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Have you ever snapped at someone and then instantly regretted it? What if you could turn those automatic reactions into intentional responses? You're listening to Relish, the podcast for people ready to stop chasing self-improvement and start savoring their lives. If you're tired of the hamster wheel of healing and hungry for more joy, presence, and meaning, you're in the right place. Hello, Relish community. Welcome back. If we haven't met yet, I am Alysia and it's time to relish the moment. On Monday,
we officially launched this podcast. Wow, this has been months in the making. I can't believe it's actually happening. And even though I am recording this in advance of you listening to it, obviously I would like to manifest your amazing support. So, thank you for listening, for sharing, and for being a part of this community from the beginning. Please tap follow or subscribe so that the next episode drops right into your feed. In our two episodes from our launch day, we talked about the hamster wheel of healing and we talked about joy being your birthright. Mindfulness actually helps
me experience that joy. But most of us aren't here in more moments. We're stuck in autopilot. Research says we spend half of our waking hours zoning out. So, how do we reclaim those lost moments? Let's jump into it. Victor Frankl wrote one of my favorite quotes. Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Mindfulness frames this as reacting versus responding. Reacting is automatic, unconscious, compulsive. Responding is intentional, conscious. It comes
from a place of choice. Imagine that you are cut off in traffic. Okay? Um, how might you react in that moment? I want you to actually connect to your inner road rager for a minute. You know, maybe you honk or yell or flick them off, cut them off, whatever it is. And in that reaction, what feeling comes with that in your body? There might be, you know, a sense of tightness or tension or stress. In that moment, your sympathetic nervous system, your fight or flight response is automatically dialed up. But what if in that same situation, you could respond rather
than react? You know, maybe that looks like taking a pause and checking in. H what's happening inside of me right now? Getting curious about myself and also maybe even curious about the other person. What's going on with them? Why are they driving so fast? Are they okay? That conscious pause dials up your parasympathetic system, the rest and digest system where you can find ease amidst stress. Now, this shift takes practice and it requires mindfulness. Mindfulness simply means non-judgmental awareness of the present moment. So it's a type of awareness. It lets us
consciously choose how we direct our attention and respond. And that's true freedom. In my journey, mindfulness practice has helped me experience what I call freeze frame moments. So these are moments where I notice myself responding rather than reacting. And I see the shift happening in real time. It's almost like, "Oh, I would have done this. I would have reacted this way before, but now I'm responding differently." You've probably felt these moments in your own journey, too, whether you know through meditation or other practices. Mindfulness, uh, you're learning is one
of my special interests, and I got my masters in it. I could nerd out on it all day, but I'm going to try to give you what's relevant here. So, I made up this framework in graduate school. I'm going to um explain it auditorially for the podcast, but we're recording all these podcasts as videos for YouTube. So, um, either there or in the clips on social, you'll see a graphic or, you know, some text come up on screen to help. Uh, and I'll also put it in the show notes. So, imagine that there is a graph. Okay, the bottom kind of x-axis is a flat horizontal
line representing autopilot. Then there's this second line above that one, a parallel horizontal line representing consciousness. So the baseline is autopilot and then there's a line across the top that is conscious awareness. And imagine that we are hanging out at the baseline as we do as humans on autopilot and then we have a little spike or a blip in awareness where we pop up to that line of conscious awareness on the graph. We become fully present for some amount of time maybe briefly maybe for longer periods of time and then we go back offline and you know get back to
the bottom of the graph. So, a blip is simply any moment when you wake up to the present. It could be feeling one breath. It could be tasting your coffee. It could be noticing the smell of the soap while you're washing the dishes. Noticing any kind of sensation. So, consider this. Your five senses, sight, sound, smell, taste, uh, touch, can only be experienced right now. You know, I can't taste ice cream yesterday or tomorrow. I hope I'm around to taste it tomorrow, but I can only experience it in the now. Now, I'm not talking about, you know, eating the ice cream and getting lost in
the hedonic pleasure where um, you know, I'm judging this as delicious and wanting more of it or maybe I'm beating myself up for, you know, eating the sugar. No, I mean noticing what the sensations of it are really like without judgment. Noticing the taste, the smell, the emotions, the thoughts. That's what makes it a blip. That's the type of awareness. The type of awareness matters. Mindful non-judgmental awareness. Okay. So, uh you're going through your day off and on autopilot and then you experience a blip of awareness. You hang out there in conscious awareness for
a time. You go back down to autopilot and then at some point it happens again. Every time you blip, this blip is a chance to pause and choose consciously rather than react automatically. My goal and maybe yours too is to have more frequent blips, you know, and stretching that gap between stimulus and response. More blips means more freedom, more conscious choices, and that means less stress. Now, I'm not suggesting that we are supposed to, you know, uh, hang out in conscious awareness every minute of every day. And in next week's episode,
I'm going to actually talk about why that's not neurologically possible in a healthy brain at least, and why you wouldn't even want it if it could happen. But the sentiment is we feel more freedom and less suffering when we experience more moments of consciousness, of presence. I think um Lau said, "If you're depressed, you're living in the past. If you're anxious, you're living in the future. Um if you're in the present, you're at peace." Something like that. If you're at peace, you're living in the present moment. You might be um understanding why I love mindfulness. I've played around a lot with this in my practices,
both on the cushion meditating and off. Once I actually bought a clicker as an experiment to see how many times, you know those like clickers that when you're going to an event, they like click to count the people. Um they're really satisfying to click, by the way. But I bought one to see how many times I could turn to awareness in a day. Okay, I know. Go ahead and judge me. Um, I can't actually take credit for the idea. I got it from one of my meditation teachers, Guy Armstrong. Um, I love experimenting in this way. And just a side note, I know I'm having a lot of digressions here,
but notice the joy. Okay, we talked the other day about how important it is to um, find joy in the personal growth to find it gratifying for the sake of the moment, the journey, and that's how we cultivate eudemonic joy. That's what I've done and why I love the work. So, let's get back on track. I was playing around with the blips of awareness thing that I made up years ago in grad school. And while investigating the stream of consciousness, I realized that those blips, those tiny little awakenings are transformational because they allow us to get intentional in that
that in between. Remember Frankl's quote, between stimulus and response. that in between um becoming conscious having a blip into awareness allows us to live with intention. Intention cannot happen on autopilot. Uh it requires awareness. It's conscious. It's purposeful. It's deliberate. Intention lives in the gap. So it's this tiny pause to reconnect to the present moment and live more mindfully. I took this blips concept and then I turned it into a simple five-step micro practice that I call blips of awareness and it's intended to stretch that gap in a way. It's like a mini
ritual that I use during transitions. So I will use it before coaching sessions or meetings or going to dinner with a friend, uh doing a workout, anything really. And it's an opportunity to take a pause, begin again, reconnect to presence and intention. So I want to share it with you today so that you can have a practical tool to play around with. Naturally, I use the acronym blips. So B L I ps there's five steps, one correlating with each letter. B of blips, B stands for breathe, one conscious breath that instantly grounds you back in the present. uh back in the now. Basically,
what I'll do is I'll take a couple breaths, get out of my head, get back into my body, get back into the present. B L is let go. This step is about noticing expectations, noticing judgments and then letting them go. Releasing them, acceptance of what's happening is crucial for presence. Reality rules, right? So, with this step, I ask myself what my expectations are. Am I expecting this dinner with my friend to be annoying? Am I anticipating this client is going to uh push my boundaries? Am I looking for a way to get out of what's going to happen here?
You know, these thoughts become projections that impact our experience. So, instead, can I become aware of them without judgment? Okay, I'm expecting her to need something from me or, you know, for me to let her down. I notice that thought. I let it pass. I don't uh get lost in it. And sometimes in this step, I even consider what else could happen. What else is possible? Maybe she actually doesn't need anything from me today. That's a possibility. And then I'm back in presence. Okay. So, we did B is breathe. L is let go. Let go of expectations and judgments. The
third step, I is for intention. So, I ask, how do I want to show up right now? Why does this matter to me? Why am I going into this next thing? Why am I choosing to go to this dinner with this friend? Why? Because I love her. I care about her and I want her to know that. Or why am I going to teach this class? Because I want to help people learn and I feel, you know, I want to inspire them. I want them to be excited about this content. I have to reconnect to why this matters and how I want to be. So maybe you want to be open or curious or present or engaged. What would help this specific
event? So I choose some specific intention for how I want to be to stay connected uh to why this matters to me. Okay. So B L I P is for pay attention. Now this I think is the hardest part. Our attention wanders. If you have ever meditated, you've probably noticed the mind wanders away maybe a lot of times. Um and we have to commit to awareness as your next moment unfolds. So this step is about setting yourself up for success. What could help you pay attention so that you can stay present in more moments? Sometimes um I will put a post-it note on my computer screen with my
intention written on it for that you know client or you know coaching call or meeting or whatever so that I can remember it. Sometimes I'll write a little symbol on my hand as a reminder. Sometimes I'll wear a specific uh bracelet or like a rubber band or something that when I see it, it helps remind me of what matters to me, stay connected to that. Sometimes I can walk into a room and then there's like I'll find a visual cue that can bring me back. Remember, begin again. Could be like, you know, a paper weight on a desk or a salt shaker or whatever. Okay, so we went through
B Lip. The last step S is self less. This is about zooming out from me, the self, and staying connected to the shared humanity that's around you. So, I want to stop and notice how am I making this about me right now? You know, I'm going into this lunch with a friend. I care about her. And instead of focusing so much on my own grievances, can I focus on her? You know, give her the gift of my attention and feel connected to her. Maybe, you know, she's been going through a hard time. I want to support her. She showed up for me before, too. So, this helps me go into this thing, whatever it
is. Feeling like there's a sense of us, not just me. So, that's an overview. B L Breathe, let go of expectations, set intentions, pay attention, and selfless. Now, after this episode, you're going to find another short recording waiting for you. And this recording is a Blips meditation practice that you can follow along with. It's short. It's just a couple minutes, but it's a perfect way to practice building this habit into your day. So, I use this regularly myself. I mean, I don't need to use the recording anymore, but I often share this with clients, and it's a way to transform everyday
transitions into intentional moments of choice and ease. So, you might use a recording if it's helpful, at least at first, while you're getting the hang of it, but after you learn the steps, you'll be able to do it really quickly. you know, one to two minutes and then you're good to go. I love this topic. I could write a book about it. Maybe one day I will. Okay, so now it's your turn. I want you to pick one transition that you have today. Maybe it's right after this episode. What are you going into next? Um, and try the blips practice. Even if it's without the recording,
just give the steps a go. You know, take a breath, notice your expectations, let them go, set an intention. How could you pay attention? And then get the selfing out of the way. And when you do that, notice how this shifts your experience and if you find yourself responding more and reacting less potentially. Okay? So, go try it out and then come back and comment here. Share it with me on, you know, Instagram, socials, all the things. Alyssiah Shake. So, I want to know how do you practice presence? If today's episode was intriguing or helpful, I would so appreciate
it if you would rate and review the podcast. Share it with a friend. Your feedback is vital for this community to grow and thrive. I really know and believe that it actually cannot grow without you. So, thank you for building this with me from the ground up. It's so special to me that you are here from the very beginning. Tomorrow, we will pause so you can play around with blips. And on Friday, I'm going to be back with a very special quick bite episode. Okay? So, have a wonderful rest of your day and week. And until then, relish this moment. Talk soon. Victor Frankl.
Victor Frankl wrote Victor. Victor Frankl. Okay. Hold on. Just listen.
