LIVE w/ Dr.Charryse

What is up, Cadre fam? It is 2024. If you're listening to this live. Oh, can you feel the excitement? It's a new year, and if you're here, you made it. It's another morning, afternoon, evening, depending upon when you're listening to this. We all have a little something in your cup. Non alcoholic, I hope. But, hey, it is 530 somewhere. My beverage of choice is iced mushroom coffee, if you can believe it. But don't knock it till you try it. Let me take a sip before we get started. Oh, my goodness.

So good. I can't even tell you how much I missed being with all of you. I always enjoy this space. It was so good to have some time away to rest. Would I even call it rest? Sure. You know, to rest, to create, to get things together, to spend time with family. But we're back, and it's time to get into it. So here's what I want you to do. If you're here, say hello. Say hello to everybody and let me know where you're from and what is your focus of this year. And if you don't have one, it's okay. But I need you to get one soon, because if we're going to talk about focus, then you actually need to have one.

If this is your first time here, I'm doctor Charisse, a licensed clinical mental health therapist, mindfulness practitioner, and author. I'm passionate about helping you experience peace and harmony. Keyword, harmony, not balance, because balance means that everything is going to be equal in your life, and that's not real, but harmony and peace in every area of your life, if you do the work. And, yes, I missed you, too. Oh, I know where Warner Robbins is. It actually just warms my heart, because I did grow up half my life in Atlanta, in Norcross and Decatur and DeKalb, all the places.

So when you come from that area, you know those small places, if you are coming into this year and it's been challenging, I know somebody just mentioned having a loss. My heart goes to you or goes out to you as well. I try to say it's a new year, honestly, instead of happy new year, because sometimes the new year doesn't get off to a happy start. But I am a firm believer that every storm eventually has to come to an end. Speaking of storm, we had a crazy one here last night. I had to cancel all my sessions, all of groups, because there was no Wi Fi.

But we'll pick up back where we started. And I was determined that this morning whether I had to go sit in a car parking lot and find some wi fi and lighting. You and I were going to be together. That being said, Beth Schofield is in the house. She understands why I'm saying her name that way. Enjoy. The two hour delay means you can to sleep in a little bit. And let's get into our focus of today. So we're going to talk all about focus. And while it may be this cliche word at the beginning of the new year, this is something that I want you to really consider, part of what you want to cultivate all year long.

Our focus is something that requires a constant practice and intention. It's something that we have to come back to. The whole purpose of goal setting or creating a vision for yourself is to help keep you focused, whether that's in your personal life or that's in your professional life as a business or a leader. If you don't have a strategy, if you don't have a plan, if you don't know where you are and where you want to go and map out a way to get there, then you're going to feel like that little rainbow that happens on your computer that tells you you're out of space and something is about to break down.

So keeping your focus is your responsibility. If you're taking notes. Up to you, I encourage it because I don't want this just to be edutainment, which means education with a little bit of entertainment on the side. I actually want you to think about the things that I'm going to share with you and how you can put them in your life. There's so many sides of me, those of you that have been around me for a while, you know them. The one that's operating right now in this morning and today, if you haven't been able to tell, is the fire.

The one that says, I want you to move from thought to action, I want you to do less taking in only, and I want you to take in and apply the things that you hear so that a week from now, two weeks from now, a month from now, you can go. I see progress. I feel different. I can tell that practicing habits that help my focus is actually paying off. So if you looked at the description, there are two things that I want to give you this morning. Of course I'm going to give you more than that. I'm not going to promise you any more than I'm going to stop in 15 minutes.

20 minutes is my goal. That's my 2024 goal. But I'm going to take care of business, you step away whenever you need to. That's how we're going to do it this year. And if you're good with that, say cheers. So two things that I said I was going to give to you. One of them is how does focus influence your quality of life? Think about that for a moment. As I'm talking, when your life is not focused, you will often find that the quality of your life lessens. It diminishes. Because when there is not a clear and central focus, you're likely going to feel like you are being pulled in several directions or you will feel like you have no direction.

Either one of those places is uncomfortable and also keeps you stagnant. Pulled in too many places, lack of direction is complacency, is stagnation, will put you into a pool of a low state and then have you regretting the fact that you've wasted so much time and opportunity. So when you're focused, it has a significant influence on your productivity level and on your ability to achieve your goals. Now, I want to balance the concept of your productivity level with a full picture. Yes, it is important, necessary and helpful for us to be productive individuals, productive in our lives, productive in the roles that we have.

But I also want to always say that your purpose is not your productivity. That might be for somebody. Your purpose is not wired to your productivity. So focus is not desired to make you productive. So that then you feel like, now I have a purpose because I'm getting it all done wrong. You have a purpose because you're you. You have worth because you are you. Your productivity is just your bonus to the world. There's a thought, my productivity is not who I am. It's a bonus to the people in my life.

And the reason why I want to go there for a moment, and that's so important is because a lot of times people lose focus because it's too attached to productivity. And then you spend so much time building everyone else's vision and dream that you feel like you've lost yourself. If you're working on health goals, whether that's working towards being in a place of restoration or being in a place where you're maintaining or developing what you have, you will be honest with yourself and say, in order for you to do work in your personal life, you have to have focus and capacity.

The other thing I want you to consider when we talk about quality of life and focus is that your focus will also play a role in your interpersonal relationships. When you are struggling with your focus, when you lack focus. When you have too many different focal points, it will hurt your interpersonal relationships and you'll start to find that you resent some relationships. Have you ever been in that situation where your focus was diverted, could even be on something that was a good thing, but it was over focused and hyper focused.

And as a result of it, you were starting to resent, not spend enough quality time with the interpersonal relationships that you said were important to you, and you felt like perhaps there wasn't enough hours in a day, there wasn't enough time. If you're in a situation where you feel like, I don't have time for me, I don't have time for my loved ones, everyone is pulling on me. That is on you. You have to focus, you have to prioritize, you have to sit down and allot the appropriate amount of available time, starting with yourself and then with everybody else.

Today's hard truth, one of many today. It is not everyone's fault that your level of focus is all over the place. Cheers. All right, so that being said, I want you to keep that in mind, and that's not meant to make you feel like, oh, doctor Charryse, you are hurting my heart this early in the morning. I'm not trying to hurt your heart, but I am trying to wake you up to your potential. And in order for me to do that, you have to be focused. The world is waiting on you. You are already doing some incredible and amazing things.

You're waiting on you. Healing is waiting on you. Hope is waiting on you, but the world is also waiting on you. Because when we're healthy and we're running on all cylinders, then our purpose benefits. The other thing that I want to give you, why is staying focused a key to success? I want to read this because I think it's important and I want you to be able to get it down. It allows you to concentrate your energy and your resources in the right direction. Key point, every direction is not the right direction.

Everything is permissible, but not beneficial. Said the same thing in two different ways. And what I'm essentially saying is, you always want to be thinking about is my focus in the right direction. Is it moving me towards the things that align with the vision and the goal that I've set for myself, for my family, and for my business? Or am I running in directions that are just meeting my ego needs? Cheers. I told you I was pumped today. Or am I running in directions because I'm trying to avoid confrontation and conflict?

Because I am working to please other people? At the expense of what I said I've envisioned for myself and the level of harmony that is actually important to your mental fitness. Any direction that is negatively impacting your mental fitness, your mental health, your soul, your spirit, any direction that is impacting that in a negative way is not the right direction. Even when things are hard and difficult, when they're aligned with your vision, there's this dual strength and focus that exist even through the challenge.

When something is misdirecting you and stealing your focus, you're going to find that you feel way down. You're going to find that you constantly feel like you're having to brush yourself off and dust yourself off and get back up. It's going to feel like a fight to stay in that moment. If you're in that situation, no one can get you out but you and it's important that you do. I want to leave you today in these last few minutes with a seven at seven. I do these periodically. I will try to do them even more consistently.

Seven at seven. Seven daily habits to help enhance your focus. Number one, start with stillness. One of the most impactful things that you can do as soon as you wake up is to start with stillness. Let's do something. Let's be still for 20 seconds, starting now. Now take a moment and pipe in and tell me what you noticed. For me, I noticed the minute I got quiet and my shoulders went down and I started to breathe that things started to settle, that my mind felt like it was starting to open. How you spend that time in stillness is up to you.

It could be in breath work, it could be in meditation, it could be in prayer. But I want you to consider the importance and the value of starting in stillness, which also balances out your nervous system, allows it to regulate, allows you to notice the physical dynamics that are existing and then moving forward and letting that inform the direction of your day. Number two, decrease or avoid multitasking. Multitasking is not marvelous. It doesn't work well for our brain capacity and increases our stress level.

I will go into that a little bit more as we go throughout the rest of the month and I talk about focus. But multitasking goes against what you believe in terms of being productive. It stresses you out and leads you to burnout faster. Let me give you an example. If you start your week off and you're like, oh my goodness, I love it. I've got this big, huge to do list and every minute of my day is scheduled by Wednesday, you've tapped out. Mark my word. How do you know if by Thursday morning, you're struggling with your eating habits, with wanting to move, with wanting to follow through, with appointments, feeling exhausted, having a desire to hit snooze, you've burned yourself out Monday through Wednesday because you're doing too much and you're trying to multitask.

If there is a demand on your life to multitask, then there's too much going on in your life. Number three, set a timer when you're working on a task. So if you have multiple tasks that you need to work on and you're trying to navigate your time, set a timer. There's something called the Pomodoro method. P o m o d o r o. Funny technique that you can look up. Won't explain it, but it's an example if you want something tangible. But when you set a timer, especially those of you that have a neurodivergent brain, it is extremely helpful for you to focus your attention to tasks.

And of course, during that time, don't pick up your phone. Many of you waste a significant amount of time because in between focusing on task focusing, you're also picking up your phone, answering notifications. Oh, let me look at this real fast. Our brain is so distracted that the quality of our time, our energy, and our effort is reduced. So set that timer, turn everything else off, unless you're working on something in the computer, but you could still turn the notifications off and focus your attention to that task.

Number four, prioritize your night day routine. Yes, I said night day on purpose. You're going to hear a lot of information from different people and different influencers about a miracle morning. But here's the truth. If you don't have a great evening, you're not going to have a miracle morning. Am I telling the truth or am I telling the truth? Your evening will set the tone. For your morning. You need a concrete, habitual evening routine that signals your body and your brain that we are now moving into a time of rest so that you get adequate sleep.

You wake up in the morning with a brain that is fully going through all the synaptic processes that it needs needs to. That can only be done through your deep REm sleep cycles. And then you will be more likely to easily wake up at the time that you have set for yourself and feel like you have the capacity to make the decisions that you desire. So it is not your morning that just needs attention. Your evening will fuel your morning. It sets the tone. Every night you decide what the next day is going to be like, if you stay up super late and you know that your body is one that needs a certain amount of sleep, then you're going to have a difficult time the next morning.

If you're the kind of person that goes, oh, it's okay, even if I don't get a full night of sleep, I can still get up the next morning. You can, but you're going to top out. You're damaging your brain. You're damaging your telomeres in your brain, which will influence your aging and your memory. So that is a very time limited dynamic and you are paying for it in multiple ways. It is important to know that your evening will direct your morning flow. I'm going to review these at the end. Number five, say no.

One habit to help improve your focus even more is going to be say no. I need you to say no or not now, but thank you more this year. Number six, this is one of my favorites. You're going to want to take a sip before I say this one. Cut off toxic relationships. That is. I need you to get every under adult out of your life that exist. Now. Granted, some of them you might be married to or they might be your partner. Some of them are family members. So that's difficult. You can just put in boundaries with them.

But the underdeveloped adults in your life, the ones who pull on you, manipulate you, try to control your time, try to control your energy, don't like it when you're not focused on them. I need you to put them in check. I know that's not very therapeutic, but it's the therapy of Doctor Charryse. It's out of the book of Doctor Charryse. I need you to put them in check because they're still in your focus. Here's an example of how they're still in your focus. You spend all of your time making decisions based on them.

Here's what you need to do. Here's what you want to be doing. Here's the direction that you want to take. But because you're overly concerned with their response, you don't stay focused. They fight your focus. Those are underdeveloped adults. And you know why? Because they're really like little children in adult bodies that are placing too much of a demand on you. Anyone in your life that's placing too high. The demand on you is on you because you let them. Everybody breathing. I only have one more to go.

Number seven, count the cost. What's the cost of you not being focused? Think about last year. Where did your loss of focus cost you. Where did you not work on something that you said you wanted to? Where did you start working on something and stop? Is that your habit? Where did you miss out on an opportunity? Where did you not take an opportunity because you were not focused enough before the opportunity to be ready when the opportunity came? Because that's the beauty of focus. The beauty of focus is you have to stay ready so you don't have to get ready.

When you stay focused and the opportunity comes, the moment comes, crisis comes, you're ready because you have the skills and the tools and the resources and the practices in place to anchor you no matter what. The whole concept of I keep having to start over because you keep losing focus. And focus is not something that's going to magically appear every morning and stay with you throughout the year. You have to fight for it. And so my job as your mental fitness coach is to push you to fight for that focus.

So here's how you can apply what we've talked about today. One each day over the next month, I want you to take a few minutes and I want you to identify the focus wasters in that day. Sit down at the end of the day and write down where did I lose focus today? What's taking away from my focus, what's disrupting my focus, what's distracting? Whatever it is, be specific. And then of course you're going to make a plan to reduce whatever that distraction or that barrier is. The other thing that I want you to do is I want you to consider using two or three of the skills off of the list that I gave you at seven.

At seven. Let me go through those again. One, start with stillness. Two, decrease or avoid multitasking. Three, set a timer. Four, prioritize your night to day routine. Five, say no or not now. Six, cut off toxic relationships, underdeveloped adults. And seven, count the cost. I'm going to leave you with this thought. Your focus is your fuel. It is what will fuel you into all that you desire for yourself. But it is your responsibility to make sure that you heal, that you restore and that you reclaim anything and everything that you need to fuel that focus.

That being said, as always, eat the meat, leave the bones. That means take the pieces of what I've said today that are helpful to you and utilize them. Take the pieces that you are not ready for and put them on pause and put them on the side. But knowledge is not power without application. So I do need you to do something. I do need you to do the work and take the things that I've talked about and put them in action. Of course, you can always circle back and put that information here. Oh, my goodness.

I just realized something. I was sick earlier and my voice is still going away a little bit. I can't believe I almost didn't say this. So many of you have heard me talk about a summit, a wellness summit in Charlotte with myself and some other Cadre experts. Registration starts today. m. You will be given immediate access. Space is limited. So I'm just telling you, if you look at it and go, I don't know, I'm not sure, you snooze, you lose. And then at 01:00 it will be open all across the world. You do not want to miss what we have planned.

I'm just telling you, you're going to want to get in on this. I am super, super excited. So if that's something you've been wondering about, today is the day, and I'll be on, on some of my other platforms talking about it later. I love you all. I hope you have an incredible and phenomenal day. Remember, your day will be what you make it, so make it great.