Hi, I just did a shot of tequila because I'm doing a solo episode
improv and completely unplanned and I'm still getting used to
liking this feeling of staring into a camera and saying things
to myself for an hour. So bear with me.
But I thought today we could talk about getting your spark
back. I have lost my spark many many
times. So many different things can
cause you to get in a rut and lose your spark and ultimately
kind of feel like you've lost yourself.
And I just want to talk about how to get out of that, how to
get your fucking spark back, OK. Because we don't have time to
walk around dim and sad. We don't.
We have a short lifespan that's bumming me out.
I don't want to talk about short lifespan.
So the tequila is kicking in. OK, But I've talked about this a
couple of times. The thing that really gets me,
not like that it gets my spark back but motivates me to get my
spark back, is the fact that it really is finite.
We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow and like best
case scenario, we're living until old age and going
peacefully in our sleep. I can't.
But this got so morbid so fast. And so I think about how we need
to be more in the moment, more present, more grateful, because
right now we are filled with youth and we should be
vivacious, OK? We shouldn't be walking around
with no spark. Nobody has the time.
Sorry for that. Like, morbid rant.
I don't know if I should be doing solo episodes.
Was that scary? Should I redo that?
All right, here's an alternative intro in case I change it.
No, you know what? I got to stay true to my
original thoughts. It was morbid.
It is what it is. That's how I feel about it.
We're going to move on. OK, the first part and the worst
part of figuring out how to get your spark back.
What do you call it? A spark or a sparkle, A light.
This is how I know that things are in alignment.
I don't know if you guys heard Angelito.
It was producing everything always and is incredible.
He just said that the people before me, they were bravo
people and that someone asked her, did you get your sparkle
back? I came up with this topic like
20 minutes before I filmed and now I feel like I feel good
about it. OK, so the first part of getting
your sparkle, your spark back, your light, whatever it is, is
you're going to have to take a real hard look.
And I know this sounds obvious, but it's something that we avoid
at what the fuck caused it to go away in the 1st place?
What snuffed your flame? It can be a pervasive thing
that's still going on and you're going to have to address
whatever it is and cut it out. For me, the last time I lost my
spark, let me think, Oh my God, I've lost my spark so many times
in the last two years. I actually have a scenario for
each category. The last time I lost my spark
was in a relationship that just like was not doing it for me.
It took me a long time to let go of.
I didn't want to face the fear of the unknown that was on the
other side. And I did not get my spark back
until I made a very hard decision to leave a long term
relationship. It sucked.
But then I very quickly got my spark back.
I think I said on the Amy Chan episode, like I feel like I've
been freed from a basement. I see the light.
I'm now frolicking through a field of daisies.
And it's not because of him or because of the relationship.
It was just that it wasn't what was meant for me.
It wasn't aligning with me. And because of that, I was
existing in a world that felt false, that felt fake.
I was waking up and I was going through the emotions every day
because I didn't want to deal with the switch up.
And because of that, I started to lose myself.
Like you can feel that feeling inside when you start making
decisions consistently that no longer align with what your soul
like, really wants and feels is right.
And we do that because we crave comfort and the unknown is scary
and we don't know what the unknown's going to feel like,
but we know this feels OK. But we're losing ourselves in
the process. The time before that I lost my
spark because I went through a really like dramatic career
thing and I was like, oh, I don't know what to do in this
scenario. And I lost something that I was
like very, very proud of and that I put so much effort and
work into, but it wasn't aligning with me.
Again, the same pattern every day I was showing up and forcing
something that wasn't sitting right with me to continue on
because it was afraid of the unknown and what would be next
and how everything would go. And I think the same thing
happened to me in other scenarios with my career where I
worked for somebody for a company that I no longer enjoyed
the format that was going on there.
Like I had way too much work on my plate and my salary wasn't
high enough or I didn't love my boss and how tumultuous that
felt because we never knew what we were going to get when she
showed up. There's been so many scenarios
where that has absolutely zipped my spark away.
A career change is arguably a lot harder to make than a
relationship change because it dictates your finances, which,
you know, changes everything in your life.
But once you make that change and you start doing what you're
passionate about in a way that you feel like fulfilled and free
buy it is a day and night difference.
OK. And your situation also, by the
way, and in any category here, if we're talking about romantic
or career or friendships or family or whatever it is,
whatever's dulling your spark, your sparkle, it doesn't have to
be bad. It can be a scenario where
everything's just OK, but it's not great.
I think that that's the number one cause of this spark being
dimmed is that we settle for things that are OK because we're
afraid to go looking for what is great.
We're on a floating space rock, you guys, we're in the middle of
a Galaxy that is a speck amongst others.
It's just, it's too much. And it's also absurd, in my
opinion, to not try to aim for what you really want and desire.
I used to listen to this commencement speech, the Jim
Carrey hot topic right now. Jim Carrey did all the time when
I was scared. And what he says in it was that
his father was a great comedian, but he was so afraid to fail
being a comedian and not be able to support his family that he
got a job doing what he thought was safe.
He got a job as an accountant and one day he was laid off from
his job that he didn't fucking like as an accountant and he
lost everything. And he couldn't support his
family, which was the outcome that he feared about pursuing
being a comedian. And it happened anyway.
So you might as well go after what you love and what you
really want to do because you can fail at what you don't want.
Also harsh harsh reality. But like, you can literally fail
at the mediocre. Safe choice too is super cool in
that way. He also wrote a $10 million
check for himself in the memo he wrote for acting services
rendered. And he used to carry it around
in his wallet every day and he would visualize he was like
visually manifesting someone handing it to him and giving him
accolades for his acting performances.
I think it was the Dumb and Dumber franchise.
He got paid $10 million a couple years later.
So he's just like an interesting case study.
But I love that commencement speech.
You should listen to it. I think if you're struggling to
make a career move, it is a super valid point to be like,
OK, I can fail at what I think is safe, so let me try to go
after what I love to do and give that a shot anyway.
I implore you to do that, especially when you're 20.
It's like, get out there, OK, Then we have other ways to dumb
ways to die, million ways to lose your sparkle.
We have family. If you have a great family, you
are wealthy, you are so lucky. If you have a dysfunctional
family, which I think majority of people experience in some way
or another, then you probably know what it's like to lose your
sparkle because some crazy instance has occurred.
Somebody said something to you, somebody's done something,
someone's called you out. I had someone write in like 2
episodes ago about how every time they talk to their mom,
even though they were like 25, successful, doing well, had a
great job, they were proud of themselves.
Their mom made them feel terrible about about themselves.
She'd make comments about her weight or how she wasn't doing
enough in her career. She just always came away
feeling like she wasn't enough for like she was never going to
get praise from her mom. And I think that's not uncommon
to feel from a parent or from an elder in your family.
It can really dull your sparkle. As you guys know, I, I don't
stay in contact with my dad or his side of the family and
that's new for me. I grew up with a dad and then
that happened when I was 25. When you set boundaries that
need to be set and you work with therapists to do it and you
process and you get through the transition period of that, you
do get your spark back. Whether that means just like
setting a boundary and not talking to them as much or like
saying, hey, let's not talk about my weight or my career or
my love life or whatever. Or, you know, it's an extreme
scenario like I found myself in where you have to set such a
strong boundary that you don't speak anymore.
There's a way to find your way back to yourself after
experiencing something like that and feel good again.
Dealing with dysfunctional families is not really talked
about that often, and it's almost like a little taboo to
address. So I'm happy to do it because I
think we need to be talking about it.
Oprah just did an episode recently, and it was just full
of people who no longer speak to certain members of their family.
And it was kids and parents and aunts and uncles and sisters and
brothers. It's more widespread and
happening more often than we know.
Like I also get DMS from you guys all the time sharing that
experience with me that you guys go through it too.
So just know that like, that is one of the quickest ways to lose
your spark, but it's not impossible to get it back.
And then of course, friendships. Friendship breakups suck.
They almost suck worse than romantic relationships.
There's no way around that. When you build a strong platonic
friendship with somebody and you lose that, it feels like losing
a sibling, at least for me. I'm an only child, so I
developed very strong relationships with my best
friends. I've known most of my friends
for decades. We've been best friends for
decades, and if I lose one of them, which I've had happen,
it's devastating. It will absolutely cause you to
lose your spark in the same way that a breakup would.
Now that we've addressed the root cause, the root causes, we
need to address the fact that you are not going to be able to
get your spark back where you lost it.
You cannot heal in the environment that exhausted you.
Your Spark very rarely returns in the same place where it
disappeared. As challenging as it is to make
a large change in your life surrounding romantic
relationships, family, friends, career, if you want to get your
spark back and glow again, you have to do it.
The rest of this episode is only going to be beneficial to you if
you go ahead and you make the hard choice and you get rid of
the thing that is doling you. How to do that is another topic,
and I've got probably 50 episodes on that by now, so just
flip through the catalog and find one that is relevant to
whatever you're going through. But I talk about that sort of
thing very often. So let's get past that and let's
talk about how to actually get the damn spark back, OK?
Of course, you're going to have to acknowledge the grief and the
sadness that come when you make such large changes in life.
Let's even Fast forward past that a little bit, OK?
Past the point of letting go, past the point of processing.
It's going to start small. Usually when I start to get my
spark back, I realize it in a moment where I'm like belly
laughing for the first time in a long time.
One of those things really, like I'm getting apps right now, or
it comes in a moment where you spend a little extra time
getting ready before you go somewhere and you're like, you
know, what the fuck was I sad about?
I look good, I feel good. Put on a song that makes you
feel really good for me as a song from the 70s will do it for
me. I've been listening to Ring My
Bell every day and dancing to it.
Like pick a song that makes you want to get up and do something
and dance a little bit around your room like Britney Spears.
If you guys have ever seen Crossroads, we need that energy.
Like there's genuinely something healing about dancing in a big
T-shirt with a hair brush microphone around your room in
the mirror. This is going to sound woo woo,
but it literally changes your energy.
Like you're operating at a higher frequency, You're
happier, You're releasing serotonin, you're releasing
dopamine leaky scientifically to getting your spark back, there's
many ways to do it. These are all the annoying tips
that you hear where you're like, OK, like I have to journal and
workout and leave my house and get ready.
Yes of course you have to do all of those things, but I think if
you want to speed run getting your spark back every single
day, force yourself to dance and jump around to a song that gets
you going. Secondary benefit there, if
you're dancing and jumping around, you're getting a little
lymphatic drainage in the morning, you're going to feel
better already. I also think you can shock
yourself out of feeling like shit with an ice roller.
Like order one off of Amazon, put spoons in your freezer, or
just dunk your head and ice water.
I was taught a long time ago by my therapist is if I'm having a
panic attack, like you need to touch something cold, it'll snap
your nervous system out of it. And so even if you're not having
a panic attack, but you're just feeling kind of blah in a funk,
shock yourself out of it in the morning.
As a matter of fact, like a fun little combo to do is play the
song, dance around and you're waiting for your coffee, your
macho, whatever you're making in the morning.
And then put something cold on your face, under your eyes.
But your spark is usually going to come back quietly in little
tiny ways before it shows up loudly in full force.
The next thing that you're going to want to do is start getting
ready in the morning everyday. I hate it.
I don't like doing it myself, especially when I'm in a slump.
I want to have no makeup on. If anything, I want to focus on
skin care, if I even have it in me to do that.
I want my hair in a bun. I don't want to give a fuck
about it. I want to wear sweatpants and a
tank top, and I want to throw on sunglasses or a hat if I have to
go into public and call it a day.
But that's not going to make you feel good about yourself.
You're going to feel better when you look in a mirror and you
feel good about the way that you look.
Unless you're somebody who genuinely like you look in the
mirror and you're like, I feel better now than I do when I'm
done up, then so be it. Whatever it is to your
appearance that makes you feel better.
So I'm not saying it needs to be doing your hair or your makeup
like whenever you feel your most beautiful, do that every day in
the morning. There's actually something
called enclothed cognition. The clothes that you wear can
influence your mental state and behavior.
So a famous study at Northwestern University found
that when people that wore clothing, they associated with
competence like a lab. So there's another thing we need
to all put on fucking lap in the morning, have their focus and
confidence improve. Doing your hair or your makeup
or dressing for the part that you want can actually shift your
mindset and your perception, not just your appearance.
The brain responds to signals and when you start showing up
looking put together, the brain starts believing that you are
and that your life is. And sometimes you got to fake it
till you make it. OK, and also routines, which is
why I keep saying like every day, let's start a routine has
been shown to lower stress and stabilize your mood.
And so part of why people feel calmer during beauty routines is
because your nervous system is telling you that you're safe
again. So if you're someone who gets to
sit down with no time limit and a fun playlist and maybe a glass
of wine and do your makeup for a couple of hours before you go
out and you're like, why was that more fun than the actual
going out act itself? It's because your brain was like
plummeting your cortisol and you were relaxed and entering like a
meditative Zen mode while you're doing it.
Little rituals like that I think are good to have.
It doesn't have to be getting ready or getting dressed up
again. If you feel better on natural,
like wonderful easier. But I do think that there's
something behind dressing for the life that you want and
getting ready for the life that you want.
There's also something called the facial feedback hypothesis.
OK, so it shows that your facial expressions influence your
emotions. And so when people see
themselves looking more polished or smiling in the mirror, you
can actually influence their mood and self perception.
So looking happier can make you feel happier.
Your brain partially believes what it sees in the mirror.
Psychologists talk about identity signaling, which is the
idea that your actions reinforce your belief of who you are.
When you take care of yourself, it quietly teaches your brain
how much you matter to you. OK, the next thing you're going
to do is your physical environment.
You're going to change it. Your environment either drains
your energy or it feeds it. And sometimes the quickest way
to change your mindset is to change your environment.
And not all of us can just like up and move and switch homes.
So the next best thing is like redecorating in whatever way
that you can change something. Painting a wall, moving a couch,
changing the layout of your bedroom, getting fresh bedding.
If you're going through a breakup, throw out your sheets,
get new ones, Go get flowers. Literally like go to Trader
Joe's and get $10 flowers. Whatever it is that you can do,
change something, Change the flow of the room.
The rug that was in the living room, it's in the bedroom.
The dining room chair is an accent chair now.
Like switch shit up because it changes the energy in your
apartment. And when you are in a rut and
your light has been dimmed, things are stagnant.
So you need to get it moving. You got to switch something up.
You want to get real into it, do some Feng shui, figure out the
way that things should be flowing.
My aunt likes to do that, and her space feels great.
Maybe Marie Kondo, you also don't just have to redecorate.
Like, when I'm in a rut, I start reorganizing everything.
I am someone who, like, needs an organized space to be able to
think clearly. And not everybody's like that,
but like go through your stuff. What do you need?
What is sparking joy? I just recently went through my
entire closet because whenever I went into my closet when I was
in my little rut, when my light was gone, I wasn't inspired
because I was seeing a bunch of stuff that no longer felt like
me that I didn't like anymore. I didn't go on a shopping spree.
I didn't get a whole new wardrobe.
I just eliminated things that when I saw them, I didn't feel
good. Now when I go to my closet at
least I just see a bunch of pieces that I like.
Even if I I've worn the same outfit to film like 9 times.
I've Steve Jobs. This it's my uniform now and I'm
fine with that. When I open up my bathroom
drawer and everything was a disaster.
I dumped it all out and I organized it because at least it
I feel like I'm in control. This is maybe just like a little
OCD, but of the way that things are appearing in my life, in my
space aesthetically. So now when I open it up, I see
my brush, my toothpaste, my deodorant, whatever.
It's so much better than just a mess.
Maybe this is just personal. Maybe it will help you clean up
the little things that you can control now.
It'll also give you a project to take your mind off of, like
whatever it is that's upsetting you in some way.
For like a week, start going through every drawer spring
clean. It's spring.
I do think feeling like your shit is together is a part of
getting your spark back. So fixing your space, your safe
space, your home to feel like somewhere that you're excited to
be is a huge part of it. And then, I mean, this goes back
to kind of like getting ready in the morning.
We're going to change something about the way we look, like a
core thing about the way we look.
People do this anyway when they're going through breakups,
but it helps you feel the shift into a new chapter.
Like sometimes you'll hear actors say.
I think Grace Van Patten from Tell Me Lies said that she dyed
her hair a different color than her character Lucy, because she
needed to, when she looked in the mirror, see herself and not
Lucy. You don't have to be an actress
to use that tool. When you see yourself in the
mirror, you see this chapter of your life as as something you're
still in. So let's say I have long hair.
I just went through like a crazy year.
I feel like I've lost my spark now.
I'm going to cut it to here. Now I'm in a new chapter.
Everything in my camera roll is a new era.
I'm not I'm not looking at things the same.
It's like literally turning the page.
Last time I did this, Here's a hot tip.
Instead of cutting my hair, which I used to always do, I'd
like get a Bob or something insane.
I extended it. I got extensions.
I think that's better because if I want short hair again, I can
just take it out. If you're someone who likes to
go chop their hair off and then like regrets it got extensions,
change the hair color, change your makeup routine.
If you haven't worn eyeliner in years, try out a wing.
If you've been wearing winged all the time, stop doing it.
Stop wearing mascara. Get a different lip color.
Change something about your core routine, about the way that you
look so you can feel like you've entered a new chapter.
Not only is that cliche for a reason, but it is a very quick
way to feel like you've entered a new era.
You're ushering in a new era, which I think is the goal
overall. If you want to get your spark
back, you got to feel like we're letting go.
What? And we're moving forward.
OK, here's another one I don't really hear people talking about
enough. It's been entering my For You
page a little bit recently. But I think that music is a huge
part of what keeps you in a slump or what helps you get out
of it. Again.
It's like an energy thing. You're in like a low vibration
if you're listening to sad music all the time.
I have a friend, I have a handful of friends that when
they're sad, they love to listen to sad stuff.
Even when they're happy, they're listening to sad stuff.
If you're listening to stuff that is depressing as fuck,
you're going to feel depressed. Sorry.
I like sad girl music as much as the next, but it does make me
feel sad even if I'm not truly listening to it.
It's just like dreary in the background versus something
that's like uplifting and happy. It doesn't need to be like CVS
music where you're like, OK, it's too much, but like find
something that has like a happier note to it and listen to
it. I have a literal playlist full
of songs that I will sing when I'm in a run or like listen to
because it, it genuinely brings me out of it.
I think that there is power in your words and power in your
thoughts. I also saw someone say recently
that listening to a specific song every morning changed their
life. Like it genuinely lifted their
spirit out of the depression that they were in.
They were happy again. I started listening to it
because I was like, OK, like what harm could I do?
At that day I got the best news that I had gotten in months.
It happened 30 seconds into listening to that song.
And then I went for a drive and the song came on shuffle and I
was like okay songs on again, Love that.
And then in front of me was a license plate frame that said
you are what you listen to. I genuinely think you are what
you listen to. Be careful what you're
ingesting. And this isn't just music, but
this is media. Sometimes I have to take a news
break. There's a lot going on in the
world. And if you are ingesting things
that are intense and that cause anxiety all the time, like
you're gonna feel like trash, you have to set boundaries and
parameters around what's going on in your mind.
We absorb a lot of things subliminally.
I've said this on an episode, I think when I was like 14, I saw
this video on YouTube. It's so old and I think it was
called like the psychology of subliminal advertising or
something like that. And basically this guy gets
taken on a ride to a studio and he thinks he's recording
something else. And along the ride, there were
certain billboards and posters and things that they were
subliminally advertising to him. And then when he got to the
studio, he was asked to come up with an idea.
And what he came up with was exactly what they were trying to
influence him to come up with and create based on the things
that they planted along his way on the drive, subconsciously,
things that he clocked for like a millisecond.
So I think our brains absorb so much more than we realized and
we have to be really careful with the things that are going
on in the background of our lives, whether that be like TV,
Instagram, TikTok, when you're mindlessly scrolling music,
whatever it is, start fine tuning what you're feeding your
brain. It matters.
I went through a phase two where I deleted Instagram and I just
downloaded the Ted app. And when I wanted to scroll,
they have like shorts. I would just scroll on the Ted
shorts and like learn shit instead of absorb, you know,
whatever my algorithm echo chamber was giving me at the
time. OK, last thing that I would
suggest, go do a couple of things by yourself.
I have felt my spark comeback strong when I was alone because
it gives you a chance to see that you actually enjoy your own
company. Go to a museum if you've got
one. Go to a concert by yourself.
Go on a trip by yourself, go out to dinner by yourself, go to the
library, go read a book in the park.
Go for a drive by yourself, paint at the beach by yourself,
go for a walk. Like it doesn't have to be
something crazy. Pick something romanticize it
and do it by yourself and do it a couple of times.
It doesn't need to be like a weekly thing, but like do it a
couple of times and I promise you, you will start to be like,
ah, life is worth living. I don't like doing stuff like
that or I guess I do, but like I don't go out of my way to do it.
But every time I do because I'm forcing myself to do it, I'm
like, Oh my God, why don't I do that more?
I've never got into the habit of doing it frequently, but I know
that every time I do it, I'm like, that felt great.
And it gives you a certain confidence and like empowerment
within yourself that no one, nobody can take away from you
because you're giving it to yourself.
So give that a shot. Let me know what activities you
come up with. Getting your spark back is not
usually one big move. It is a series of small choices
that bring you back closer to yourself and remind you of who
you really are at your core. Every time I've gotten my spark
back, I've realized that it didn't disappear.
It didn't go anywhere. I didn't like actually fully
lose myself. I just needed to make changes to
the conditions that I was in for it to come back and grow again.
You have to get up. You have to make the changes and
you have to remember that like nobody's going to save you.
Nobody's going to come get you out of the rut.
You have to do it yourself. And life is too finite and
precious and full of cool shit to go do for you to stay stuck
in a sad little, a sad little spot, a weird little place.
That's what I used to call it. This is another thing that would
make me feel better. Like I would draw a little dot
on a notebook and circle it and be like, this is where I am.
I'm in a weird little place, a sad little spot, but I don't
have to stay here. It is up to you to be your own
knight in shining armor and say, you know what?
We're not doing this shit anymore.
And what's the thing like? Any day you can just wake up and
be like, I'm so back. We're so back.
Today's the day we're back, OK? We're back and we're better.
Get up and go do something. One of the million things that I
listed for yourself, please. And if you're not doing it for
you, do it for me. I want you guys to thrive.
It's the sound of the police. You guys do hear any sirens
because you're going to get they're coming to get you.
They're coming to arrest you for staying in a slump.
OK, the tequila's wearing off. So I'm going to end this Love
you guys love to talk to you. Today was easier things to you
know, I should be sponsored by tequila whenever I do solo
episodes. I shouldn't be promoting alcohol
in an episode where people are in ruts.
It's fine. DM me if you guys come up with
any alternative methods that I have not listed here.
I'd love to hear them. Please rate the pod at five
stars subscribe. It means a lot and it helps me
keep the pod going. I will see you next week with a
guest. I was drunk, yeah.