Lockdown life can be tough. There are ways to make your new temporary "normal" become sane and enjoyable. In this episode Jeff and Rachel discuss daily habits you can form to survive and thrive throughout the lockdown.
Lockdown life can be tough. There are ways to make your new temporary "normal" sane and enjoyable. In this episode Jeff and Rachel discuss daily habits they have formed to survive and thrive throughout the lockdown.
Jeff (00:05):
Welcome to the self-directed life. I'm Jeff Nabers.
Rachel (00:09):
I'm Rachel Nabers.
Jeff (00:10):
It's time to take control of your money, your health, your time and your life.
Rachel (00:15):
Yeah. Welcome back everybody. Let's get into it. In this episode we're going to talk about how to stay sane during lockdown.
Jeff (00:23):
Oh yeah. So we're just going to kind of go through some of the things that we're doing, explaining the rationale behind it. And a lot of this stuff has been lifestyle choices we've been making for over a decade, but now they matter even more. Cause this lockdown experience we're all having, is really kind of putting pressure on our habits. You probably can't do things the way that you used to do them a month or two ago. So now as a time to form good habits and keep your sanity. All right. Number one.
Rachel (00:57):
The first one is go for walks.
Jeff (01:00):
Yes. So assuming that you have, you're living in a place that you have the ability to get outside and go for walks without getting into close quarters with other people, you probably gonna want to do that. You know, listen, this coronavirus thing isn't just about like we're all living in a Petri dish, and then if the virus comes near you, you get it and then you have it. It's that's not what's going on. 24/7/365 your immune system is constantly battling a gauntlet of viruses and bacteria that you're always exposed to in the room you're in right now. I hate to break it to you. It's full of viruses. The air that you're breathing in right now, there's viruses in them. Your entire body is more bacteria than it is human cells, and it's more viruses than it is bacterial cells.
Rachel (01:54):
We're covered in bacteria, right? It's called I think the acid mantle.
Jeff (01:56):
Yeah, but let's make sure we got that. You have a certain number of human cells, you have more bacterial cells in you, and then you have more viruses in your body than you have bacterial cells. So viruses are tiny, and there's more viruses in you than there are human cells. So the name of the game isn't avoiding contact with viruses. You are viruses. The name of the game is keeping your immune system strong. And you know, avoiding running into a, a really large viral load of this Corona virus thing that we know so little about. So when you go outside, there's going to be less virus density in the air that you're breathing and hopefully you're going to get a little bit of sunlight that's going to help with vitamin D. Vitamin D is actually a hormone. It's really essential to your immune system with, in particular with Corona virus. And there's a great resource on YouTube called Dr. Berg, like iceberg, and he's got some videos specifically about vitamin D and coronavirus. So, go out, have a walk if temperature permits, expose a bit of your skin, wear a mask if you need to. Number one, go for a walk. So next up I would say is exercise. Rachel, you are the master of being able to exercise without a gym and in small spaces, what do you call it?
Rachel (03:23):
I don't know.
Jeff (03:23):
What would you say you're about to do it? What do you call it?
Rachel (03:25):
Oh, well, I usually say I'm going to do a jumpy workout. So so Jeff and I have created a life where we've been able to travel a lot over the years. And inevitably what that means is if we are, you know, in the mountains of Canada or in the jungles of Brazil, there's not always a gym that I can join. Sometimes I do. I have been known to do classes and you know, short gym memberships all over the world.
Rachel (03:49):
But more often than not, I just work out at home. And so I actually saw on an interesting site called the visual capitalist that home weight sales, like dumbbells and kettlebells are up 307%. So people are making their little home gyms and there's all kinds of things that you can do to get your movement on when you're at home.
Jeff (04:13):
What are some resources? Where are you getting your workouts? If somebody wants to do a workout, like what you do, where do they find sure.
Rachel (04:18):
So I'm going to sound like a total millennial gal, but Instagram has got tons of fitness influencers that have great programs that are available. Tons of people post their workouts every day. I like to do short, powerful workouts like tabbada or high intensity interval training or sometimes they call it E mam, which is every minute on the minute I'm just doing simple exercises, jumping jacks, dead lifts, squats, jump squats, burpees are killer and amazing.
Rachel (04:51):
And you know, even just on YouTube.
Jeff (04:54):
Let's make this easy. What is a resource that somebody could go and do a workout from that that you like, like on Instagram or something?
Rachel (05:03):
Okay, so there's a gal, yeah, there's a gal that I really like. Her name is Natasha ocean I think is how you pronounce her last name, a gal in the UK. And she specializes in these high intensity, 20, 30 minute workouts. She does these videos on Instagram almost every day and she's really great and a lot of them have no equipment that are necessary. So I really like her.
Jeff (05:24):
I am a person who is afflicted with, cannot work out without fun disease. Yeah, it's true. So I, my primary methods of workout are riding dirt bike or snowboarding, you know, depending on where we are. Surfing can also definitely qualify for an a surfing spot. So I've been riding my dirt bike now less often than normal. And also I don't really encounter people. I definitely make adjustments though to not ride as hard and take almost zero risks in terms of if there's a big obstacle or Hill climb that I know have the skills to do, I'm not really taking the chance because now's not a time where you went on it would want to end up in the hospital.
Jeff (06:10):
Like if you're driving your car, you know, another thing, part of I think what we're talking about here is how to release stress and but part of this is like peace of mind as well. If you start to exercise control over areas that you can control, like when you're driving, if you just bring your a game for attention and awareness, then that's going to avoid the vast majority of car accidents that you could have.
Rachel (06:35):
People like to say that they are expert multitaskers. The worst place ever is driving and driving. You want to be an expert, single Tasker and your single task is driving.
Jeff (06:47):
We've got the choir here. You're listening. I'm sure except for that. I just noticed that there's that one person driving while they're listening to this. So this, that's the only multitasking allowed. But no, seriously you know, now is not the time to split your attention when you're driving because look, if you're in New York city and you get in a car accident, then you're going to be brought into a hospital full of people with Corona virus. So, you know, that's actually one of the theories. We'll dust off the stats when we finally have all the data later on and can do a postmortem on the Corona virus world event. What really happened? We don't really know what's happening right now very well. But one theory is that actually coronavirus is spreading a lot in hospitals. So one of the things that the Chinese publications recommended for the rest of the world is to put coronavirus patients in their own separate hospitals or temporary hospitals.
Jeff (07:42):
Anyways, you don't want to end up in a hospital. So I'm not doing anything that could break an arm or a leg. But personally for me, I've got to engage in some sort of sport or game to to work.
Rachel (07:54):
But I think also is sort of what you're saying is if you like skateboarding or you like going on bike rides and things like that, then make sure that you are not, you know, pushing yourself too hard or exceeding maybe your comfort level so that way you're decreasing the chances that something might happen to you.
Jeff (08:11):
Yeah, I had it explained to me in a really great way by a great friend of ours over in Switzerland, Frank Seuss, I'm chairman of BFI capital group and he told me, Jeff, there is the comfort zone. Then there is the challenge zone and then there is the risk zone.
Jeff (08:32):
Now if you stay in the comfort zone then you're probably not going to accomplish very much. You're not going to ever do anything new. It's going to be pretty boring. And that's that. The challenge zone is really where you thrive. That's where you learn new things. And the risk zone is where you get hurt. That's where if you're like skiing and you turn into a noodle and you're like, Oh, one more, and then that's the run you break your leg on. Right. So what I'm doing out on the dirt bike is avoiding the risk zone. Yeah. And if you also have some sort of, you know, activity that you like to go out and do. Like by the way, I went out dirt biking last weekend and there were hundreds and hundreds. It was the busiest day I've ever seen it out in this recreational area of people on their recreational vehicles of various kinds.
Jeff (09:18):
So obviously a lot of people are cooped up in needing to get out exercises.
Rachel (09:22):
Move your body in some way, I think is just what we're trying to say. You got to get some movement into your life to relieve stress, de-stress and use stress, especially working from home. You have to, you know, family is around all the time. The kids are always around. You gotta have a way to let that stuff go.
Jeff (09:38):
Yup. Next one. It was just kind of something that we've been doing because we're fortunate enough to have an infrared sauna is using it. So if you in your life have access to a sauna or an infrared sauna, that can be a really great way to de stress, stimulate your immune system, draw out toxins from your body, et cetera. Another area has to do with sleep.
Jeff (10:06):
So sleep is super crucial. Rachel, what are some of the things that, that you're doing to optimize your sleep?
Rachel (10:16):
Yeah, and there's some great resources out there that will post for you on books and things that you can do to optimize your sleep. But one major, one is making sure you have a dark room. You know, I sleep with an eye mask on, which is actually really fairly new for me. Only the last, maybe a couple of months I've started sleeping with a nice soft eye mask on and it blocks out all the light and I'm sleeping much more deeply. We keep the temperature low in the evenings and at night. You want your room that you're sleeping in to be cool and not hot. And then also you know, taking a break from screens right before you go to sleep. That's probably one of the best things that you can do.
Jeff (10:58):
Yeah. So you may have heard of this, but blocking blue light, there's D there's a disagreeing information, but there's a lot of evidence that says blocking blue light, which let's talk about what is blue light. First of all. So light has a spectrum. You know, if you're into photography, you know, there's this thing at the end of the day called hero hour where when you take pictures of people, they look more like a hero because there's this beautiful orange, warm golden color, a warm light. So warm color temperatures are like orange and, and you know, incandescent light bulbs have that glow to them. That warm right on the other end of the color spectrum is instead of orange light is blue light. That's very cool light. And that would be in the, you know, natural world of sunlight. More like noon in the middle of the day lights coming straight down.
Jeff (11:56):
That's like your blue light spectrum or fluorescent lights. You know, a lot of modern trying to be futuristic looking lights are basically blue and the light spectrum and they appear to us as just that bright white. So your screens and your phone and your iPad and all that. It's all putting out this light spectrum and a lot of it is blue light or that, you know, if you ever look at somebody in a dark room and they're on the computer, then it's gonna, their face is going to have all this white light, right? So you actually want to block that and there are two ways to do it. Number one, the screen that you're using itself could have settings that make it a little bit warmer, which blocks the blue light. So that's called night shift on an IO, an iPhone or iPad.
Jeff (12:53):
There's an app you can get on your desktop computer or laptop called flux. And I don't know what it's called on Android. I don't use much of Android. We have an LG TV a lot. We, anytime you see colored temperature and cool to warm, if you move it over towards warm and then the most effective thing you can do is wear special glasses that block blue light and they basically have orange lenses. And those tend to work. Now real quick basics on why block blue light. Well, you have your rhythm and your body has hormones. In the morning you wake up and your cortisol spikes and that's kind of your stress or awareness hormone and that helps to kind of wake you up at night. What you really want is lots of melatonin to be naturally happening in your body.
Jeff (13:48):
And the melatonin is what helps you go to sleep and have very restful sleep. What the studies have found is blue light at night blocks or reduces your production of melatonin. So even if you fall asleep with low melatonin, your sleep might be less restful. So if you block blue light. Best thing to do, don't have any screens after dark. Next best thing to do, wear blue blocker glasses, you can find them on Amazon, there's all kinds. And then the next best thing to do is just adjust your screen settings to do its own blue blocking.
Rachel (14:24):
And remember another thing that also we do before bed at night, which is we take magnesium. You can just get that online. Amazon, your grocery will deliver that to you, but magnesium also is supposed to be great for helping you relax in the evening and have more restful sleep.
Jeff (14:39):
Definitely. I think you want to avoid exercise for a couple to a few hours before sleep. Otherwise I think it can raise your cortisol levels. So you really just want, like you, you know, when you have a bad night of sleep and you know when you have a good night of sleep when you really want to do is just dial in the things that you maybe didn't know about that were causing the bad sleep. You know, I personally would strongly recommend that you're not like reading news at night or really getting on social media platforms for the most part. Probably, you know, you want to be hydrated but don't drink too much water or that can wake you up. Those are the main things and the cool air cooler.
Rachel (15:25):
Better sleep is just so restorative and, and great for repairing your whole body. So make that just a really top, top priority. Get good sleep.
New Speaker (15:35):
Absolutely. Okay. Another one I would say is to create, right? So if you're, if you used to, right, but you haven't been writing, right. Whether it just means keeping a journal or if you want to write some blog posts or a book or whatever. If you have any creative writing projects, just dive into it. If you're into music, you know, we both play guitar and other musical instruments. Guitars just been basically a decorative item in our house for probably the past. I may be honestly over a year, so it's been a couple of years since we were really active with music. And now's the time to pick things up, learn an instrument or just dust off that old instrument and play it. You know, I think for myself personally, if I bring into my awareness, how much am I consuming, whether that's consuming food, consuming information, consuming what other people are producing, they're the producer on the consumer.
Jeff (16:41):
The more than I'm a consumer, the less fulfilling my life isn't. The less happy I am, the more than I'm up producer making things that you know, maybe other people are going to consume them or maybe I'm just going to express myself and recording some songs that I never let anybody listen to. Either way, the process of being a creator of being a producer is extremely rewarding and you know, getting back into those brain chemicals and everything. Like these social media platforms are designed to basically run off of our dopamine, you know, so we're constantly like searching. We're constantly looking what's, what's the next thing? Let me scroll down in my social media feed. And that's just constantly hijacking your dopamine system in your system. Your whole body's full of dopamine and dopamine. There are some good things that happen with dopamine from, you know, the different research I've seen in books I've read.
Jeff (17:42):
But if we wanted to oversimplify things to the point of, yeah, this is going to be wrong, but it's going to be kind of right and useful. Your dopamine isn't really the happy drug. Dopamine is the chasing drug. If you want to feel like you're just constantly chasing something you never can catch and you want lots of dopamine. If you had to pick one of your, you know, inner drugs in your body that you might be having when you feel really happy, that might be something like oxytocin. Oxytocin is like, you've arrived, you're present, relax. You made it, you're here, everything's good. Right? that's the kind of thing that when you hug your loved ones and your skin is touching their skin, you're both releasing oxytocin. Or when people garden, people get addicted to gardening. Partially it's because they stick their hands in the dirt.
Jeff (18:31):
There's bacteria and the dirt that stimulates oxytocin. So oxytocin is actually literally related to the feeling of happiness. And if we wanted to be really simple, I think that when you're being a consumer, you are consuming what other people have produced. And you're kind of in that dopamine mode where you're chasing a happiness that you'll never catch. When you're being a producer, you're probably more likely to be in that oxytocin mode where you're, you're creating. And I think it's a myth that some people are creators and some people aren't. You know, if somebody never lifted weights in their entire life, you couldn't expect him to show up to into a gym and bench press 300 pounds. It just, you didn't use the muscles. So if you start bench pressing, you're gonna feel really weak and you might go, my body was never made to bench press. Well now you're doing a thing and if you're weak at it, the more you do it, the stronger your OIC yet you don't know almost nobody was born playing an instrument or being an amazing writer or anything like that. So just get out there and create.
Rachel (19:37):
Look, if you want an easy way to get started with this cause anyone can do this at the end of each day, before you go to bed, just write down one thing you're grateful for. Just do that while you're in quarantine. Do that while you're in lockdown. Even if you've already been locked down for 18-20 days, doesn't matter. Start tonight. Just write down one thing that you're grateful for. I guarantee that when you frame that gratitude as what you're taking into your restfulness and you're asleep at night, that will really help roll into an awesome next day
Jeff (20:10):
Bonus thing. We like to do a gratitude walk where it's both of us and we just take turns saying things that we're grateful for. This is so important because your brain has a filter. And so it's really easy to slip into having your filter be like, what's wrong with this situation? What can I complain about? What can I make fun of? What can I poke fun at and take a jab at? Well then you, you're basically walking around unconsciously asking the question, what's bad about right now? And then your brain, if it filters out anything that's not bad so it can find something that is bad, will find nothing but bad things. So a gratitude walk can get your body moving while simultaneously changing the filter out and say, what's great about right here in now?
Rachel (21:05):
I want to take it even one step further. And this is sort of in the relationships quadrant, I guess, of self-directed life. One thing that Jeff and I have gotten pretty good at over the years when we have an argument is we talk about what we're grateful for and sometimes it starts a bit begrudgingly. You know, if we're both still sort of coming out of the argument, but it really helps us to refocus on what we're grateful for and we find that that can really help us turn things around.
Jeff (21:35):
Do you really think any of our listeners would be having arguments during the lockdown?
Rachel (21:38):
You mean stuck in the house with their loved ones with no out? (laughs) Probably.
Jeff (21:45):
Oh man. So yeah, gratitude walk is great. Gratitude is a great way to just change your mood cause you're in a bad mood. You're obviously rejecting and filtering out all the great things that there are around eat. Like everybody has something to be grateful for. If you're not grateful for what you have, somebody going to come from some situation where they don't have what you have and then they're going to leapfrog past you to take advantage of all the opportunities and resources that you're blocking out. This is why people move to the United States from other countries with, you know, a penny in their pocket and nothing but sheer willpower. But they're going out and going, I'm going to find some damn opportunity. What's, what's a great opportunity. And next thing you know, 10 20 years later, they're a massively successful business person where somebody who is, you know, born in the United States with all this amazing opportunity but wasn't trained on how to see it and look for it. Just pretend like it isn't there and complaints.
Rachel (22:42):
Yeah. And I think, you know, I've done these little gratitude journals in, You know, fits and spurts over the years and when I come across them, it's always really, really nice to read through them. So if you, you know, have the inkling to keep a little gratitude journal during this crazy lockdown period, then days or weeks or months or years in the future when you look back and you read through this little journal talking about all the things you are grateful for, even in a seemingly really confusing time, it can probably bring a lot of peace.
Jeff (23:15):
Excellent. Next step, yoga. We're just stretching if you don't want to, if you're, yeah, if you're just like yoga, I would never do that. Well then it's stretching.
Rachel (23:27):
Still under the category of, you know, moving your body.
Jeff (23:29):
Of course. Yeah. I definitely was a person who was like, I'm never going to do yoga. That's that. And then I was in Costa Rica one time with a friend and she was just like, I'm going to yoga and I was just so bored. So I was like, all right, well let's just see what this is about. Nobody's gonna see me here. And I loved it. It was awesome. I thought that we were going to have to be doing some weird like seance at the end of it. As it turned out, it was really just like a stretching session where you could just follow some simple instructions and we had a good teacher.
Jeff (24:04):
And since then I've learned that yoga with a good teacher is you know, amazing and yoga without a good teacher is not. One thing that I've been doing is I've been doing these home yoga sessions for over a decade. I just went into target one day and grabbed this DVD called AM yoga from Rodney Yee. And it started doing them and there's five different sessions for every weekday of the week and they're only 20 minutes long. And it's been great to this day, it's still my go to. That's a great way to frame the day to do it in the morning. Yeah. And you know, our friend was over here the other day who's really into yoga. I'm not the other day, I was the other month before the lockdown. And you know, he was like, Oh you have a, you have a home practice. And I was like, okay, yeah, if that's what you want, whatever, I don't know all these terms and stuff.
Jeff (24:58):
I just do yoga with the is DVD now it's on Amazon prime, but now everybody has a home practice or no practice for yoga. So now's the time. I think any age, any condition, no matter how flexible or unflexible you are, just start doing some yoga.
Rachel (25:17):
Yeah. And this is where also YouTube can be a really valuable resource cause there's all kinds of different levels of yoga for whatever your physical abilities are.
Jeff (25:25):
Absolutely. next up to the extent that you have things that you do want to get done, make a checklist, make a plan. In the simplest way you could take an index card and write the three things that you want to get done that day and folded up. This is just been true all the time. You know, if I am unhappy at the end of the day, there's about a 99% chance that I didn't make a list or that I didn't look at my list after I made it.
Rachel (25:55):
So you had no guide, right. Or plan for your day on what you want to get accomplished. So at the end of the day, you're just sort of reacting rather than proactively deciding how you want to spend your time.
Jeff (26:06):
Yeah. And the fewer items there are on it the better. I think, you know, I like a good two to three things that you're trying to get done. Maybe you could have a little kind of side list of just a few things that take like, you know, two minutes each or whatnot. But make a checklist. And then if you're make a checklist every day and then you try to, you know, our to do list and you try to make that the guide for your day, then you're gonna start learning. You know, what can I get done in a day? So just basic productivity. If you just wake up and start hacking away at the endless tasks, then you're probably gonna work the wrong tasks at the wrong time and low priority stuff will get worked on high priority stuff will get procrastinated and then you won't get as much done. All right, let's talk about something that's a reality for pretty much everybody. Now. We're probably ordering more things from the internet that then physically show up at our houses. How do we handle that?
Rachel (27:06):
Yeah, we need, you need a protocol for package decontamination. So what we do. Well, so Jeff is in charge of the first step, which is when a package comes in, he puts on gloves and then moves the package into the garage and it just stays there for a couple of days. We know that the virus can live on cardboard for people, say 24 to 48 hours. So it just gets moved right into the garage. It does not come into the house. And then after a couple of days have passed he'll put on gloves again, open the package and then take out the contents and they stay there again. They stay in the garage for another couple of days. Of course, don't do this with perishable items, but anything that's, you know, shelf stable or not perishable, take the product out of the package and leave it out in the garage for another couple of days.
Jeff (27:55):
Right? So we quarantine it in the garage, then we open it. And then after that, whatever is inside, we clean it off. And you know, in the realm of decontamination, soap works really well for anything that you can, soap. So like your hands or non-electronic and it just, anything that it would be okay to use soap with just regular old soap actually is the best thing to kill the virus. And I say kill the virus in a, I'm doing air quotes now. Because you can't kill a virus cause it's not alive in the first place. Viruses aren't alive or dead. They're just you know, what you really want to do is, I think it's called de-nature the virus where it just kind of structurally rips apart. That's what soap does. So soap works really good for anything you can soap, anything that you can't, so you want, you know, alcohol is pretty good, but alcohol doesn't really denature the virus as effectively as soap.
Jeff (28:56):
Or you could have like a spray bottle of bleach or there's some other ones that we have. So bleach and water, not just straight bleach, but yeah. Yes, obviously. Definitely. okay. So the next thing I would say is to severely limit your consumption of just social media and mainstream media. This one's hard because it's everywhere. Well, and it's made to be addictive. Right? So all the, you know, best industrial engineers worked with Facebook to make Facebook addictive. Same thing for Twitter. Same thing for instance, that the social media platforms that are the most successful are the most successful because they're the most addictive and by design. So if it feels, if you use social media and it feels hard to break away, that means it's important to break away. So that's where you can maybe set a little timer. You know, we have our little Amazon echo.
Jeff (29:56):
You can just say, Hey, set a timer.
Rachel (29:58):
for you know, 30 minutes and if you want to limit it to 30 minutes, it'll seem like five minutes go by in 30 minutes. Yeah. But that's really important to do because it is way too easy to just keep scrolling and scrolling and go, Oh my God, three hours have gone by.
Jeff (30:12):
Next thing is like in your social media you really need to curate it. If there's people that you don't want to hear from, unfriend them, mute them, unfollow them, whatever. There should be like little three dots next to their post on whatever your platform is. And you can unfriend them or mute them or unfollow them. You know, just look at everybody who posts something that shows up in your feed and go, do I want this person in my brain? And if the answer's no, then remove.
Jeff (30:43):
Also, I would just really encourage to generally avoid or even more severely limit mainstream media. Now I do watch some mainstream media because I just want to know what are other people being exposed to. But you know, it used to be mainstream media and alternative media. And when we're talking about, you know, mainstream media being like CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS news, I was like all the old news organizations that existed on TV before the internet. And then, you know, if you think of alternative media, like all the different channels and different people that you can follow on YouTube or Twitter or having a podcast like this or whatnot, I think it's number one, really important to understand that alternative media is far bigger than mainstream media now. So when we say mainstream media, it's actually probably better to say old media or conventional media because they're shrinking.
Jeff (31:42):
Their numbers have been shrinking. They're not mainstream anymore as far as numbers. Yeah. There's like guys in their twenties who have a YouTube channel and they publish a video. More people see their video than CNN 24 hours cycle for the next day. So you just have to understand it's kind of a game when you watch old media and it just, it all looks so authoritative and they have the graphics and they like two minute spots and soundbites here and there. You know, 20 years ago that was very authoritative and millions of people were watching it every moment. That's not the case anymore. It's really reaching very few people. Even the presidents press briefings are nowhere near the most viewed videos online. So anyways, avoid mainstream media that are mainstream media. The problem is basically just that they have advertisers who are their customers and they can only say things that their advertisers approve of.
Jeff (32:42):
If they say things or advertisers don't approve of their advertisers, stop giving them money. So the news business isn't in the business of providing an unbiased viewpoint or just letting you know what's going on. I think everybody knows this by now, but you know, old habits die hard. So if you're still watching mainstream media, I encourage you to get an Apple TV, an Amazon fire TV or a Firestick and just start exploring these other apps. A lot of them will have an app for CNN CBS or whatever that you could check in with, but it will also start to get access to, you know, looking at a more wide spectrum of information. Probably the absolute number one media in the world right now is actually podcasting and we resisted a long time before creating this. But you know, it's like the new radio show that you can carry in your pocket with a million radio stations.
Jeff (33:37):
Pick which ones are going to serve you the best.
Rachel (33:42):
Okay. So along the -Then as far as bringing food into your house, order food online, if you can avoid going to the grocery stores, do there are wonderful resources available. Instacart, a thrive market, lots of different services where you can order food and have it delivered directly to your house. We still have a process of decontamination. There's a great YouTube video that's gotten lots of views now from a doctor, we'll make sure we post it where he talks about the whole process of how to decontaminate or disinfect food that's coming into your house.
Jeff (34:19):
But you basically just want to put her, you want to clean your counter, put it on one side of your counter right after you clean everything, move it to the other side of the counter and you just wipe it down with wipes and and then wash your hands afterwards.
Jeff (34:32):
But yeah, you want to disinfect everything that comes into your house. But it's also if you can afford to pay, you know, a 10% tip or you know, in $5 delivery fee or something, if you can afford that, then number one, you're like, like Instacart, Instacart, a couple of weeks ago said they need to hire 300,000 employees. And at that time we tried to use Instacart and they didn't have any delivery windows available cause they didn't have people. So they've started to hire some of those 300,000 people and now there's delivery windows. We've got one coming tomorrow, I think. So you know, if you're in Texas, AGB I think has some online delivery. But check that out, get food delivered. It will help support your local economy.
Rachel (35:16):
And if you can also tip your delivery driver well through the app, they give you the option to do that. These guys are part of our essential workforce that are going into the grocery stores and getting stuff for you. So take care of them so they can continue doing their jobs too.
Jeff (35:32):
Yup. Next up is, you know, what should you eat? Obviously this is a huge topic that, you know, lot of people are very, very opinionated about. Probably too opinionated and you know, I think there, there are different camps. There are vegans who thinks that everybody should eat vegan. There are paleo primal people and think everybody should eat paleo. Primal. There are there's the Keto crowd who thinks that everybody should eat Keto. And you know, I don't think that just completely subscribing to any one thing and believing that you're right and everybody else's wrong, you know, this isn't a time to like be doing the right diet. This is a time to just be going, okay, you know, how can I be doing what's good for my body?
Jeff (36:22):
And this is information that changes constantly. When we were growing up, people said more butter was bad and margin was good. Now we've known that margarine was made plastic or something. Yeah. It's a industrial waste product that they were all sitting around going, what are we going to do with all this toxic sludge? And you're like, tell people it's like butter. But there was no internet back then to like have the scandal break on a blog or something like that. We just ate margarine. Instead, eggs were bad, the eggs were good. Milk milk does a body good. Right? And I think so here's a few things that I've found through, well let me just say one thing on the science front. Okay. There's no particular person or group or organization that says what is or isn't science.
Jeff (37:17):
And I think that the idea has become widespread that anecdotal evidence is meaningless and stringently controlled, double blind placebo studies done in a laboratory is, you know, like the Holy grail is something true. Well, what were the results in that, you know, fully scientific study versus, Oh, that's just an anecdotal evidence. We don't pay attention to that. I think that it's very disempowering and you're not living this self-directed life if you're looking for studies to tell you how your body works. I think that there's definitely some useful information that comes out of there. I also think anecdotal evidence from somebody else isn't necessarily gonna tell you what's going to happen when you do something. So I think, you know, part of is just common sense. Try some different ways of eating and see how you feel. Myself personally, I started kind of doing like paleo. Rachel and I both both are doing paleo many years ago and we instantly lost quite a bit of fat, very quickly started sleeping better and having more energy. So I think there is something to having a high fat, low carb nutrition plan where the fats are good healthy sources.
Jeff (38:45):
Sorry about that-where the fats are good healthy sources. And you know, whatever carbs you get. Also good healthy sources. So I, I think in general, vegetable oils are pretty bad. That creates a lot of inflammation. Things like canola oil all of the things like olive oil are good and healthy. There's good healthy saturated fats. In, you know, you can also have too much protein too. So I mean this is obviously a massive topic that we could do a whole episode about or some people will do a whole show about them, but I would say take a, take a closer look at, you know, paleo and keto and then just recognize that there's more to it than just fats versus carbs versus proteins. There's also the cleanliness of it, like how processed or unprocessed processed is it. So like in the realm of meat, like some jerky from the grocery store, it's going to be pretty highly processed.
Jeff (39:44):
Now it'd be pretty dirty protein, whereas like grass fed beef from a local farm or regional farm would be really queen, you know, similarly kale versus like packaged kale chips. So there's different ends of that spectrum. How processed things are. The less processed it is probably the better your body is going to handle it. It's going to be easier on your liver. Your liver is responsible for every 300 functions and in your body. So yeah, eat, eat healthy. And what's the thing that we just started getting some food delivery and testing out these keto meals?
Rachel (40:26):
Trifecta foods, I don't know, something called trifecta.
Jeff (40:32):
It's stuff that you can just put right into your freezer and then you can thought out when you're ready to cook it and you just stick it in the oven and it's like a complete meal.
Jeff (40:41):
All you do is oven it and then you're eating it 20 minutes later and it's pretty good. I think we've tried maybe five or six different dishes and like four of them were good. Yeah. And two of them were like, Oh, don't do those again.
Rachel (40:54):
Yeah. And you know, just the final thing I want to bring before we close this episode is, you know, connect with people who bring you joy. So do that phone call with your friends or the, you know, we did a zoom dinner party a couple of weeks ago where we just set up our webcams and all made dinner together and just hung out. It's important that you're not completely isolated, even if you're in lockdown on your own. Take some time to connect with people that bring you joy.
Jeff (41:26):
Definitely. So you can do that with FaceTime on Apple devices. You can do that with, you can use WhatsApp.
Jeff (41:37):
Whatsapp is really cool. Anybody on any type of phone can use WhatsApp and you can even have a little group and just start a group call right away. Definitely I think that at least two or three times a week you should be having some sort of video conference with the same people that you would probably be getting some face to face time with. If you weren't under lockdown. So that's really important. Anything else would you add to this? Okay, so one that I didn't talk about is also just meditate. And this is ironically probably the hardest thing on the whole list because our entire culture is like all about uppers like coffee and just nonstop.
Rachel (42:23):
Yeah. Just even just like a moment of silence.
Jeff (42:27):
Everybody's brain was like, what's next? Right. And that's that dopamine addiction. So meditation is obviously simple. You just stop doing stuff, just do nothing.
Jeff (42:41):
And then also it, you know, until you do it and get the benefits of it, it also is like the, it seems like the least beneficial thing you could possibly be doing. Like I'm not accomplishing anything right now, but it's actually really good for your immune system. And this whole podcast is about how to stay sane during lockdown. And you want to be able to just relax areas of your body. You can do like a scan from your head all the way down to your toes and just make sure that every little area of your body is relaxing. And and it, you can do breathing, you can focus on your breathing.
Rachel (43:22):
There are guided meditations, there's apps that can take you through it too if you don't know what to do on your own. Calm and Headspace are great.
Jeff (43:30):
Yeah. So calm is an app. Headspace is an app. You can look those up on app stores of Android or Apple. And those are guided meditations, but you also don't need anything. You can just stop doing things is stop making noise, close your doors, sit down against a wall, lay down and meditate. Not a whole lot else to say about that, other than, nothing to it, but to do it. And I do think it's very worthwhile. And I have to admit that's the one thing on the list that I have been doing the least consistently. But I want to work on that.
Jeff (44:08):
Okay. So let's have a little recap. Walk, go outside, get some sun. Okay. We didn't talk about sun specifically. We like to lay out in the sun in our backyard and expose as much of our skin as we can. Same thing, it's about vitamin D and then also for us we're less fans of chemically full or full of chemicals sunscreen, which some studies show actually caused cancer themselves and we're more fans of adapting to sun exposure by laying out in the sun, actually getting a little bit of a tan so that then when the summer is full-blown in swing, you could go out in the sun without getting burned as easily.
Jeff (44:55):
Then so exercise, just move your body in one way or another. You could do jumpy workouts at home, like Rachel does jumpy workouts or you can go do whatever you need to do. Obviously you just want to stay away from other people. The sports where you like some of the main team sports, like basketball, football and stuff. You probably want to stay away from for the moment during lockdown.
Rachel (45:16):
You could play a one man football game alone by yourself.
Jeff (45:19):
This is, yeah, this is the part of the podcast for you. Realize Rachel denies an indoor kid in her life ever. Okay. So then you've got sleep, do anything and everything you can to make your sleep better. Blocking out lights, blocking blue lights keeping cool temperature in your house. Create so right. Create music, learn an instrument, do something to make something or, and, or learn a new skill.
Jeff (45:47):
You can learn a language. What's the apps that you've used? Memrise for learning language, right?
Rachel (45:54):
Yeah. And maybe keep a gratitude journal as part of your creation process.
Jeff (45:58):
Meditate, yoga or stretch. Make your plan for the day. You know, like if your plan for your day is different than it was before, locked lockdown, then you're just, you know, one of the, a billion people who have been affected by this. But it doesn't mean that whatever the day plan is, is you just forget about it. You should still think about it in the morning and follow it. And decontaminate your packages that come in. Do you contaminate your food that you might order from online? Limit mainstream media I would say too, is contaminate your brain from mainstream media and decontaminate your brain. Don't let other people poo in it and even television and other mediums.
Jeff (46:38):
Oh, also in terms of like about Corona virus specifically there's a lot there's been a lot of divide among what people even think is going on. You know, like in the very early phases, there were some people going, Oh my gosh, this is going to become a pandemic. This is a big deal. We have to start testing people. We have to start wearing masks. We have to start social distancing. There were people saying that in February. And then, you know, the whole world has come on board with that in March. But even to this day, there are now people that are still thinking like, this is a hoax. The coronavirus doesn't even exist. This is just a, and so we'll get into that maybe in another episode, some of the different diverging opinions about what's going on.
Jeff (47:26):
But I think you need a good source of information about what is really going on with the virus itself. You know, obviously you can go to just the body count of dead people for coronavirus, but it's not gonna really tell you that much. And I think you need to find genuine experts. What I did is I found a lot of experts who knew what was coming before it came. And then I made a little list on Twitter. So if you find me on Twitter @JeffNabers, and then you look under lists. There's a Corona virus info list. It's only about five people. But then that just creates a little feed where you can go, okay, our president is not an expert. In Corona virus. The experts that he does have talk at his briefings are then constrained within the political context of their speaking with and for the president. So you need to find, you know, independent sources of expert information from immunologist, epidemiologist, fire, ologists, et cetera. And so I have just a little list I've curated. You can check my Twitter feed on that for the list. All right. Avoid negative people and sources. You know, this is something you should do before, during, and after lockdown. If you haven't already been doing it, now's the time to start for your sanity.
Rachel (48:41):
And also the opposite of that. Avoid negative people and sources and connect with people in sources that bring you joy. Eat healthy.
Jeff (48:51):
That's the last thing. Just recapping. Yeah. Do it. Eat healthy. Eat healthy. Period. Eat healthy, period. Okay. That's it. Cool. So again, go to selfdirectedlife.com. Make sure you're signed up for the email list so that you get some of the bonus materials we're putting out only there and a message us on any of the platforms or through self-directed life.com and let us know what you think of the episodes so far and any suggestions or requests for future content. We are all ears. Okay. That's it for episode two. Thanks for listening. Have a great day. Thanks everybody.