Health & Fitness When the Worlds on Fire

In a very RELEVANT episode, Carissa and Shemar discuss how health and fitness fit into life when it seems like everything around us is on fire. With all of our current events, it's a tough time to be informed or to be an empath, let along keep up with a fitness routine...so here is our take on how to stay grounded, how to keep your health and nutrition as a priority and most importantly to validate what you may be feeling in these tough times - YOU ARE NOT ALONE! :) 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

What's up, y'all, and welcome back to another episode of Real Talk with Rebel. Happy to be here. Shamar in the building. Got my boss Lady Carissa right here with me. And yeah, not a super long or crazy podcast today. We're just kind of doing a pulse check. Yeah, well, we're seeing. The pulse may rise.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

I don't have any bullet points to follow, so we should see.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

You know, you can't turn on the TV, you can't scroll your phone, you can't talk to your family or friend without hearing or seeing something that either makes you want to punch somebody, jump off a bridge, or curl up in a ball. And hey, we're all feeling that. And that's not wrong. You're not alone. And there are things that you can do about that besides just sit with that anger, sit with that sadness, post angrily and lose friends, whatever. So we're just gonna kind of talk about some constructive ways that you can use fitness and also not ditch fitness, right, in these times when life feels so heavy. Because what could you need more than lifting when shit gets heavy, right? That's that's just how it goes.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Right. And I feel like there's like this fine line that we try to walk of like we're trying to lead from the front always, which is like we wanna be positive and we wanna help people feel their best and help people be able to like, you know, move forward and whatever it is that they're trying to do, trying to do regardless of what's happening in life. But also you can't pretend like everything's good. Like you can't pretend like everything's fine, you can't pretend like this isn't something that we're having to navigate on a day-to-day basis, like you said, of like waking up to a different shitstorm every single day in whatever that looks like. And the world is getting heavier. Yeah, the world is getting crazier. Um, the amount of information overload that we have just to be somebody who is even remotely aware of what's happening, yeah, is almost like you got to check yourself in somewhere. Like just to be informed right now is like you almost have to be medicated just to be informed.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

And yeah, at the end of the day, like we're we have like a monkey brain, you know, like we were not designed to know what's happening to multiple millions of people. We were not designed to know, understand, and see genocide or terrible things or hear about the evil in our government, right? So these are we were meant to live in a village of like 500 people, do your damn thing, grow your damn crops, and now I'm worried about what's happening to the Indian elephants and the diminishing red wolf population in North Carolina and all these things. And it's just what happened is just having a community, right? There's there's so much going on all the time that if you're not living in a constant state of overwhelm, hit me up and let me know how.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Right? That's well, then you just have to be ignorant. Yeah, and I think that again, it's they're both, it's like we're six seven. It is like we what in the world, you guys. Like that's the worst part of this, is that I have to live in a six seven space. Like it's like, where do we live? Where do we exist in the middle ground of this? And it is so hard because it's again, you you can't live in a toxic, you can't, you can't live in this toxic positive world anymore. I am unfollowing every person in my timeline that is doing that. If you are not, if you're posting daily and just acting like nothing's happening, I can't deal with you. I literally can't. Like this is insanity. You have to be speaking up for something somewhere. I even, even if I completely disagree with you at this point, you stand for something. At least you're saying something about something. So, but yeah, I think that, you know, you're right. It's we're overwhelmed. We've got too much information. But at the same time, again, it's it's just like this double-edged sword for every single aspect of life anymore. I feel like we're I love social media. I there's so many great things that it does. Like it it raises money for people who need it desperately. It helped my neighbor find her dog, you know, that we thought was lost forever quickly.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

It's like the connections that are possible, the money that can be raised, the information that can be shared.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

There's and the things that we should be aware of. Like there's terrifying things that are coming out that we should be aware of that without social media and without all of this information, the information highway, we wouldn't be and we would be ignorant, not by choice, and then things would hit us upside the head. So again, we can go on and on and on about all the craziness that's happening in all the ways, but we want to start this off by saying if you're feeling that right now, we're putting words to that, we're verbalizing that, we see you. Um we feel it too. We feel it too, 100%. And like, let's like work forward in a way that like we can figure out how to find some happy middle ground on this and still be informed, living in this world that feels like WTF every second. Um, but also like, how do we find that balance and how do we still take care of ourselves and how do we still show up every single day the best way that we can while holding all of this stuff and trying to navigate it at the same time, which is crazy. So we we just have some thoughts on it.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Yeah, and just we want to validate that feeling like the gym is one of the last things that you need to be worried about right now is not a wrong thought to have, right? If you're concerned with personal life, family, finances, what's gonna happen to you politically because of what people are saying about the color of your skin, your orientation, your sexual orientation, your belief system, like it can be really hard to be like, yeah, I wanna go rip a pump right now, but that doesn't mean it's not good for you. And that's what we're kind of here to talk about, right? Working out doesn't need to look the same at all of these different, you know, avenues of life. If you're feeling like if I'm feeling angry, I'm probably not gonna go play pickleball because I'm gonna lose friends and lose some balls, right? I'm gonna go lift some heavy weights, I might go for a run, I might go do some ball slams, but you have to understand where you're at. And I think that can help you not remove things from your life that normally bring you joy. I know when I'm overwhelmed, I have a tendency to retreat, right? Even if it's from the things that I know I enjoy doing, when I'm overwhelmed, I have a harder time finding joy in things that I know bring me joy on a normal basis. So, how do you continue doing those things and how do you put almost an emotion to those things to then know where to go when you're feeling a certain way? So one of the most common emotions that I experience and a lot of the people that I know experience in this day and age is uh anger because shit is fucked up. You know, we're paying a lot of money to people that suck, we're seeing people die, we're seeing people be fed poison, we're seeing people be lied to on a regular basis, and that just makes you want to sit at home, turn off the TV, turn off your phone and just sit and not do anything, right? But in those instances, I have to do one of two things, and it's either go to the gym and do something pretty heavy, really force-intensive, right? Bench heavy, where I have to grunt, get in there, turn some loud music on and do ball slams and sing a rock song, whatever it is. But you have to have an outlet for that emotion. Like you can't sit and let anger fester because then it bleeds into your life. If I stay angry, my my friends know, my family know, my clients know. It'll come out in ways that I would never want anger to come out. So that's where having an outlet like ball slams, heavy bench press, going on a run, doing a boxing class, like if you want to hit the shit out of somebody, you probably are not gonna get that out of your system without at least hitting something. Like, that's that's just the truth of the matter. Sometimes you want to punch, kick, slam, throw, and that's just where you're at. The gym gives you a place to do that. You can punch the bag, kick the bag, slam the ball. You have a place to constructively and productively work through that negative emotion. And that's that's my favorite thing about the gym is the gym allows me to manage my emotions in a way that I never could with therapy and drinking or smoking or any of that, with talking to my favorite person. There's just a certain aspect of my emotions that I physically have to work through and I feel better. And that's that's what I want to encourage y'all to do.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

And like the the anger is not just gonna leave your body.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Yeah. And I think, you know, when it comes to, you know, backing up just a tiny bit in what you were saying, I think anger is one of those things too that kind of comes out in a million different ways, right? So it's, you know, if you guys have ever seen like the feelings wheel, like this is a you know, shout out to therapy days. But um the feelings wheel of like anger will come out in people a bunch of different ways. So you mentioned, you know, it can be like a feeling of like you want to like do something, like a physical thing, like a violence thing. Like, I've got to get this out, I gotta scream into the pillow, I gotta hit someone with a baseball bat, I gotta punch somebody somewhere, something. But then you also mentioned it can be a situation where you want to like curl up in a ball sometimes. It comes out as um frustration. It comes out as tears. That's definitely the season I'm in. The angrier I am, it's like instant tears. And you're like, what the hell? Like that's not, it doesn't feel like what I'm feeling, but it is. And so I think that movement in general, the science of movement, you guys, is unmatched. It is just one of those things that it is going to release just about every good feeling, um, you know, hormone, the dopamine, the serotonins, the all the things they are going to be released in movement. And so those are the best defense that you have against any type of emotion. And I'm not gonna call them that's not negative emotions. Like anger is an emotion, it's not negative. Um, it is something that every single person experiences. It's not bad, just like food. It doesn't have a moral value. It is a valid emotion to feel at any point in time. It's just how you handle it after that. And having a toolbox full of coping skills and things that you know that are gonna help bring that down are gonna be really important. And it's not just for other people around you that's really, really important, obviously, but really for you. Because at the end of the day, the more anger, the more frustration, the more sadness, the more grief, the more things that you feel, the more trauma. Again, because we can't even play on this, you guys. The thing that the things that we're seeing online, the things that we're being exposed to, they're trauma, they're trauma. We're like we're experiencing micro traumas on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Yeah, we're desensitized, yeah, but that doesn't mean that the things that we're seeing are less traumatic just because you're having less of a reaction to them because you've become moderately desensitized.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

It is trauma. And you know, I've it it's funny because I swear to God, back in the day I used to joke with clients. I mean, this is my mental health days, but also even in the gym. I used to joke with people who watch, like, listen to nonstop true crime. And I'd be like, Isn't there enough? Well, and I'd be like, that's you know that's trauma that you're listening to to relax. To I I it was just like, you can't listen to that kind of stuff, like laying in the infrared pod, in my opinion. Like you're trying to relax, and then you're listening to trauma to relax. Like that doesn't match up, and then your body is going to keep score of those things. And so um that's essentially is where I'm going with that is the amount of micro traumas and traumas that we're experiencing on a daily basis, the amount of information that's coming in, however that's coming out of your system, your body is keeping score of those things. And so if you're not figuring out a way to get it out, if you're not figuring out a way to move through it and work through it, um, then your body's gonna keep score of that shit. And it is 100% gonna come back to bite you. And it's gonna come back to bite you in ways of like that we talk about in here all the time, where you've got um brain fog, you're having a hard time sleeping, you're it can affect your appetite. It can straight up affect your body's ability to burn fat. Save tension and inflammation, all sorts of stuff. Your metabolics. I mean, you're you they're literally the science of these things are your metabolics pathways will shut down um in ways that your body will be like, you know what? We're stressed all the time. The cortisol is through the roof. Something's happening. Your body biologically will stop burning fat and it will burn muscle mass. It'll burn the glycogen and your muscle mass because it feels like it is um, you know, in fight or flight, it feels like there's a threat. So it's gonna hold fat because that's biologically what it knows to do to protect you. You know, at the end of the day, that's what it's gonna do. So there are a lot of ways that your body's gonna keep score on this. So I think it's important as we talk through this stuff, and Shamar's giving examples of the things that he does, let that, you know, do those things resonate with you. But also if it is a situation where you're like, you know, I don't know, like I could go play pickleball and that would be the thing that would help me. Or I could go um, you know, knit or join some little social group or do something low-key. Whatever that looks like for you, whatever you think would resonate is what we want to encourage you to do is like not stop doing those things. They might take a little more effort, um, but they'll be worth it. We were just talking, like speaking of the pickleball thing, we went had a pickleball event um last Friday. If you are in our community and you want to join our pickleball community, please um message us and let us know. We'll send you the link to our group chat. But um, one of your clients was so sweet because she that whole day was like, she's dealing with a lot of grief and a lot of things in her life, very, very, very heavy things. And she did not want to come. And then she had, I think it was like a call from a friend or a family member or something like that. And she was like, I think I'm gonna do it. And they were like, sure, you should do it. She taught herself in and out of it a hundred times. And then she finally showed up. She said, the entire two and a half hours she was there, and we I gave her a hug on the way out, and she was like, This is the best thing I could have ever done for myself. And this is not what I wanted to do, but I did it anyway, and now I'm so freaking glad, and I had the best time and all the things. And so that is again just the fundamental thing that movement will do, regardless of the mood. And that's what we want you guys to like hear out of anything in this is that that is it's just so therapeutic in every single way.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

Because yeah, my way or Carissa's way is not the right way, but you just have to find a way, right? You cannot sit with anger, you cannot just for for forever, right? You have to sit with anger for a certain percentage of time. Same thing. Yes, sadness, overthinking. Yeah, sit with it, but you cannot be consumed by it, I guess is a better way to put it, right? You have to then find a way to sit with it, process it. Okay, how do I move forward? Yeah, right. And I think you put us into a good next, you know, point for the emotion, and it's gonna be sadness and overthinking, because I feel like those things just kind of loop together. When I overthink, a lot of the time I get sad. When I'm sad, I start to overthink, right? So for me, overthinking and sadness comes down to I want to be able to sit with that emotion. And sometimes that requires doing something a little bit less intense, right? So if I'm really sad, really overthinking, I love to go dribble my basketball. I love to just go for a walk with some calm music on, or even sometimes no headphones and just listen to the birds and walk and feel the sun and remind myself of how many things I am grateful for, right? Because in a world full of stuff and shit and bad people that you could sit here and list all day. Me and Chris could go back and forth playing categories of shit that we don't like in the world right now and be here until four o'clock, right? But there's a lot of stuff I do like. There's a lot of stuff that I like about the life I live, the people in my life, a lot of stuff I like about myself. And sometimes you just have to root yourself there, right? You can't be ignorant, but you also have to be aware that the best thing you can do for everyone around you is taking the best care of yourself. And that's gonna translate out into how you can pour into people, how you can show up for others. So find something. Same thing Carissa was saying, maybe you need something really impactful. Maybe you need ball slams when you're sad, right? But whatever that is, instead of sitting with that sadness all day, sitting at home, crying, you know, what can you do that's gonna move you forward, allow you to process that emotion without being consumed with by that emotion and move through it, right? One of my favorite stories is about how buffalo run into storms versus away from storms, right? If you're under a rain cloud and you're running away, that shit's just gonna follow you, right? That's raining on your head all day. You're not gonna outrun a cloud. You turn around and you run through it, damn if you're not getting wet, but you're on the other side a lot faster, right? And that's be a buffalo, run into the storm once in a while, right? That's that's just the answer sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Yeah, and I think that's one of my favorite sayings. I've been, I say this to my kids. I've I and somebody said it to me at some point, and I say it to myself all the time is that action breeds confidence. It's almost like that. It's like the overwhelm is real for me too. I don't know about anybody else, but again, in the world that we're living in right now, I get dysregulated so easily. Yeah. And so I will wake up in the morning and be like, I am locked in. I'm gonna do all the things. I've got my, you know, my lead follow-up, I got my consults, I got my evails, got all the things and meetings, dah, dah, dah. It takes something seemingly, and again, it's it seems small, but in the world that we're living in today, it it's it could be a breaking news of 62 million hits on a website that makes you want to blow the whole joint up, um, you know, just as an example. But that's like one breaking news thing that that would that the immensity and like it would just dysregulate me immediately. And then it's like Instagram posts carefully. I just one Instagram post changes the whole, like it's just tiny, right? So I'll be so dysregulated that now it's like how do I move forward? Like, what what was I doing? How was I doing this? Now I can't even put what was I texting?

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Oh my god, we look back at this and F that. Are you for real? And then that's what I want to do.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Is then I want to just get on social media and I want to just doom scroll and just be mad and be pissed and be shocked and all the things all day long. And then it's like now hours have gone by or a certain amount of time. Now I'm off, now I'm way behind. Now what? And again, so in that moment, I'm having to be really intentional because again, it's happening more often than I would like, just real talk. It is, and that's things happening in my personal life, that is things happening in the world, being a mom. Like it doesn't take much anymore for that to happen. So I've got to have a really strong toolbox of like, okay, when that happens, what am I doing to get regulated again as quickly as possible and not getting sucked into the whole dysregulation? And for me, it is action. But sometimes, like in a situation like that, I was already taking action. Then this threw me off. So like going back to the action is not actually gonna work. So, what is like another thing? So, what I've made a habit of doing is keeping like this like basket of like low-level things that I can do that don't require a a lot of brain space, but that can give me get me back into the swing. So, again, that would be like a walk, or it would be like if I'm in the gym, then what I can get on the treadmill and just walk on the treadmill for a second. Um, I can get on the saunopod and like reset if I need to do that. If I'm at home, fold laundry, take the dogs out, like something like that. That just like it, it's repetitive. I'm doing something, it doesn't take a lot of brain work.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

Walk around the block, like whatever that is for you, that literally just you can do on autopilot. Because sometimes that's what you need. You just have to, I need to clear my brain right now. Like, I can't even deal with having any, like, what can I just go autopilot through?

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Yeah, like but I'm still doing something, I'm still accomplishing something. I'm still, you know, again, the serotonin, the dopamine, those things are naturally going to be happening. Even folding towels. I got something done. Like, great. My couch isn't full of towels and laundry anymore. So that looks better. I feel better. I'm able to, you know, click that off of my thing. I take a walk, the serotonin, the dopamine, the sunshine, the birds singing, the whatever the situation, the grounding, all those things are going to come. Together to help, and then I can kind of regroup and then I can get back to what I needed to, but it's the action part of that. And so I love that thing about the buffalo because again, it feels really like crazy, like ah, like I just gotta run into the storm and be crazy. It doesn't even have to be like that. Sometimes it is just turning and looking at it straight in its eyes and being like, no, like, okay, I'm gonna stand, I'm gonna walk through this, I'm gonna go back, and then the other side of my I'm gonna get back to it 100%. So I love that. I love the the buffalo analogy there.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Yeah, and that's just whatever that looks like for you, right? A walk, that's where for me this is something more low-key. But like I said, for you, this might be I wanna slam when I'm sad, I wanna go surfing when I I wanna go swim, whatever that is. Like I have a client that just loves to swim. If she's having a bad day and she can go get in the water, happy go lucky. She might be a mermaid, I don't know. But if she touches that water, she is all good. So you have to find those things, right? What is your perfect reset, right? So I just think any way you can find that. And then the next emotion is a very complex one, but it's it's guilt, you know. So it's very easy to feel guilty in a lot of ways during this in this world, right? I feel guilty for being like, oh my god, life is so hard, and there's homeless people. I feel guilty for being like, damn, I just wish I could take, I could have a break. And there's people having their homes blown up and raided and all these things, right? So how do you how do you manage a feel? Or maybe I'm a mom or a dad trying to find that two hours for myself, and I feel a guilt for leaving my family behind. I feel a guilt for not being at work, making more money to support the family that I've worked so hard to have, right? So guilt, guilt's a very complex emotion because I think guilt leads into one of these other facets, right? Guilt makes you angry, guilt makes you sad, guilt makes you overthink. So that's that's another emotion I see on a very regular basis in myself and in clients around me. And that's really where I have to go do something that makes me feel grateful for the opportunity to help other people, right? Like whenever I'm feeling guilty, I love to train, right? Or I love to go fishing by myself and then help a kid set up his pole that just broke off. Or I love to go to the gym and play basketball and stop and talk to somebody that's having a hard time, or you can tell they're kind of sitting by themselves and just, hey, come play with me, bro. Right. So just how can I go and put a little bit of good into the world instead of feeling guilty about the fact that I can't change all the bad around me?

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Amen. Yeah. Empaths unite. This is a this is a tough ass timeline to be in if you're an empath, is all I'm gonna say. It you feel everything so much anyway, but right now, it's times a thousand. And an ADHD empath? Oh my gosh, double.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

That's double trouble. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

It's crazy. And so again, I think that there's just more people out there than you know, even we recognize or realize. And at the end of the day, you guys too, don't forget that like the negative shit and the bad shit is always louder. It's always louder than the good stuff. It's always so it's that's why it's so easy um to like hone in on that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

And we have a negativity bias as people because it's into our survival instincts, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:26

100%. We gotta figure out the worst case scenario because we gotta be able to plan for it. And everything is the worst case scenario right now. Every single thing. Jeez.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

Yeah, like that that that couldn't be true. That couldn't, oh, it's actually worse than that. Oh, it's actually worse. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

So we are being like again, and then you know, it's it's tough too because you we have been taught, and and the way we've been built in this country, especially, is like that we tr that we're supposed to be able to trust our leadership.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Yeah, we're the best.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

We're like the world's police. We're supposed to be able to trust all the things, and that is clearly not true. And you know, obviously we've known that in little pockets here and there forever, but it's becoming so unbelievably true, um, and just such a slap in the face. And I think that again, as things get exposed and things like there's just so many things that if you're a a functioning person, if you have more than two brain cells, if you're not in the anderthals, you know, if you can rub those two brain cells together and one plus one doesn't equal jello, you know, then you can figure out that we are not in a good space, like across the board. And when you're an empath, it's like you see that stuff, like you see the human rights violations, you see, you know, the straight up the the net the Christian nationalism stuff that is happening right now. It is so hard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

From two Southern Christians, by the way. Like this is not from Oh gosh, I am the biggest believer. I am the biggest believer. Former youth ministry.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Yeah, like it, it's and that makes it even more infuriating. Absolutely. I feel like if we were atheists, it would be like, oh, look at what they're doing. Saw that coming, you know. But it's like I'm infuriated on the daily, and it just hurts on such a level because again, I was taught to be Christ-like. I was that's what I built my entire existence on. And kindness and it's wild to see what we're seeing right now and being gaslit into believing that it's something else. So these are all very heavy, heavy, heavy things. They're not normal things, you guys. This isn't like, you know, I don't know, back in the day when it was um, you know, the biggest thing was a scandal behind closed doors in the administration. I mean, it's like the things have changed a lot. We're taking in a lot more information. And so, um, and just a lot heavier stuff that deals with all the emotions that you were just talking about. You know, the guilt, the shame, and then the anxiety. I think it's just one thing that, again, so many people are dealing with. The root of a lot of that is 100%, you know, phones and social media and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

Overstimulation in general. We're all just so overstimulated.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Yeah, we're not built for this. And so monkey brain, again, we always want to turn people back to the movement aspect of it because it seems so stupidly simple.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

But it is, it is, and that is again, it's just one of the most empowering best things. You rarely, rarely, rarely ever in life hear a person say, after a workout, I wish I hadn't done that. I wish I hadn't done that. Like it is, and again, I say workout, but that's movement of any kind, whatever that means to you. Um, figuring out a way to move your body, figuring out a way to um, you know, stimulate all that stuff to to maybe it's just to clear your mind, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:01

Do a puzzle. Like I play Magic the Gathering. There's times I'll just sit and lose myself in little rectangles of cardboard for hours. Because that's much better than the world that I'm looking at on the outside.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Yep, a hundred percent. And I think the, you know, you and I talk about this a lot too. We talk about it a ton here, but like the social aspect of it is um, you know, so huge too is getting into a lot of the emotional stuff that we're feeling is like this lack of connection for a lot of people to like real connection of like, you know, are you seeing this? Am I saying that? I don't know. Like we live in a place too, is like around here in the South, it's just tough because you feel a certain way, but you're like, I don't know. All right, do you feel that way? Uh-huh. Like, can I say this to you? No, that's I'm past that point now. I don't give a damn. But, you know, a lot of people I know feel like that. And it's like, I don't, I feel like I can't say anything, especially if you're a small business owner. It's like, oh my gosh, like if I say something and then am I gonna lose clients? If you're a person online, am I gonna lose followers? Am I gonna lose whatever? You know, well, uh that's up to you to make that decision. But at the end of the day, I only care about being on the right side of history. So um I will remain where I remain, but it doesn't make it any easier to take that stuff on, try to like filter it and figure out what's going on and then move forward in whatever way that feels. I've got kids, I've got three girls, and it's really tough to raise girls in a timeline like this. Um, and so my rage is always right here, right beneath the surface. And the people who are around me a lot will tell you that my rage is evident. It is, I vocalize it a lot. But for me, again, I know the backside of that, that if I don't, and if I just play dumb or I play ignorant or I act like everything's gonna be okay or that everything is okay, um, then I actually do more harm to myself. It's more stressful for me. So um, me making sure that I am communicating, doing things, you know, going to therapy, having those outlets. Um, but the social part of it for me is absolutely huge. I love movement, I love exercise. We pickleballed for three hours last Friday. It was the best thing ever. My shoulder paid for it, but I don't even care. I loved it. But the social part of it is so unbelievably huge for me.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

Fun, fellowship, and fitness in this timeline are some of the things that are keeping me sane. For if I didn't have the friends I have and the activities I have to do, if I didn't have the friends that I have to talk to when shit is heavy and something bad happens, or they didn't have me to call, or I didn't have fitness to move my body, if I didn't get to take the anger, take the sadness, take the overwhelm, and put it into something, yeah, it would just stay in me. Or it would go out into somebody that does not deserve it. Yes. And I love how you mentioned that, you know, it it seems simple, but it's not easy, and that's what we talk about all the time, right? Like go on a walk, and unless you have an injury to your legs or back, you're gonna feel better. Like it's very simple. That doesn't make it any easier. If you're sitting on your couch bawling out of overwhelm, I bet a walk would make you feel better. That's really simple to get up and go walk, right? Not easy. When you're all you want to do is sit on the floor and cry or rock, or all you want to do is lay in your bed and stare at the ceiling, or all you want to do is go and hit something. Let me go outside and take a sunny walk. It's not easy, but it's a very simple solution to have a little bit of time to yourself and to have some time to process your thoughts and hopefully get those feel-good emotions and those feel-good hormones going and give yourself a chance to calm down, right? And the last one on my list is exhaustion, right? And I just think that's kind of the the culmination of all of these, right? If you're angry or sad or anxious or overthinking or any of these emotions outside of joyous for long enough, you will be exhausted. And exhaustion then leads to these other emotions coming up more frequently. When I'm exhausted, I'm a lot easier to anger and I'm a lot easier to be upset. That's just the way it is. So all of these things, it's a cyclical process, right? When you're angry for too long, you become exhausted. When you're exhausted, you're more easily angered. And that's that's not a loop that I try to find myself in often. And when I do, I need to be by myself. I'm somebody that I know I said I retreat at times, but for me, that works, right? There's nothing wrong with wanting healthy space away from people. We never shame our clients for not showing up for three or four days. Like, you are going through it. That is fine. The first thing I'm gonna recommend is hey, if you can move and do something that you need to do, if the gym is an outlet that you need, please show up. But if it's not gonna do you any good, if it's gonna be more harm than good for you to show up and be around people, please go for a walk by yourself. Like that for me, being by myself first gives me the time I need to then go get help or a second opinion. But if I go into it too heightened, I might just be like, that shut up. That's not even no, I'm not dealing with that, right? But if I thank you, man, I have thought about that. Do you have a follow-up in a way I could execute that? Because I've thought about it and don't know how to move forward, right? But if I go for that first without giving myself time to relax, it's just not a good situation for anybody. And right, exhaustion for me, I love to go stretch or walk or do a very low grade exercise, and I can almost feel my energy bar charge, right? I just show up to the gym like last place I want to be, this sucks, whatever. Start stretching, step on the shake plate, walk for a little while, 15 minutes in. Damn, bro was a bitch. Why he's so tired for? It's like, but sometimes you you will switch that quickly, right? Like I am walking on the treadmill and I just I'm going from red to green on that battery because I just I had to give energy to get energy, right? You can't charge without plugging in. So you have to figure out how you plug in.

SPEAKER_00 35:17

Yeah, absolutely. I think um the joy part, you know, I think it's interesting because again, I think the timeline that we're living in right now feels like I feel like joy is almost exhausting because it's so it hits so much harder. And again, if you're an empath, you totally get this. Like we're speaking empath language right now because we are both empaths, but the joy, like I was thinking about when you were just talking um about the space shuttle, the Artemis, and the way I clung to that, how long were they up there? A week. Yeah, the way I clung to that, because it was the best thing in my freaking timeline, and it was the most wholesome. Oh, yeah, and beautiful, and if you're some weirdo tin hatter getaway right now, like I don't want to hear it about your world is flat and anything else. But like that was the most incredible. It was so wholesome. But I think bigger than that, it was like watching four people who were leaders, they were intelligent, they were from all different places, women, men, people of color, people of different religions, different backgrounds, all the things like come together in a space and do science, do what they know to be true and what they've studied and what they put together, and like all these things, and to do something as fucking incredible as go to the moon and then do all these amazing things together. And then I mean, Britt, I mean, when they named the crater after the guy's wife, I was like bawling, they were all hugging, I was bawling, like, and then they came back, I was bawling. Like it was just, but I felt exhausted almost from it. I was like, we needed this so bad. Like, I just felt like as a world, like we needed that so bad that it was like almost exhausting to try to even take in that joy. And again, I know that's an empath thing. If you're an empath, you get it. I am bawling because I'm happy, I'm bawling because I'm sad, I'm bawling because I'm ever in everything in between. It's just me. It's that how I've always been, it's how I'm wired, it's fine. But I think that it's, you know, it's really interesting again, just in this timeline. And that's why we wanted to point, like, we wanted to have this episode because it's really, really important to talk about this right now, just about how everything up is down, down is up, left is right, everything feels crazy and weird. And we're here to validate that and be like, yeah, like we can still navigate it together and we can still figure it out. And again, just like health and fitness, there's no right answer to that.

SPEAKER_02 38:03

There's seasons 100%. Yeah, like sometimes you're just gonna be in a I need to go on walks every day type of season, and that's gonna do more for you than lifting weights does. Yeah, and that's okay. Absolutely. You know, sometimes you're gonna be in a actually, I wanna show up to the gym and sling weight around every day for three weeks. And sometimes that's what you need. Sometimes that weights clinging against the floor, that's that's music to your ears. That's therapy, right? I just threw that shit, and that's you needed that more than therapy in that week, right? And that that could be where you're at. And that and maybe it's like Carissa's saying, like, for me, that was like the Olympics. Like, whenever the Olympics happen, I'm like, I'm like, wow, look at the world. It's almost like we can all be in the same room in the same place, and it's not everyone, right? Like, look at these French athletes and American athletes and Japanese athletes and Korean athletes and whoever else, all getting along, all respecting the game that they love, all representing that the country they come from in a way that makes them proud, but not sticking up for the bullshit their country is doing. Like we had skiers and people be like, Well, I'm excited to be here. I'm so proud to be an American, but I'm not proud of what America is doing right now. And like he is still there because he loves his country, the sport he's representing, and he can still feel some type of way. Like, you know, if the Olympians, the top of their sport, they've been crowned the top. They they should be as joyous and as proud as possible, and they're feeling the heaviness, right? That's that's proof, like Alisa Liu, right? That's why people clung to her so hard, right? Like so much. She was just like, hey, you can just do your thing. You can just, you don't have to burn yourself out. You don't, and it was just, she was just a refreshing, you know, just a change. And was she anything incredible? I mean, yes, but the attention she got was just a little bit extra because that's what you could see, or you could see what's going on in Palestine. You could see Alisa Lou and people talking about her smiley piercing and if it's cute or if it's ghetto or whatever, or you could listen to people talk about what's going on in Venezuela, yeah. And it's yeah, yeah. Like, how long do we need to follow this little figure skating teenage girl and make her our entire you know personality? Not that long, but it's a lot better than the alternatives.

SPEAKER_00 40:27

Maybe forever. Maybe forever.

SPEAKER_02 40:29

I mean, she's in like teen vogue or something now. I mean, she's killing it. But it's just like when the world, I just think it's very apparent when the world clings to these the bad bunny situation, right? When the world is like, thank you, we needed a hero. That's that's beautiful, but it's also sad that people are grasping so hard just to find a piece of joy, a piece of happiness, a piece of like inclusivity and just not hatred, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:55

Well, and I think that's it, is that the the gross majority of the the world, our you know, country in particular right now, is feeling resistance.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

In in like a really real way. And social media and all the news and stuff like that makes it more like we're looking going, oh, oh, oh, like we're all feeling this. Okay, like that's not just me. But there's like a resistance feeling that's coming in general that's like bubbling beneath the surface and starting to come out. I mean, all these protests and stuff like that, obviously it's becoming really huge. But even in something like ice skating and following the seemingly, you know, again, just like she's just like the sweet little teenage, but she went against every single thing that has been known to ice skating in that world for decades. Decades, it's been this is how you do it. It's like Simone Biles with a gymnastics up. Yeah, this is how you do it. This is how you do it. This is how you're gonna look. This is this, this is what you're gonna wear, yeah. This is what your hair is gonna look. This is how you're gonna do your bun. These are the the songs you're gonna do. Like it makes me so happy to see like these gymnasts and stuff like this doing songs that they love and not just like these classical, boring ass, whitewashed everything stuff that they've always done because that's what they've always done. And they're breaking out of that, and there's something so unbelievably freeing and gratifying to normal people about it, and there's something absolutely triggering and traumatizing to other people and and see my two brain cells comment before. Yeah, um, but it is the most amazing, and I think again, that's like we're it's two things are happening at one time. Like we need a little bit of escapism and to cling to some things, but we're also like really resonating with people and going, hell yes. Yeah, like yes, that's why you shouldn't you be able to do whatever the hell you want to, and then be a badass figure skater, and then we lift you up in front of every single like you don't have to look like every other person has looked like you don't have to do it the way everybody else has done it. Um, like you do you in the most sometimes I hate that saying because sometimes I think it's weaponized and taken too far. But in situations like this, like I really, really loved that for her. I loved how she just like took it back and so casually. She was like, yeah, no. I was like, I fucking love her so much. So anyway, so all of that to say that I think um, you know, I think you're right. I think that it is the exhaustion piece of this kind of it like all kind of culminates in that. I feel like at the end of the day, and there's just this feeling of like we needed this.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

But like, yeah, it's just like it's not bad to see these people doing amazing things and be happy for them. Like you should have felt strong emotions about the bad bunny performance, right? And you should have been like, Yes, love is the only thing more powerful than hatred, right? But we shouldn't have to be like, yes, this is the thing, we haven't escaped. We're good, right? It's just, it's sad that we have to look for we just need something good. We just need something good.

SPEAKER_00 44:07

Like, yeah, 100%. So, and I think again, you know, we kind of ended the last podcast talking about how we as the people hold the line on this. We're the ones with the control. And so at the end of the day, you guys have that autonomy over yourself. You have the ultimate control over how you're handling this or not handling this. And there's no right or wrong way or amount of time like that you need to handle it. You know, again, I say handle it, and that looks different for everybody. But as long as you're taking care of yourself so that you can show up the best way possible, because again, when you're dealing with a time frame like this, and again, whether you feel like you've got to be a part of a resistance movement or you've got to be a part of a protection movement or you've got to be a part of an education movement, whatever it is right now, you've got to have the energy. You've got to have the bandwidth, you've got to have the ability to do that. And so it's important to take care of yourself because I'll carry the torch for whatever it is that I'm doing right now. But when I need to set it, like when I'm tired and I need to rest them, I hand it to you. And then you've taken care of yourself so that you can carry the torch. And then the next person can. And then we can all be healthy and move towards whatever it is that we need to do. And I think that um, again, the movement part of this, again, we just cannot, you know, um, we just cannot harp on this enough. Is like the movement part of it, it is something that you have shied away from, that you have stopped doing, you have never tried. Um, we really, really, highly, highly, highly recommend that you do that. It is such a game changer in a way that you love, in a way that is meaningful to you, in a way that is um getting you outside of your head, whatever it is. Experiment with all the things. I don't give a damn. If you want to do drumming, bungeeing, underwater basket weaving, it does not matter. Find something right now. It is imperative to our health, it is imperative to our brain functioning, it is imperative to our sanity to take care of ourselves right now.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

So and that's that's really a beautiful closing statement, right? We just want to validate that you should be feeling all sorts of emotions, but you also have to take care of yourself in the midst of that, right? You can't just give up movement because everything feels too heavy to move. You've got to get a little stronger, man. The place to go do that is Rebel Fitness. But you know, it's it's really just the gym in general, right? So we hope y'all keep moving, keep moving forward in a physical way, in a mental way, in an emotional way. If you need any help finding ways that you can move that make you feel happy, that just make you feel a little more alive and that's what you need right now. Come check us out. You can come walk on the treadmill and talk to a trainer for 30 minutes. You can have a trainer come and kick your ass if that's what you need. If you want to be laid out on the floor, sweating, breathing heavy, and you're like, thank you, you just beat the sadness out of me. Somebody can do that for you. If it's just a walk, please take that walk. I just want to encourage you not to give up, not to stop, not to freeze up, whether it's the gym, whether it's just a walk, like Chris is saying, whether it's knitting, whether it's sitting in your rocking chair on your porch, find your coping mechanisms, find your basket of things that you can go to and you know, here's my dopamine basket. I'm feeling overwhelmed, I'm sad, I'm tired, I need to go for a walk. I need to go fishing. I need to pick up that book that I've been reading, right? Whatever that is for you, if you don't have those miniature escapes, those miniature bounce back points kind of set up in your day, it's gonna be really, really difficult. And if you need help with that, check us out at Rebel Fitness, go to therapy, right? Call a friend, phone a friend. That's always something you can do. Never feel like you're too much, you know, never feel like you're a burden to somebody. And if they make you feel like a burden, fuck that person. And uh yeah. And stop listening to true crime, stop listening to true crime, especially in the pod or the sauna. But thank y'all for listening. Thank y'all for tuning in as some empaths. We love y'all. Thank you for being you. Thank you for being here. And we'll see y'all next time on Real Talk with Rebel.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

Bye.