 Hello, everybody. Happy Thursday. It is day three of our seven day learning to go slower challenge. Today, we're going to talk about mindful hair brushing, brushing my long flowing locks. This one bit shorter because hair brushing is a little bit of a smaller task to tackle, but it's a different kind of task that requires a little bit more focus, but for a shorter amount of time. So we're going to talk about that. Let's wait for everybody to pop in. If you pop into the comments, just say hello so I know you're here. If you're coming from the Facebook group, again, I won't be able to see your name. I'm only going to see you as Facebook user. Sorry. So let me know how you've been doing with your slow motion showers and your mindful toothbrushing from yesterday. If you guys have been, you know, using that stuff, let me know how it's going. Where's the hairbrush? I should have really brought a hairbrush to this. I should have. I'll just have to pretend. But you guys don't want to watch me brush my hair. I guarantee you do not. So today, yeah, just let me know how you guys have been doing so far in the first three days of the challenge, trying these new things. And let's get into mindful hair brushing. And I hope you enjoy my little cheeky title, the slow stroke. I just can't help myself. I have to do stuff like that. So mindful hair brushing. We've been talking for the past couple of days about why it's important to practice learning to slow down so that you can do that on demand so you can help to build your new response and relationship with anxiety and stress and fear. So we're looking for a little everyday things that we can use as tests, right? And as tasks that we can use to practice how we go slower and just kind of slow things down to take the edge off. And today we're going to talk about mindful hair brushing. So here's what's different. Hey, Nat, can we have a tutorial? No, you can't have a tutorial. But so here's the deal with mindful hair brushing. This is why it's a little bit different. When we talked about using the slow motion shower, and we talked about mindful toothbrushing in the last two days, those are things that have multiple components. So a shower is built of multiple components. Hey, guys, you know, you have to turn on the water, you have a washcloth, or you have soap, you have shampoo, you have a towel, you have a bunch of stuff, right? And there's a different things to do. And with toothbrushing is the same thing. You got to get your toothbrush and get the toothpaste and put it on the toothbrush. There's different things to do. So yesterday, we talked about breaking those two more complex things, a shower and toothbrushing into it's their smallest little discrete components, right? And focusing on those. With hair brushing, the deal is you really only have one thing to do. So it's a slightly different thing. And in the Facebook post and the Instagram post that I made, I guess on Monday that kicked off this whole thing, I talked about just trying to brush your hair for 60 seconds. So toothbrushing would be a few minutes, right? We tried to talk about taking a 10 minute shower or longer than that. But hair brushing, since there's really only one thing to do, you're just focusing on this one repetitive physical action. And that's why I say, you know, go for a minute or so. Most of us, I'm going to say, Hey, Nikki, most of us, I'm going to say when we brush our hair, comb my hair, I comb my hair in five seconds, like most likely, even if you've got very long hair, maybe you brush your hair for a few seconds, you know, maybe 10 seconds. But really, truly, it's just an exercise in mindfulness and learning to slow down to sit and say, I'm going to brush my hair for 60 seconds, a full minute. But when you're brushing your hair, you only have one thing to do, which is to run that brush repetitively, right? You're going to pick up your comb and your brush, you just run it repetitively through your hair again and again. Daniela, what up? I haven't seen you in a while. So what does that look like? I mean, you know what it looks like, because we all know how to brush our hair. And by the way, if you're a dude and you don't have hair by either by choice or not by choice, well, clearly, this one isn't for you. I had a few people make jokes about that. Like, what do I do if I'm bald? Use these skills for something else, like apply it to something else. So yeah, like exactly, like, Oh, my God, I never, here, yeah, I never brushed my hair for that long. I always try to like do it really fast as Nat, right? Which we all do. So what I would say, it looks like if you're going to engage in mindful hair brushing would become your bed. You know, I gotta tell you, the beard thing is a thing. Like it is still, I've had this beard for quite a while now. And I'm still not used to having to brush my face. Living my best life says Daniela from Croatia, our friend Daniela is here, which is really great. So mindful hair brushing or beard brushing, whatever you want to do. For the, here you go. For those of us with Mohawks says Bessie. Mindful hair brushing is just one repetitive motion. So you're going to pick up the hairbrush or the comb, whatever it is. And you're just going to run it through your hair nice and slow so that every stroke becomes very slow. And mindful, you're paying attention to each one of those strokes. That's what we care about, right? Because mindfulness and slowing down is all just about paying attention. So what I want you to do when you try mindful hair brushing is to literally just pay attention to every one of those strokes. So if you can decide that yes, I'm actually going to brush my hair for a long time. I'm actually going to do that when we get off this video. I'm going to do it because I don't know if I've ever brushed my hair for 60 seconds. But if you decide you're going to brush your hair for a full minute, it's going to feel weird because it's a long time to do it. But just run that brush or that comb through your hair very with a focus on that activity. How does the brush feel in your hand? How does the comb feel in your hand? What does it feel like moving through your hair? Can you feel it on your scalp? And just let each one of those strokes be sort of slow. Don't rush through it and just focus on the physical repetition and what the physical sensation feels like. All the while, your mind might be wanting you to engage in those rapid fire thoughts where they might be anxious thoughts or fearful thoughts or they just might be kind of stress driven thoughts and, oh my God, I have all this stuff to do. What do I have coming up? I'm going to be late. I have a meeting. I have this too. Instead of focusing on the chatter in your brain or the sensations in your body, just put your focus on each one of those strokes and slowly move that comb or brush through your hair once every second or two for 60 seconds. That's it. That's all really mindful hair brushing will do for you. And again, because it's an activity that many of us will engage in at least once to three times a day, that gives you an opportunity to practice. So instead of brushing your hair for four or five seconds or 10 seconds, invest the extra 55 or 50 seconds in your well-being. And when you brush your hair for the next couple of days, brush it mindfully, take a full, full minute to do that and see how that feels. Again, if you're not in the habit of living like this or practicing these things, you're going to feel really weird to do it, because you're just not used to it. We're used to rushing, rushing, rushing, rushing. So when you slow down, and I'm going to suggest like I wrote in 7% slower, really exaggerate that slowness, really exaggerate it. Like if you exaggerate it, it will help you learn these new ways. So again, what I wrote in the book is if you want to try and go 7% slower, which I know you can't, you have to practice going 13% slower so that you actually get to 7%. So really slow it down and allow it to feel weird. If you're going to, if you feel weird brushing your hair for 60 seconds, then that's okay. Feel weird. Just, just practice it. Try it. So let's see. Oh, Mia's here. What up? Mia's on board with this mindfulness practice. I dig it. Mia can use this mindfulness practice. I know she can. In fact, I will be on Mia's podcast. She has the shit we don't talk about podcasts. So if you go to MiaVost.live.slash podcast, I'm going to be the next guest next week. And we're going to, we're talking about 7% slower and how Mia got really low-grade obsessed because I called her out with all of her rushing habits. Loving me. So yeah, let's, let's talk about that. So let's hear how have you guys been doing? Tell me what's going on. I'm going to look at some comments here. This one's going to be a little shorter because a little less talk about. We're a little further into the challenge so we know what the concepts are here. I never brush my hair for that long. Comb your beard slowly. You can probably add doing your hair too. Oh, I missed this. This is a good comment. You can do that. So you don't have to just use your brush. Like if you want to really take it to another level and amp it up a little bit more, why not turn it into a whole thing, right? So if you put mousse in your hair or gel or whatever it is you guys put in your hair, yes, take your time and do that slowly too. So the cool thing about this little seven day challenge is, yeah, it's a seven day challenge to sort of get you in introduced to these sort of concepts. But I like what Bessie said here because you can actually start to do these things all the time. That's because this crazy guy from New York tells you to do them, but start incorporating that anytime you can. So I know Bethany is here and earlier Bethany was talking about dishwashing. Like dishwashing is a thing that she rushes through. I would rush through the dishes too because I hate doing dishes. But that's an opportunity to say, oh, I'm rushing through this. Let me slow that down. Let me actually be mindful here. So any chance you get, it's good to practice this stuff. So let us see who else we have. I'm sorry that it doesn't show me names. There's a link I can send you guys to in the group. I'll post it that let's restream see your name. Feeling great at the moment at work, very busy and we are understaffed. Normally I would get stressed and rushed. Very good. I'm going at a steady pace even though everyone is running around around me. So that's excellent because just because everybody else around you is running like speed demons doesn't mean you have to. And really and truly if you slow things down and operate mindfully and deliberately in your work while everybody else is in freakout mode, you're not really going much slower than they are in practical from a practical standpoint, right? They might be going a few seconds faster here and there. But in the end, you're going to be more effective. This morning, I narrated a few chapters of 7% slower. And one of the chapters is the benefits. And when you learn to do this, the benefits in your life. And that is one of them that comment about everybody else is losing their shit at work and you're just calmly getting things done. Yes, yes to that. I'm here for that. That is one of those benefits. And it probably makes you a little bit more effective as a member of your team and just makes you better at your job. Really? I hope I don't ever need to brush my beard. But we hope so too. That would be a sad day for all of us. Let's see here. What else we got? I'm just going to look sorry for the spelling mistake. It's all right, Nat. Don't worry about it. I remember this with washing my teeth. So Daniela has already done this in Croatia with her teeth brushing. But what does Nikki have to say? I know Nikki, you're kind of new to all this. So I'm happy to see you joining in. It was very strange doing the tooth brushing in my bathroom today. I am the one who normally empties the dishwasher while doing my teeth. All right, so you actually brush your teeth in the bathroom or whatever room that was going to be. Good job. Good job. Not like subjugating your tooth brushing to the dishwasher. We end to the tyranny of the dishwasher. Good job. Let's see here. I talked about that yesterday, back and forth. It's hard not to engage. The hamsters always go, yes, yes, yes, yes, let's see here. If you give yourself a head massage. Okay. Here's another benefit of this. Like there's all kinds of benefits here, right? You're not only learning skills and learning to slow things down, which is, as we know, so useful. But a head massage could be relaxing. I've never thought about that, to be honest with you. I'm just not a head massage kind of guy, but maybe I should be. I don't know. Let's see. Oh, Leslie's here. What up, Leslie? Waiting for the audio book because I'm too busy rushing around to sit and read a book. Am I doing this right? Yes, because you know, if you finish reading the book before everybody else, then you win. It's a race. Leslie and I talked about that the other day. Let's see here. I get in the zone. It's more dissociative. Okay. So Bethany is a pro hairbrusher. I love it. Brushing hairs that bristles. Oh, okay. Here's somebody who clearly enjoys the hair brushing thing. Maybe a little too much, but we don't judge. It's totally cool. You do what you need to do. Delicious. That's a hell of a way to describe brushing your hair. But if that's your thing, I'm here for it. It's all good. Let's see. What up, Dave? I'm taking a shower last night. Get close to the 10-minute mark. Started having a bout of anxiety. Let's put it on the screen. I can put it on the screen. I could do that. We have the technology here. I was taking a shower last night. Got close to the 10-minute mark. I started having a bout of anxiety. Bad thoughts. I was like, I can't get out of the shower. Very good. Stay 10 more minutes until the anxiety decrease a little. Excellent job, dude. Exactly what you should have done instead of bailing and then deciding that running out of the shower was what saved you. You stayed in it, rode through it, and let it end. That's a great, great, great job, brother. I cannot ask you to do anything more than that. Really good. Lewis is here. What up, brother? Long time no see. Let's see what we got here. I applied this to my racing thoughts yesterday. Just tried to think about things more slowly. Let me address that for a second. That's really good that you're trying to apply the tools. That's why I write tools like this. It's a really good book. If you don't have it, you should probably get it. Yes, I know a lot of you are waiting for paperback and audiobook. I can appreciate you old-school paperback fans. Totally fine. Very soon. I might upload it today. We'll see. Cover's done. Somebody said I had a big exposure. Who said that? I did an awesome exposure today. I don't know what that is, but if you want to share with us in the next couple of minutes, let's do it. Let's hear what it is. I love these success stories. Sarah says, welcome, Sarah. I am looking forward to this. I think I try to multitask too much, thinking about what I need to do. Well, multitasking, I'm guilty of that too. I can multitask like a mofo when I have to, but I was doing it all the time for no good reason. Things get much better if I just do one thing at a time. I might do them in rapid succession, but in the end, that's really all multitasking is. Try it. Just try to focus on one thing for even 10, 15 minutes. Put everything else away. You start to see that it does make a difference. So many of us are guilty of that, though. Really, really are. Pro-multi-tasker, okay. Let's see. A lot of people are, right? This is great. I'm digging these comments. I just brushed my hair the whole time you've been speaking. I've been talking for 13 minutes. Don't, you know, thinking crazy. I don't lose your hair over me. Okay. Very true. Leslie is coming here, dropping the bombs. I realize lately how focused my mind is on doing the next thing. When you become aware of it, like Pandora's box is open. Now you know, you can't unknow it anymore. So, yes, it is true. Just the act of practicing these silly little things, like showering and tooth brushing and hair brushing. And tomorrow, I think we're going to talk about mindful eating, which is its own subject. A lot of people are writing about mindful eating and doing something. We're just talking a little bit about it tomorrow. But when you start to get into these things, you can't unknow your rushing habit. It's super valuable because it really shines a light on the fact that you are rushing and always trying to think of the next thing instead of doing the thing now that you have to do. So, that's a really good comment, too. Let's see here. Electric toothbrush. Let's see here. Oh, okay. So, this is, I think, our exposure, right? I'm sorry I can't see your name. I went for a drive even though my DPDR was hitting super strong, reminded myself that being uncomfortable isn't the same as being unsafe. Very good. Somebody's been paying attention. That is true. You can be uncomfortable and safe at the same time. Correct. Okay. Let's see. It's been calming down because my mind is now on something else. Okay. Well, I'm certainly happy that we're able to help you calm down. I'm glad that your panic attack is over because those are crappy, crappy experiences that none of us like for sure. Just be careful about trying to use distraction to get through a panic attack. That's not necessarily a good long-term strategy. But what I want you to notice about that, the fact that your panic attack is getting better and ending because you're focusing on the video instead of the panic, is if you notice all the danger that that panic seemed to represent to you goes away when you get out of your own head. So, that is while distraction definitely teaches us the lesson of panic and anxiety being kind of a liar, like real fear, but with no basis. We don't want to necessarily use distraction as a long-term strategy. Okay. So, let's see here. A lot of comments. You guys are rocking it today in the comments. Eric is here. I'm going to put you up on the screen so I can read it easier. Having crazy anticipatory anxiety about taking my daughter to the movies for her birthday. Happy birthday to her. I literally broke it down, took it second by second, and we had a blast. Brother, I am psyched to hear that. That is exactly how this works. All I have to do is put this key in the ignition. If you got a key, most cars have a button now. All I have to do is take out my money to pay for this popcorn. All I have to do is eat this one kernel of popcorn. When you break things down that way, it can be a little bit exhausting at first because that's not a natural way to live. But if you're new to this and you're using the idea of slowing things down, 7% slower, if you will, you have to do it that way. Like just break everything down into the smallest thing. All I have to do in the world right now is take the next two steps to my car. That's it. It's my only job. And then when that's done, all I have to do is open the car door. So, dude, I'm really happy that you used the tools that way. And I'm glad that you had a good day with your daughter. That's big news. Love it. Oh, Hillary's here. Hillary, by the way, Hillary Lauren Jastrim. If any of you are aspiring authors, you need to know Hillary. This is my book editor and my friend. I love Hillary. So I'm glad that she's here about being uncomfortable, being safe. Yes, one of the key foundational components of everything I've ever done, written, said, posted is the idea that you can be afraid and safe at the same time. You can be uncomfortable and safe at the same time. You can be uncertain and feel vulnerable and be safe at the same time. It is the foundation upon which all of this, none of which I invented, by the way, is built. And if you guys ever hear something about something called DBT, which is called Dialectical Behavior Therapy, much of that is based on those premises that more than one thing can be true at the same time. I can be very upset. I can be very emotional, but I can still be okay. Like, that's a core component of DBT, which is one of the CBT variants that we talk about sometimes. All right, folks, so 18 minutes. We went a little longer today. I appreciate all of your comments. I love all of them. Try mindful hair brushing today. Add them to your mindful toothbrushing and your mindful showering. And try to use these concepts as much as you can every chance you get, right? Because the more you practice it, the more you will be able to use these things when the chips are down and you kind of need to use them. So thanks again for coming by. I'm not going to tell you about the book. Most of you're getting the book. Anyway, paperback is due out hopefully Monday at the latest. Audio book is I'll be done narrating I think tomorrow, so I'm going to get that cook in an audible. So by the middle of next week, we'll have a paperback. We'll have audio. The Kindle is still there. It's actually doing very well. Thank you so much for all of your support. I hope this is super helpful for you guys. And I will see you tomorrow. Same time, same place. We're going to talk about mindful eating, which basically is chew your food, man. All right. See you guys tomorrow. Thanks for coming by.