0:02 Alright everybody, welcome back to Acorns to Oak Wellness. I’m Paris Cousins, licensed massage therapist and owner of Oak Wellness here in Bartow, FL. I’m here again with Stephanie Heidel, owner of Foundation Mindset, an education space here in Oak Wellness, gently touching on the eight pillars of wellness. How are you Stephanie? I’m so good. That was such a beautiful introduction. You make me feel so special. I try, I try. Gently touching. Gently touching. Such a way with words.

0:34 In case you can’t tell, this one we didn’t, have not really scripted this one. She said you know let’s do a podcast on something we’ve talked about a lot. So how about, Decision Fatigue? Yes, we talk about that a lot. Yes, there are books written on it, there’s other podcast on, there’s probably talk shows based on it…I don’t know I’m pulling this out of thin air. It is something that we all face. Whether you are a stay at home mom, a career individual, just, we all suffer from it. We all have so much thrown at us all day long that at some point we just go…I don’t know… Yes, so this podcast is for people. For people. All people. All people. Because all people I would say struggle at some point with decision fatigue. I really think that we all battle it. Daily, daily!

1:31 I mean you see jokes and memes like, “where do you want to eat? I don’t know where do you want to eat? I don’t know where do you want to eat? I don’t know, where do you want to eat?” But Stephanie, did you know that there is actually historical documentation on why it’s so hard for women to choose where to eat? Specifically women? Yeah, specifically women. Oh, um, yeah ok I guess I don’t know this one. So, yeah, it’s actually in the Bible it’s biblical. So yeah, when Adam asked Eve what she wanted to eat, she made a bad decision and got him kicked out of the Garden of Eden. (laughter) So that’s why…ooohhh we can’t make a decision on where to eat….I did not know where you were going, I was so scared. I was like I don’t know what she is going to say, she’s stumping me. Obviously, that’s a joke, but there is…. Don’t ask us! That’s right, don’t. Don’t ask us what we want to eat. It didn’t pan out well for you. (laughter)

2:26 But there is actually science behind why it is so hard to choose where to eat. And you were telling me a little bit about that earlier. Yeah, so, your brain is just, specifically the going out to eat one is because it’s at the end of the day. So at the end of the day, your brain has just been making little tiny decisions all day long. From what am I going to where down to what am I going to eat at the end of the day. If you haven’t planned ahead for that. Answering emails, answering phone calls, text messages, answering questions from little children running around or ya know even just what’s on my To-Do list.

3:11 Stephanie and I, again we were talking about this, we talk about this a lot, it’s almost as if…. We’re tired a lot. We are, we’re tired a lot. We wear a bunch of different hats and we kinda joke around where we need personal assistants. But even more than that, it’s like, we need wives just to take care of some of the things that we take care of on the day-to-day. Picking up the dry cleaning, grabbing the prescriptions, making the meals, deciding what to eat, what do we need from the grocery store, what’s in the pantry. There’s just so many choices that we have and so decision fatigue is real. I’ve read a lot of books just trying to deep dive…am I lazy? like what in the world, why am I just so exhausted from what I don’t think I should be exhausted from.

4:09 There’s been a lot of kinda simple tips and tricks that I’ve read about that are helpful. One of which is if you’re fatigued from making decisions all day then make some of those decisions up front so you’re not constantly having to make them everyday. That’s a good one. You could go as wild with this as you want to. You could go, if you’re really struggling you could go as far as every Monday I wear this outfit, every Tuesday I wear that outfit. Isn’t that what Steve Jobs did? Like, didn’t he wear the black turtleneck and jeans like every single day? Yes, so that’s, this information comes from all kind of places, that’s not even where I first heard that, but you’re right, he was working on battling decision fatigue. Yeah, and He’s a man, so this is for people. So this is for everybody. That’s one reason why uniforms actually are kinda nice because it takes that one more decision out, yeah know what to wear and that makes a lot of sense, it really does.

5:20 I read something somewhere where on Tuesdays we eat tacos or taco Tuesday or whatever. We always do this, we always do that because that does take some relief off of your brain. It takes just some of those mundane decisions out of there. Sure, sure that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense, and ya know, I’m a list person. I like to like, check things off of of a list, it just organizes things for me. But then my list just gets so long and it’s almost too much to just put one more thing on the list to check off. So, ya know, To-Do lists are great, and I think it does help. One thing I’ve recently come across is instead of writing down at the end of the night, to kinda ya know brain dump, instead of writing down what you’ve accomplished during the day, you write down that five most important things that you need to get done the next day, so that your brain can quiet down and not worry about tomorrow.

6:21 Yeah, that’s a good one. Two things when you said, my husband he relies on his lists, just like all of us, but that need to feel like you’ve accomplished things. He’s told me before that there’s been times he did something that wasn’t on his list, so he wrote it down just so he could cross it off. (laughter) I’m guilty! I’m guilty! Like oh no, I need to do that. Which we can even take a deeper psychological dive on that of…. Let’s not. That’s too deep? Too deep for this podcast. We will keep it shallow, we will keep it shallow and we’re going to splash around in the shallow pool. Kinda like we’re in the grocery store checkout line. Got it, shallow end, just what you would say to the person in the grocery store checkout line. That’s it, we’re not going deeper than that. I like it! Maybe another day when we’ve both fixed our hair, yes, we will go deeper on the psychology line. We will be a little more prepared for the psychology on that one. (laughter) We weren’t using big words today like diethyl phthalate. Got it, got it.

7:32 But I would like to leave everyone with the awareness that fatigue sometimes is your body telling you to rest. One hundred percent. I think, especially, I don’t know I would say especially as women, but that’s because I don’t know what it’s like to be a man, so maybe this is for men too, but we do sometimes have like this um, sorry I’m stumbling over my words, but this need to like do all of these things and if we don’t do all of these things then like for me personally I’m like oh no am I, I should have done more and I’m lazy, when really your body is like “you probably would work better if you rested for a minute.” I mean, maybe that’s what your body is trying to tell you is that rest is ok too.

8:17 Yes, and it is, it’s so important. Rest isn’t sitting and scrolling. No, no! Your brain is (spinning noises) still not resting. Intentional rest. It’s more the intentional rest. Laying down, closing your eyes just for a minute, soaking in you know just calmness. Stepping outside and getting into nature is such a big one. When the weather is nice, just step outside and let the sun hit your body, feel the breeze on your skin and take a moment of just quiet. Add it to your list, your To-Do list…rest. I rested today and cross it off. Even if it’s just five minutes and you set a timer. It’s important, intentional rest. We call those brain breaks. Yes. Take a brain break. I hope that today that you’ll intentionally rest. take a brain break for sure.

9:12 So guys, thanks for joining us here on Acorns to Oak Wellness like and subscribe below and um we’ll be back with more little tips and tricks and acorns. Little acorns. Little acorns. Bye guys…bye