Oh My Goodness! Ep. 2: Doing the Next right thing & The Halto Tool

Hey, friend, welcome to the second episode of The Oh My Goodness podcast with me. Your host, Aj Smit, it has been a week since my first episode dropped, and it is currently January 21, 2025, Inauguration Day, and Martin Luther King Day was yesterday.

And all week, I've been asking myself, what should the second episode be on? Do they need the encouragement of, hey, you've had a hard day? Here's how to take care of yourself. Should we dive into a topic already about how to listen to your intuition or inner knowing, or hey, if you're feeling stuck in creativity? And then I even thought, hey, maybe we should do a podcast episode on what it's like to take the first step and then be like, Oh, now I have to take a second step. And what does that look like, and how do we get stuck?

Similar to how this weekend, I was like, oh, but should I do this, or should I do that? And then yesterday happened, and I found myself thinking about what I thought this weekend, and then I got very sick this weekend, so I didn't record but it was like, why don't we just tune into spirit and see what shows up? And so I want to encourage you like I'm encouraging myself in real time, that sometimes we don't always have the right words, and sometimes we don't always know what the right thing to say is. And yet, time keeps moving.

It does that whole real-world time thing. What is that where a day starts anew, even when somebody died, or a divorce happened, or an accident happened, or an amazing day happened, and then it's the next day, and then the day after, and then a month, and then a year. Time keeps moving. Time waits for no man, you know. And also, today was a hard day and a beautiful day.

I live in Korea currently, and in the middle of my day, I get caught up on the news and everything that happened. I was concurrently doing training for an RTA course resiliency training assistant on our base, which helps military people, both members and families and kids, show up with resiliency, which is something we joked about because it's a term that's often thrown around and can be quite exhausting when people say, "Be more resilient!" And you're like, "I have no more resiliency to give!" Right?

There is no more sauce in the engine. Or what is it? No more sauce in the pan. I have no more forks or spoons. There's some metaphor. If you listen long enough, you'll understand that my metaphors get mixed up quite often. You'll just have an adventure. But we were doing the next best right thing as much as we could, and I think that's all we can do.

Like, okay, here's reality. What do we do next? And sometimes that looks like fueling yourself. It looks like taking a nap. Sometimes the next right thing is eating cake and crying in the bathtub. Sometimes the next right thing is going to bed. Sometimes the next right thing is going to the gym. Sometimes, the next right thing is having a hard conversation.

Sometimes, the next right thing is going to work, right? Sometimes the next right thing is picking up after your dog when it goes on a walk because you also need a walk, right? We're going for our mental health, and I think sometimes it gets underrated, undervalued, doing the next right thing, but it's got to be bigger than that too.

You have to survive. You have to keep living. My friend, you, this time, the thing keeps going, and you're going to keep going. And so then what do you need to be able to keep doing as reality is doing reality.

Time is doing time, and unless you have the ability to stop time, which, like, I don't know, yeah, I have some notes. I have some ideas, so just send me a message.

But if you're like the rest of us humans, with no Molly Weasley powers and no time travel powers, then you've got to be honest with yourself about what the next right thing looks like and what your role to play is.

How are you showing up? And this isn't call out or call in. I mean, I guess maybe it is. If this resonates that way, then Cool. Sorry, not. Apologies, I don't know, but I think a lot of us need to start getting a lot more honest about ourselves, about what your capacity is and what you need to fuel it.

Because I think running on empty, you know, there's a lot of like, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, but like, is it? Is it? And I had this conversation this morning about toxic positivity, and I run naturally high. And in our training, they were talking about positivity and positive thinking and positive psychology, and how maybe it's over the top and silly, right? Because if you don't know this for so long, psychology is 'What's wrong with you?' focused

And then this guy, I think his name was Martin Seligman. And he was like, hey, maybe we should ask a question about what's good with people, what? What are the common threads with people who are thriving? Let's study that and then maybe help people who are not doing well get to that or bridge that gap, right? And so I want to ask you the same thing.

What brings you down? What brings you up? What helps you catch sustaining breaths?

I have a tool. I call it a cheat sheet. I learned this in my sobriety adventure, and it's called HALTO: hungry, angry, lonely, tired, overwhelmed.

And if you're like, cool, AJ, I'm all of them, lovely. Go to bed.

Go shower, eat a snack, go to bed, hit the reset button. If you're like, I can't I'm in the middle of my day. Okay, how can you be tender and gentle with yourself, right? So, like, let's just start right there. If you're like, I'm already overwhelmed. Cool, Big breaths. Just take a couple.

I see you. I hear you. I hear you in the overwhelm. I hear you in the exhaustion. You're not the enemy. I'm not the enemy. We've just got a new tool to help you get some more ground beneath your feet. I hear you and how big everything is feeling right now.

And sometimes when we look at a mountain, we're like, "Are you kidding me? I have to climb this?" We're like, No, thanks. I'll just, I'll just, what is it? "Let me just stay here."

I don't know, but so often we get daunted by the really big things that we end up in freeze and can't get out of it. And so HALTO is this tool, and it's originally HALT but I don't know about you, but overwhelm is a big thing for me. So it's hungry, angry, lonely, tired, overwhelmed.

Somebody said, overwhelmed and tired are the same thing. Like, no, they're not. It's like sleepy and tired, right? They are two different things. And so you're going to, if you have a piece of paper, you can grab a piece of paper.

You are going to make a chart. And you can also think about this in your head. You can put this in your phone, and zero to five minutes, five to 15, 15 minutes to 30. 30 minutes to an hour, one hour to three hours and then, like half day full multiple days. In your chart, then go down and list what you can do to address that thing in that time frame. For example: Hungry, you cannot make a full four course meal in 5 minutes unless you have one of the aforementioned powers that you're not telling anybody about

In five minutes you can eat a granola bar. In five minutes, you can eat a banana. In five minutes, you might be able to whip up a peanut butter and jelly. Peanut butter jelly, right? And okay, in 15 minutes, you could grab a granola bar or you could make an actual sandwich, probably.

You can maybe make mac and cheese really quickly, or, like, a microwave meal, things like that. If you have 30 minutes, you can probably make a whole meal, order something in, or, like, swing by somewhere real quick.

If you have an hour, you can make a whole meal. Or, like, get some things out of the freezer. Right? Like, you can do more things and kind of hit some more areas. And this isn't more gold stars or not; the gold stars are being aware.

Awareness is the first step for change. If you ever work with me in any capacity, in Red Tent or otherwise, you'll hear me say that a lot, because I think sometimes we have this guilt for not doing things the first time we learn about a tool. I hear this often when people hear about a tool, and they're like, I'm not good at this yet.

I'm like, you literally found out about this three seconds ago, and you're already saying you're not good. You haven't learned this yet. How are you supposed to be good at something you don't know? Right? So can we just be like,

"Hi, Shame, thank you so much for being here. Go eat some snacks. Go eat some popcorn. Go sit over there, please. We do not have time for your nonsense today. We have cool, cool things to do."

So go through the list for each one, anger. How can you process anger? You can call a friend. You can swamp it out. Swamping is a tool by Mama Gena. So you listen to a rage song and you like dance and rage it out. Then you listen to a grief song, and then you listen to a turn on song, like a pleasure song that, like, makes you feel really good, and step back into your power.

You can vent. I love Viking war music with drums is my jam. It's what I row to the gym to process anger for me, because that's also linked with adrenaline, right?

Think about these also from a hormonal, 'what is your body doing?' standpoint. What is your nervous system doing when it's like this? When you're so hungry, noticing, Okay, we also need water, right? You can drink a glass of water in your zero to five minutes.

For your anger, you can, punch the air. You can, do a dance break and just violently shake, which if you're like, that sounds weird. Well, you try it for three minutes and see how you feel, and you'll be like, Oh, that actually helped. Similar to screaming into a pillow.

You can rage journal. If you're like, "I don't like journaling." Cool. Grab some red markers and just scribble on pages. So these are ideas. For lonely, calling a friend, writing a note, tuning into Spirit, having a meditation.

There's lots of different ideas, overwhelmed, delegating, saying no, changing your schedule, adding some things to your schedule.

Sometimes it's helpful, like support, co-working, body doubling. Those are all kind of different ideas that you can do tired, going outside and just putting my feet on the grass for like, even one minute when I'm tired makes me feel like oh, okay, I can breathe now for a moment.

It's just same thing for the overwhelm. So those are different ideas that you can do for that. Also, if we're tired, maybe a quick nap. I got an acupressure mat from the thrift store, which was a really cool find, and that has been very helpful for times that I do not have time to take a nap, but I just have, like, a five-minute or 10-minute break that I can go lay down just for five minutes. I set a timer, and I put on beautiful Chorus. I just lay there and I go breathe and, you know, or maybe a full nap. Maybe it's also go to bed. I don't think we talk about just going to bed. How much can that sometimes help, or shower?

The shower is a great reset. So if you have this cheat sheet on your phone, it can be helpful for when you're feeling stuck and something somebody said the other day, "I've just been so lazy lately." I'm like, I don't believe that," (and this is my personal opinion, all things on this show are of coming through the filter of me and whoever guests come on.) "Are you lazy, or is there a boulder in the way to doing the things? What is blocking the way?"

If usually we don't like laziness, and you can't see me, but quote, unquote, "laziness" is usually there's something in the way that is not letting you do that. So what's in the way? Can you pause and step back, and see what's there?

Can we get curious about it? If you're feeling an overwhelming phase right now, tune in and be like, "Hey. What do I need right now? Am I feeling HALTO? Okay? Which of those feels most present?"

If it's like everything, okay, if it's everything, drink water. Drink a glass of water. See if you can eat some food and then reevaluate from there. But like, does that make sense? So often when we feel stuck, we're just like, "Oh, I'm just XYZ" And it's like, okay, but maybe your nervous system is fried and you do not have capacity at this moment to do the next right thing.

So can we pause on doing the next right thing? It can often be a pause of What do I need to do the next thing? And then after doing that realizing, Okay, now that I have some capacity, now that I can think straight, what's next? Have you ever had a meal or a sandwich, or you've ate something or a glass of water, and you're like, "Wow, I feel 1000 times better."

You're like, okay, okay, now, okay, I'm here. I'm ready. Okay, what do we need to do, right? So often, we don't realize how much capacity plays a part in how we show up in the world. And so if you're navigating how to show up, not just now today, but in these next few weeks, in these months and these years in your life, if you apply this tool of asking this question, you will be deeply surprised at what happens. I'm just going to be honest, my life has completely transformed since learning this tool, and this is also what helped keep me sober and get me sober, is treating myself like toddler, which might sound stupid, but it's also true.

I think sometimes we think adults should have it together, but like we're just really animals, like we're just toddlers in adult form.

We still have these nervous systems that react. We still have the need for play. We still have this need for connection and sleep and food, and when we ignore those, and we think we should be a robot and like, Okay, we gotta go do faster, better, and we're not actually acknowledging our basic core needs, we're gonna do more harm than good to ourselves and the people around us. And I'm just going to say that, like, it is, because it's true, when you have made choices that are not in alignment with you, I would bet you over $100 that you've been at least two out of the five, if not three out of the five.

If you're one out of the five on HALTO. Like, that's normal. Like, we're usually like, Oh, hey. Like, I'm getting kind of hungry or whatever, right?

Two out of the five we may reach for, like, a healthy coping mechanism, like, maybe like, Oh, hey, I need to, like, go for a quick walk, or I'm gonna call a friend, or things like that.

Three out of five we may say something we regret, or we may feel itchy or, like, antsy, or kind of like, oh, like something's off, like, I'm just in a weird funk today.

Four out of five, we will definitely be reaching for an unhealthy coping mechanism, most likely and probably say something we might regret, or do something we might regret, or not show up at alignment.

Five out of five is 'Do not pass go. Do not collect $100.' Go home, stop, breathe. Go get some water, go take a shower, go to bed, or just not even shower, just go to bed. Mouthwash, you know what I'm saying. It's not decorum time, it's man the gates and reduce damage all around at all costs time.

So I hope this is helpful, because I think sometimes we get so caught up in mindfulness and how we show up but like, nobody gives us, like tangible tools.

I remember being so frustrated sometimes with different speakers or pastors. They'd say, go do or be X and you're like, cool, but, how? How do I show up in a way that feels in alignment when everything?

This tool is one of the best ways and tools that I come back to time and time again is,

"Hey, how am I? Do I need a nap?"

"Hey, body, what do you need from me? You Okay?"

Because when you have capacity, then you can do the next right thing. When we have capacity, when we're taking care of ourselves, we can then take care of other people. If you think it doesn't matter and you can do anything...just because you can doesn't mean you should.

If you're like, "I've been running on empty for years."

Yeah, and why is that?

Why are we making that a bragging right? Why is that something, and I understand that in our system, that is something that is forced. Sometimes we don't have a choice, right? Like, moms, and I see you military moms, I doubly see you.

And what if we could slowly rewire that to mean it doesn't always have to be true. Sometimes we have to do those things. But what if you also gave yourself some grace? What if you were the one to extend yourself some comfort and tenderness when you needed it? What would that look like?

And if you're thinking, "Oh, hey, I can't have that." Can we just sit with the both with the 'I've had to do this for so long that bringing this in and asking this question feels dangerous.' bit?

I hear you. I hear you. I hear you. I hear you. I cherished and, like, not idolized but I used to be proud of it. I was like, "Yeah, I'm busy. I go, go, go. I do all the time. I say yes to everybody. Like, no big deal. It's all fine."

And then I was very burned out. I was having in like, 2020, 2019, I was having three to ten 10 panic attacks a week. You just want the honest truth of it, all me being like, it's all good and it's all fine, that's what was happening behind the door.

Everything was great. My business was great. I was writing a book. I had a book deal. I was writing my book. I was leading 10 red tents during COVID times a month, and I was having panic attacks.

Then I got sober. The panic attacks ebbed and flowed as I got healthier and I haven't had one in quite a long time, but, I don't think we often talk about the repercussions of saying it's fine and not actually asking ourselves how our nervous systems and how our bodies are doing.

This isn't meant to be a lecture, or "You should do better." This is a we weren't taught this, and this isn't your fault. And oh, my goodness, I see you if you are tired, and you're allowed some goodness and rest just because you're human. You didn't have to deserve it. You just deserve it because you are human.

And if nobody else has told you that you are worthy of goodness. You are worthy of love and kindness and tenderness. I'm so proud of you for how you've been showing up in your life and for the people around you. And my friend, now more than ever, you need to take care of you. This is not a shoving everybody else away, screw you, I'll get mine at the cost of others vibe.

No, no, no, no, no. This is a different metaphor. This does not involve pie.

There's enough pie for everyone.

This is rest. This is like Tricia Hersey, The Nap Ministry, the Nap Bishop, go look her up on Instagram. She's a must follow. This is about showing up in a new way of being. And honestly, if you want the full honest truth, if you would have told me this four years ago. I would have been like, "Oh my gosh, how silly. How ridiculous. We do not have time for that. Like, who has time for that? That's so childish."

Yet..here we are living a more aligned true life. And I made it through today in a way that feels aligned and grounded and true. I am in my body right now, and there are whole subsections of time in the past that I was so disregulated that I was not, I was not in my body. I felt so discombobulated and disassociated.

So I'm, I'm coming to you from a place of like, I get that this is a practice, and this is hard, and also it's worthy of trying. Thank you for sticking with me in this second episode, where we went a lot deeper than I thought we would.

And also I see you and I love you and I'm so proud of you. You're doing great.

And if you have any questions about any of this, or if you're like, Hey, can you dive deeper or say more about XYZ, please send me an email, thejoyweaver@gmail.com, and I would love to chat or find me on Instagram, Facebook, The Joy Weaver, and we're going to get through this one moment at a time. Take care of you, take care of your capacity, and hold your thread of the world that you want to see.

Keep holding on to hope, keep moving forward, keep showing up in a way that's in integrity, honor the humanity of yourself and the people around you.

Drink your water, and eat your carrots, and have your cake, because life is short, and also, like chocolate is soul food. This is not the time to count the calories. This is not the time to be extra hard on ourselves. Move your body in a way that feels in integrity to you. Take care of yourself.

If you're overwhelmed and exhausted, ask yourself the toddler question, "Hey body, you tired? Hungry? What's up? What do you need? Do we need to move? Do we need to shake?"

If nothing else, shaking, even for 10 seconds, can totally reset your nervous system, not totally, but it can help a lot. Another great book resource is Burnout, by Emily and Amelia Nagaski. Your library probably has it, because it was a best seller and it's amazing.

Okay, that's all for now, and I'll see you next week. Bye. You.