Hello, everyone, today's episode is going to be a little bit different. But to start, let's explain what this podcast is all about.
Thank you for joining me for another episode of The more than you see podcast hosted by me, actor, filmmaker, mental health advocate Deborah Lee Smith. Every Monday just like this one, I come to you to share some resources, have a conversation, and generally just dive into all sorts of topics around mental health. I am not a licensed practitioner or therapist, but just a woman exploring my own mental health and sharing it with you, my listeners. My hope is that this podcast brings you some joy, some understanding and some tools so that you can build your own mental health toolbox.
Thanks again, everyone for joining me for another episode of this podcast. If this is your first time, welcome, I'm so excited to have you here. If you are a avid listener, thank you. Thank you, thank you, it's so nice to have you back.
Now normally what I do is I started to present a topic for you all and we discuss it and I give you some resources or some tips, some homework that you can use in order to pull whatever I've said and bring it into your daily life. This week, it's going to be a little bit different because what this week was supposed to be was me starting a four part series about different aspects of mental health.
Now I go into this very briefly on the first episode, those four parts of mental health are your environment, your psychology, your brain chemistry (or just your hormones) your chemistry in general, and your spirituality. And I was supposed to start this series this week, but I had a little bit of a shit-tastic week, and that meant that I did not get to do the research, or put the time and the effort into these episodes. And I'm really excited to share some concrete knowledge around those subjects. So we're gonna postpone this yet again, one more week. I promise it's going to be there next week. And I'm going to talk about taking breaks.
Now I know I talked about this a couple episodes ago when we talked about The Power of Full Engagement and how life isn't really as marathon like people say, instead, it's like a series of short little sprints. And it's really important to, you know, put all of your time and effort into something for a very short period of time, and then to just take a break and allow your muscles to recover, allow your brain to recover. I mean, that's really what we were talking about a couple episodes ago.
But today I'm going to talk about taking another kind of break, I'm going to talk about the importance of saying no and the importance of changing your plans, the importance of giving yourself the grace and the space to say that relationships, that your schedule that other aspects of your life are no longer serving you. And that's okay. And it's okay to let go of it. It's okay to push toxic people toxic habits, toxic relationships out of your life, because if this year has taught us one thing above everything else is that we only have one life and our life is short. And it's really important to put ourselves first.
Now a really funny meme was actually sent to me today. And this sort of sparked my idea for today's episode. And this meme said, how I'm arguing in 2021: "You're right, goodbye". And that just like totally made me burst out laughing. And I think that the whole idea behind it because of course it's so important to argue thoughtfully and engage with the people who deserve your time and attention. Life is not easy, relationships are not easy, situations are not easy. It is so important to put time and effort into building and maintaining relationships and situations when they really are serving you.
But the other side of it is that it is super important to let go of those relationships, let go of those situations when they are no longer serving you. And I think that it definitely does take a lot of time and self awareness to understand what is serving you and what no longer is. I know this is something that I have been working on for years. And I feel like only in the last year and a half I finally be at been able to have a sense of how I can stand up for myself and how I can weed out toxicity out of my life, but it takes practice just like any other muscle in your body. Self Confidence takes practice, self awareness takes practice, self love takes practice. All these things take practice. And just another thing, another aspect of our life that takes practice is understanding of who is good in your life and who was not.
And I just wanted to come on here and remind you that the people who deserve to be in your life, the people who will continue to help you and support you, and show you the respect and the love that you deserve, those people are not toxic. I think that there's a real importance of understanding what toxicity looks like in our lives. But I just want to remind you, that it is not your job to detox toxic people. What is your job is to identify those toxic people, and then put up boundaries and separate them from your life, because it's very easy for toxicity to bleed into your own life. And as soon as you're able to cut that toxicity out of your life, the amount of joy and happiness and people who will support you and love you and respect you, that will only grow, that part of your life will only grow. And so it's really important to cut that toxicity out of your life.
Now, I'm gonna leave you with a little homework assignment just like usual. And if this is resonating with you at all, maybe you are feeling like everything in your life is perfect, and everything in your life is giving you joy and my goodness, I applaud you for that; but if you are feeling any sort of toxicity in your life, I want to encourage you to set some boundaries this week. And if you need any help in recognizing the signs of a toxic person, I looked up an article about this in psychology today. And in it, it said that toxic people often try to intimidate you, they try to guilt trip you they constantly see themselves as the victim. And then they therefore put victim shaming on you. They're overly defensive, you're often left emotionally exhausted after an encounter with them.
If you are feeling like that with anyone in your life. I'm not saying that you need to completely cut them out of your life, because unfortunately, sometimes those toxic people are our own family members. I just... one of the biggest things that's the most important part of mental health is establishing boundaries and protecting yourself, protecting your own mental space. And if you can build some boundaries between yourself and any sort of toxicity in your life, it will only add, as I said, greater joy and greater success and happiness to your life. So I really hope that that resonates with you. Again, I super super promise that next week, we will actually be starting this four part series for More Than You See.
I want to announce that I have a new newsletter sign up. So if you want to be reminded through email that we have a new podcast coming out, please go to the website. And that's morethan-yousee.com, and that link will be in the show notes. And on the homepage, you'll see that there is a link to sign up for the newsletter, please sign up for the newsletter, and then also you can very easily forward that newsletter if someone else you know might be interested in listening to this episode or one of the previous episodes.
I have a lot of really exciting things planned for this podcast. And I want to make sure that I'm always adding value and that I am you know, researching these subjects and providing concrete tools and research and ideas. It is based on you know, not just my thoughts, but the thoughts of our community because it's not helpful for only me to talk about my experience, it's helpful for you all to talk about your experience with mental health as well. So if you want to share how you you know, cut toxic people out of your life, if this resonates with you at all, please go to anchor which is who host this podcast.You can leave me a voice message and then I can play it on the air or if you want to send me a message on Instagram, then I would be happy to either anonymously or share a message that you want heard on the podcast. Again, this is for you. This platform is for you.
I'm not going to apologize because that's one that's another thing that I'm working on is not apologizing for things. And I want to instead graciously thank you for giving me the space this week to have a little bit of a rant with you all. And I promise next week I will come back to our four part series about different aspects of mental health and I really am excited about that.
Please If you can, you know track some relationships in your life, track some situations if there's any, anything that you can do to protect yourself, build some boundaries and cut toxicity out of your life. Please do it this week. Please remember to give yourself grace and self love. Please remember that everyone around you is struggling, and that we are all more than you see. I'm really excited genuinely to start our new four part series next week. Thank you so much for listening. I will see you next Monday.
