Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the show. Got a great show plan for you. We're going to be

talking about some mental health tips that are born out of where we are in place and time.

It's going to be a show for everyone. But before we get into anything, as always, I want to just start by saying,

how is your mental health? Take some time to check in on that. How you doing? What do you need?

What do you need more of? What do you need less of? What boundaries maybe need to be set? Where do you need to prioritize mental health more? Kind of check in on that. Also, as I'm working with some of my patients and my private practice on, what do you have built in for the week ahead of the day ahead? That's rooted in joy. You got any joy?

Set up a joy calendar.

Yep.

I work with some of my patients on setting one of those up.

They purchase a calendar, create one, print one out.

I usually make them just with a piece of paper.

Just kind of draw those lines in there, right in the dates.

And for a lot of people, it's a way to track what their lives are centering.

It's also a way to track how much work they're doing versus how much rest is built in,

how much pleasure and fun and leisure is built in,

and really getting a sense of whether or not you're overworking.

We're talking a lot about work-life balance,

but very few of us do that.

I'll say to a client,

what percentage of that calendar would be based in things that are labor driven? And it's all of it, most of it. And I'm like, all right, so write in what

you have plan that's going to be restful or based in fun and pleasure. And it's like one or two things.

And it's like, okay, so that is not work life balance. And we'll never get there. The system doesn't allow for that. Although it is with us working from home, people working four days a week, flex time, shorter days. We're getting there. And that's important for our physical health and mental health because the current work schedule is not rooted in physical health and mental health. In fact, the 40 hour work week, five days a week, eight hours a day was rooted in a time when we had community care, family support.

Now that things are different, it needs to adjust.

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