yourself. You take a little break, you come back, and then it's like, wow, this is just easier now. So I think it depends upon what it is. But i think what you're speaking to is just that it's entirely natural to have periods of dormancy and then periods where you're moving forward again. And i mean, plants, animals, living creatures, you know, do this intuitively. And yet as human beings, we expect that we're we don't need periods of dormancy. We just improve, and improve, and improve.
Speaker: and And it's just not the case. You know, ah it's really more like ocean waves. You know, we move forward and okay, now we're sliding back a little bit and we move forward and we slide back. That's just the way life works. Yes.
Speaker: We have convinced ourselves really, havent haven't we, as human beings, that life is going to be perfect all the time. And we're always going to be getting better at absolutely everything that we do. I saw a post from a previous guest on one of the business media platforms earlier today that said he'd started working with a coach because he had always tried to be better at everything that he did.
Speaker: And then he said, that was the problem. Yes, exactly. You're not always going to be better and better and better at everything that you do. He was then went into his post about how he had to really think back to the things that he was doing to realize that, yes,
Speaker: although he believed that he was constantly improving, when he actually did the analysis and thinking back, he could recognize the fact that, yeah, there were peaks, there were troughs, there were fast days, slow days, all sorts of various different things. But he didn't have this type of tool. And what you're saying, I think, is that we can become more, I'm almost wanting to say more forgiving of ourselves. Yes. If we are journaling in some form and we can actually track where the good days, the bad days, the things that have gone well, not so well, what we've learned and how everything provides us with that learning opportunity.
Speaker: We can actually become more understanding of ourselves and more forgiving of ourselves when things don't go right. Yes. And I think You know, people who are high, like they, uh, they're like high achieving, like people who are really motivated to achieve people who are, you know, maybe, uh, you know, have a natural competitiveness, uh, if not with others than with themselves, um,
Speaker: then i think sometimes they can they can push themselves at work. And then in their leisure, they push themselves too. you know Like I can improve my golf score. I can lift more weight, whatever it is.
Speaker: It's a great thing when you have, when I have clients like this, I really encourage them to think about what is something you can do in your off time that is not based on continual improvement.
Speaker: I put myself into the category of people who like to achieve and, you know, that sort of thing that, you know, I used to push myself very, very hard. And I love being able to, you know, like this morning, just open up my book, I pick up my pans, you know, and I'm just like, you know, what shade of green do I want to use? Oh, that's a nice one. I think I'll use that one. And I just play, you know, and we, we forget. hmm.
Speaker: how to do that. You know, as children, of course, you know, that's exactly what children do. They're just like, let's make the grass purple. They don't care.
Speaker: but then when they get into school, then they learn about certain things are better than others. And, you know, you need to do things this way. And of course, that's essential to function in society. But we can take that too far and just put pression ourselves to improve and to do things right day in, day out, all day long.
Speaker: It's really important to have an outlet. Like I said, if you're doing free form journaling, writing, then to say, this is like a friend that's not going to judge me.
Speaker: I'm just going to write yeah and I'm not going to worry about the grammar. I'm not going to worry about the spelling. I'm not going to worry that I'm being too negative or or whatever, I'm i'm just going to write as a way of listening to myself.
Speaker: And if you were putting art in there, then it's like, I'm going to explore drawing. If I don't like the results, then that's okay. You know, ah yeah, it's for me, not for anybody else. That's okay.
Speaker: you're You're allowed to. Yeah. You make me wonder, you know, is there anything in life that cannot be improved? But I suspect suspect that that is a whole new podcast in its own right. But for today, a Elisa, it has been fascinating. Thank you very much. i' really do appreciate your time. And yeah, you've certainly made me think. Thank you. You're very welcome.
Speaker: Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and in this episode of Rest and Recreation, I have been having a conversation with Alicia Murray, the psychologist from Washington State.
Speaker: You can find out more information about both of us by using the links in the description. I'm sure you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of Rest and Recreation as much as Lisa and I have enjoyed making it.
Speaker: So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
Speaker: Until the next episode of Rest and Recreation, thank you for listening, and goodbye.
