In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Linda Bjork about her morning routine, getting out of dark places in life, why personal development is important, a simple 5 minute morning routine, and much more.
In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Linda Bjork about her morning routine, getting out of dark places in life, why personal development is important, a simple 5 minute morning routine, and much more.
Announcer
Welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote, where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.
Ryan
Hey, Linda, welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast. How are you?
Linda
Oh, fantastic, Ryan. Thanks so much for having me.
Ryan
Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you. So let's dive in for the list of my audience of mourning upgraders. Let's start by telling them you know who you are and what you do for a living, and then give us a win that's happening in your life right now.
Linda
Right. And I have to say, first of all, that I absolutely love that. This is a combination question of who are you. And what do you do for a living? I think most people tend to use what you do for a living as who you are. And I love that you separate that. So to introduce myself, my name is Linda Bjork, and I am a woman of faith. I am an advocate for hope and healing. I am a compassionate humanitarian. I am a gentle and powerful influence for good. And I am a servant, leader, leader. And what I do is a reflection of who I am, I am a personal development expert, and I am a best-selling author. I am a podcast host, and I am the founder of the hope for healing nonprofit. And my goal is to help people become their best selves. And the hope for healing is this free resource to help people be happy and to have more confidence and self-esteem to improve relationships to help alleviate stress and anxiety and depression and all that kind of stuff. And a win in my life right now is that we have, this last year, over 200,000 visitors to our website. And so it's starting to grow, and people are starting to notice that this is something that can help them out.
Ryan
Wow, good for you. There's a lot to unpack there. I usually start with morning routines. But because of all you're doing right now with personal development, and the healing work, and the nonprofit, that sounds like you're trying to have a lot of impacts and sounds like you're having a lot of impacts. So what is what drew what draws you to that? What got you started in that direction?
Linda
Excellent question. All right. So the thing that got me started in this direction was my personal experience. I always tried to be happy and to move forward, and you know, make the best of things. But I had just a series of events in my life that absolutely overwhelmed me, and I was a mess. And I slipped into depression; I struggled with social anxiety, I felt like I had fallen into a deep dark hole. And it was so dark that sunlight and happiness and hope could not reach me. And it felt like there were no windows and no doors in this dark place. And I didn't see any way out. I thought, well, this is my new reality. This is as good as it gets. And there's no other way. So I was stuck in that place for about five years, but almost no one knew because I was very good at hiding it. Then, my sister, who was training to become a life coach at the time, invited me to come to a women's retreat that she was hosting. And I thought, No way, no way. First of all, I can't handle being around other people. And second of all, it's not gonna do me any good. Because I'm hopeless. There's nothing you can do for me. But even though I didn't want to go, the idea wouldn't leave my mind. And so I thought, okay, I gathered my courage together, I went, and I'm so glad that I did. Because it was like my sister had lowered a ladder down into my deep dark hole and showed me a way to climb out. And I've learned that healing is like a ladder. It's not like an elevator where you just push a button, and all of a sudden, woohoo, I feel fabulous. It takes some effort; it takes some time. And it's run by run, but it works. And it is amazing. And so now that I have been in that dark place, and I know how that feels, I don't want to leave anybody stuck in a deep dark hole. I want to offer a ladder to anyone who's willing to climb out.
Ryan
Excellent. Let's stay on this topic. If anyone listening is in a very dark, dark place. I know it depends. And this could be a very long answer. But are there any is there any any words of wisdom that you would you would give them?
Linda
Yeah, they have lots of words of wisdom. One is to have some compassion for yourself and to know that you are not alone and that there is hope for healing and you do not have to stay in that stuck dark place. Because when I was there, I again felt like I'm stuck there is no way out. And to realize that there is a way out was so empowering and it just brought some hope back into my life that I thought had been shut forever.
Ryan
How do you deal with your current state? Like how do you deal with stress and anxiety cuz I'm sure you still like we're all human. So we still probably still deal with stress and anxiety but how do you deal with it now like what what do you do differently than you did versus what you did before?
Linda
That was an excellent question. And I love that you brought that up. Because you know when you heal from something, it is not a one time deal where man I had this obstacle I overcame that obstacle. And that means that from here on out life is smooth sailing. And I'm never going to have another problem. Because obviously, that is not the way life goes. So what makes the difference is empowering ourselves with the way that we show up. So that when an obstacle and a problem does come in our life, that we're able to handle it and be able to move forward and to feel like, yes, it's going to be okay. Even if I don't know what Okay, looks like. You talk about the morning upgrade and how you explain the benefits of a morning routine. And if it's okay, I would love to share with your listeners a super easy five minute morning routine to help the way that they show up super in my mind.
Ryan
That was my next question. So…
Linda
It is super easy it is MMWW, and it stands for music, movement, words and water. And the wonderful thing about doing something in five minutes is that it's simple and easy enough that we actually can do it rather than having that guilt of Oh great. One more thing that somebody says I'm supposed to do. So for the music, first of all, you just pick a song, something that you love, something that makes you want to sing and dance, this is the playlist that we want, and the song acts as your timer. Most songs lasts between three and four minutes long. And during this time that this music is playing and you're listening, you're going to move your body. And you can do it any way that you want. You can do standard traditional exercises like sit ups, and jumping jacks and push ups or you can do yoga stretches. Or you can do Tai Chi, or one thing that really is effective is to do shadowboxing. Like if you have some awesome rocky song, and you shadowbox you'll be amazed at how good you feel by the end of the song. And just you feel empowered. So by doing these two things, this music and the movement, it does amazing things for the way that we feel and the way that we show up. So I'll explain briefly what that does. And then I'll go into the WW. So first of all, music is one thing that affects the way that we feel more than any other thing, it can help us to feel happy or feel sad. And our brains actually tend to the brainwaves tend to synchronize somewhat with the beat of the music. So if you're struggling with motivation, like I just can't face today, and then you listen to some positive, awesome, upbeat song, it can literally help jumpstart your brain into action so that you can get up and you can move and you can do. And then movement helps to increase our energy, it helps to lower the levels of the cortisol, that stress hormone in our body, it helps to elevate the endorphins, which help us to feel good. So here it is, it's reducing our stress, it's making us feel better, it's giving us more energy. And you can do that in a very small amount of time. Now that w w is words and water for words, you just grab a notebook and write five things that you're grateful for. And then w is to drink, a drink a bottle of water. And the reason why these things help is gratitude journal. I used to think Yeah, I've heard of those. And that's, that's fine for those happy little fluffy people who like to do that sort of thing. But I'm dealing with real problems, and I need real solutions. Now the cool thing is that the research shows that this is a real solution for real problems. So they've done lots of studies with fMRI scans. And they've noticed that when we're in a state of gratitude, it stimulates the prefrontal cortex area of the brain. And this is the part of the brain where we have our conscious thought and our decision making. So when we can stimulate that part of the brain, it helps us to be able to act rather than to react to the problems that we face in the day. It also helps us to be able to improve our decision making skills. Now, having an attitude of gratitude also helps to improve the neuroplasticity of the brain. And neuroplasticity is absolutely critical for any sort of healing any sort of growth. It helps us to be able to adapt to change, it helps us literally physiologically to be more resilient, which is absolutely amazing. Now, not only that, but it affects the way that we feel. There was a wonderful study done, where they took a group of people who are struggling with just severe depression. And the assignment they were given was to write three things that they were successes of that day, three things they were grateful for three things that went well. And then 15 days later, they check to see if it had made any difference. And they found that 94% of the participants had noticed an improvement. They had gone from severely depressed to either moderately or mildly depressed. And so it didn't magically solve all of their problems, but it helped put them in a place that they were better able to solve their own problems. And it was amazing, because that was only two weeks. So you can imagine that as that keep going with this process that is going to help improve things even more. It also helps to rank at to direct the focus of our lives. When we focus on the negative, it seems that the negative grows. When we focus on the positive, it seems that more good positive things happen in our life. Some people like to say, where their focus goes, the energy flows, and it is so true. Now the last part of this little routine is to drink a bottle of water. Now water is one of those just overlooked aspects of our mental and emotional health. Our brain is composed of about 73% water, the research shows if it is dehydrated, even as little as 1%, it begins to negatively affect brain function, and mood. And so just making sure that we are adequately hydrated is a very simple way to help us to be able to feel better. So MMWW, you can finish the whole thing in five minutes. Now another cool thing that this does, because it's simple and easy, is it it can change you from someone who thinks, Well, I probably should do some kind of exercise or probably should drink more water, I probably should do some kind of self care. And it changes you into someone who is exercising, someone who is drinking water, someone who is doing self care. And when we change into someone who is doing things, then changes began to happen in our lives. And that is awesome.
Ryan
That’s five minutes. My morning routine is 25. And I thought that was short. And but the five minutes is even, like you have no excuse not to do it. Like he have a formula to it. And it's very catchy. And like all the components, gratitude practice. Yep. 100% very big into that for me for my daughters, too. We do that every night, and I do in the morning. And so yeah, thanks for sharing. That's really interesting. Do you do on vacation too?
Linda
You can do that anywhere, anytime, anywhere, which is nice. For morning routine. If I have more time, am I going to do more, of course. But the awesome thing about having at least you know, one version that takes only five minutes is like you said, you can take it with you on vacation. You can do it anytime, anywhere.
Ryan
It's the compound effect. You know, you you're doing it every day and just the results compound. Do you think maybe it's a silly question, but to seltzer count as water. I mean, I know it is water with carbonation, but I don't know if that's, that's the same thing if it counts towards your water goals?
Linda
That's an excellent question. And I'm gonna leave that up to the person who's who's doing it. I think the closer you get to just clean water, the better. For me, it's easier to drink if I add a little bit of lemon to it. But if seltzer helps somebody get their water down, then I guess drink seltzer? Yeah. Okay.
Ryan
So all right. I've got one last question for you, Linda. This time flew. Let's see, I want to ask you. Since you are a personal development expert, I want to ask I want so if someone's listening to this, if someone's listening to this show, my show they're probably into personal development, but let's just say they're not they stumbled across it. And they're giving one episode a listen. And your episode is the is the episode they stumbled across. And they're not convinced them personal growth, tried to convince them that it is important. So why is personal development personal growth important? And why should someone take it seriously?
Linda
What a fantastic question. I would say that personal growth is not just about you, you can't pour from an empty cup. So the way that you show up makes a difference in every other aspect of your life. I am a podcast host like yourself. And I have an opportunity to speak with professionals from all around the world in lots of different professions. And I talk to people who are professionals with children's mental health and, and people who are also dealing with kids who are having lots of issues, marriages and so many things and every single person regardless of the specific discipline that they're in, the number one thing is first, work on yourself. If you want your children to be more successful, work on yourself. If you want your business to be more successful, you work on yourself. If you want your marriage to be more successful, you work on yourself. It all starts with how we show up.
Ryan
You can't pour from an empty cup. I love that. I might borrow that. I'll give you credit though. All right, Linda, this was perfect. Thanks for everything you shared. I especially appreciate the five minute morning routine formula. That was excellent. If someone wants to connect with you, where should we send them?
Linda
I invite all of your listeners to come to my nonprofit, which is www.hopeforhealingfoundation.org You can also find my podcast called Linda's Corner, and you can find me at www.Linda'scorner.com and on social media at Linda's Corner podcast.
Ryan
Perfect. Thanks, Linda.
Linda
Thank you.
Announcer
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