How to stop the 3 a.m. worry spiral

Welcome back. The holidays, they haven't even arrived yet, and your stress level may already be dressed for the occasion. Here with some tips to quiet that racing mind and break the 3 a.m. worry cycle is business strategist and bestselling author, Angela Goodman. Angela, glad to have you here with us this morning. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. So talk to us a little bit about why people seem to find themselves at 3 a.m. or whatever that random hour is in the middle of the night, their minds start racing. And I know for myself, You know, I have actually a notepad next to my. My bed, just in case, you know, God forbid, some wild, fantastic idea comes at three o'clock in the morning. Yeah, it's, you know what? It's amazing to me because most people end up going to bed at night feeling like they never got everything finished during the course of the day. And so because of that, we end up with this wake up. And during the holidays, we're thinking about our to-do lists and the gifts we've got to buy and the places we've got to go. So definitely a cause for worry this time of year. So what's happening during that? Thank you so much for joining us. 41% of Americans rate this their biggest time for anxiety. That was the last holiday season. I can only imagine what it will be like this year. Okay, so what do we do to combat this? How do we fix this? Well, I love that you told me you have a pad next to your bed because that's one of the things that I tell people. Okay. Keep a notepad next to your bed. If you don't have a notepad but you have your phone handy, we all have a voice memo app. You can leave yourself a voice memo for the next day. Once you've let it out, you have then downloaded it somewhere else It's like, okay, I can rest now. So that is one really good thing to do. Another thing that I suggest to my clients is gratitude. Use gratitude before you go to bed. Pick out two or three things during the course of the day that went really, really well for you so that your brain is in a state of calm instead of in a state of worry. Would you recommend having almost like a short... to-do list, if you will, and a long to-do list, if you will, for long-term things you need to get done. Let's say holiday season, right? We're well before Thanksgiving now, so you know you need to get the kids gifts. You know you need to do X, Y, Z, but you got a few more months. But right now, maybe you need to be focusing on planning Thanksgiving. Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of things. You can have a calendar, an actual written calendar, not one that's on your phone, because otherwise you're checking your phone all the time, which adds to the worry and anxiety. So I have a written calendar. calendar for the longer term things and then the day-to-day stuff is the things that you'll keep on your phone or that you might write just a short to-do list for yourself. That's very helpful. As far as you know how we combat this in the long term as well I mean is there anything you can do to kind of really just put those worries aside and really focus on that present moment? Yeah absolutely. So one thing that has worked for me over the years has learned how to choose my day. So we all get to start the first two minutes of our day in any way we want as soon as we wake up. For me, I choose peace every single morning. And so when things start to get hectic or I have a lot of travel or things going on that are making my schedule crazy, I remind myself I chose peace today. So that allows me to breathe a little deeper, take a little bit of time to myself to sort of relax and remind myself I chose peace today. I chose peace today. And that just brings peace right into your day. So you can choose it before you ever even get out of bed. That's a good reminder because I feel like probably a lot of times everything just kind of piles on top of each other. And even if you just have that one phrase, that one word that helps you get through that day, you can kind of reflect back on what you told yourself in the morning, right? Yeah, exactly. And if you drift too far, sometimes life just gets in our way, right? And we drift a little too far. I do actually offer a free resource on my website. It's Alignment Drift Assessment. You can go take it. My website's missangelagoodman.com And that will help you understand where that drift is coming. coming from. Fantastic. One other tip you'd give to people as we do head into the holiday season and they want to avoid that holiday spiral. Just remember boundaries and you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. So you can choose the things that you choose to do. We love the word boundaries these days, don't we? Awesome. Angela, thank you so much. Where can people find more information? I know you said the website, but I think we have it for our folks at home as well on the screen. Yeah. For the folks at home, you can definitely go to... AngelaGoodman.com and then also you can find me on social media as well for more tips and resources. Fantastic. Angela, thanks for joining us this morning. We appreciate it. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, Tucker, I'm going to send it over to you. Okay.