 One of the secrets to living a joyfully productive life, a nourished life is to become very sensitive to your internal state of being, that's step one, and then step two, to be able to quickly return to a good state of being, because you know what exercise or activity allows you to get back there quickly. So that's what I wanna talk with you briefly about in this video. I have a simple tool for you to gauge your state of being, green, yellow, or red. And hopefully the next time you see a traffic light, it'll remind you to check in with your state of being or just to remind you of this tool that hopefully you can use often, even when you're at home or at work and not seeing any traffic lights, green, yellow, or red. So green is when you are in a state of flow, happiness, if you are working, you are feeling joyfully productive, you feel confident, if it's something you know how to do, you feel strong, you feel like you're on purpose, if it's something challenging that you're doing, you can still be in green by being playfully curious about the task in front of you, about being in a mode of exploration and learning, being in an attitude of practice, grateful for the opportunity to practice your skills to learn something new. So it doesn't actually matter what you are doing. No matter how easy or challenging a task is, no matter how exciting or boring something is, you can still be in a state of green by remembering your deeper values, by practicing your energy reboot, by bringing joyful breath and gratitude into this moment, anything can be done in a state of green. Now, green also applies when you're resting. How do you rest in a way that really makes you feel nourished? And also how you rest that you think you are chilling out or decompressing, but after doing that activity, it makes you feel guilty or whatever. So for some people, it might be binge watching online media too long, doesn't make you feel rested, it just makes you feel like you maybe have spent too much time doing something or maybe eating too much or playing too much video games or abusing substances or whatever. You think, oh, I'm just, I deserve this, I had a hard day of work or had a difficult day with taking care of others and now I deserve this. And then, but after you do the activity, it's not really restful, it's not really renewing. Compared to certain things you do make you feel nourished and renewed and you're happy you did that. What is that rest activity for you? If you're open to commenting below, I'm always happy to see your comments. So green again is a state you can be in all the time, whether you are active and working or whether you are passive and resting, you can be in green, the state of flow, contentment, happiness, curiosity, learning, being on purpose, essentially. All the time. Even when we're in downtime, free time, relaxed or being with other people, we could still feel on purpose doing that, right? So that's the green state. Now let's go to the red state before we touch on the yellow one. So the red state is the opposite of that. And unfortunately, you probably know it all too well as we all have had many red states in our lives. So the state of being in red is like overwhelm, exhaustion, anger, confusion, distress of any kind. And the red state unfortunately makes it easy for us to get into addiction, to snap at other people, to be manipulated by other people and marketers because we're not grounded in our authentic power. So when was the last time you were in a red state? The more we can become aware of when we are in green or when we are in red, then the more power we have the more power we have over the quality of our lives. So when was the last time you were in a green state? If you tend to, if you notice that, you tend to be able to consciously produce that more often. When were you in a red state? If you notice that, then you can become aware that, oh, this is a choice that I have to go back into green. So again, like I said, whether you're actively working or you're passively resting, you could be in either green or red in both states. Now, what about yellow? Yellow is probably the most important state to become aware of because it is the boundary state between green and red. It's the warning sign that, oh, you're moving out of green and you are in danger of moving into the red. So yellow, if you can become really sensitive to it, gives you the real choice to say, ah, before I get into red, while I'm still have some trace of green, let me take a moment and do whatever practice or activity I need to do or to rest to get back into green. So that's my challenge for you today and every day is to become kingly aware of your yellow state and feel free to comment below if you want to share with us what tends to trigger your yellow, what activities, what situations, what time of day, after doing something, after doing something too long, when have you noticed yourself slipping into yellow in danger of getting into red? That's my first question for you that you might want to comment below. The second question I have for you is what tools do you have to get back to green? Let me share with you what mine are. So my most important tool is the energy that helps me get back into green is the energy reboot. And I've talked about that oftentimes and you can Google energy reboot and I think at this time of this recording anyway, if you Google energy reboot, my blog post about how to do that or how I do that shows up at the top. So I'm grateful for that. You can find it there. So my energy reboot is something that I do literally several times an hour, every hour during my working day. I don't do my energy reboot once I'm off work and then downtime, free time, but I do it several times an hour during the working day. So whatever working hour I'm on, usually at the computer, I do my energy reboot several times each hour but because the energy reboot only takes 20, 30 seconds. So every 10 minutes or so, every 10 to 20 minutes, I'll catch myself becoming aware of my state. And especially if I'm going into yellow, but just it's good practice to reboot and get back into green. So that's my most important practice, the energy reboot. What's also really important for me is to have a stable evening and morning routine, routines I should say, two separate routines. The evening routine, the way I think about my day is that the day actually starts the night before, right? Because if I get a good night's sleep, I am much more likely to have a good day tomorrow. Last night grateful for a very good night's sleep. So I'm feeling really, my energy feels really good today, physical energy. And of course our physical energy greatly affects our emotional and mental energy. So do you have a stable and well designed evening routine that allows you to get enough sleep every night or most nights at least? A well designed and stable evening routine. And you might need to set an evening alarm to remind you to start your evening routine. I had to do that for years, but now I'm really used to it, really used to being aware of the time at night so that I can start my evening routine on time. But you may need to start a recurring daily evening alarm to get you up from the couch or the chair or the floor or whatever you're doing at night when you're relaxing, okay? So evening routine, morning routine, those really set us up for a good energy day. And then another tool that I have is scheduled breaks throughout the day. I have talked about that before. If you'd like to, you can Google rest before you need to and then put my name behind that and you'll find my blog post about that. Rest before you need to and then add my name and you should find that blog post about it. So those are, that's what I wanted to share with you today. I encourage you, I urge you to commit to a daily practice and hour by hour practice of becoming aware whether you are in green, yellow or red, it's a very simple way of thinking about it, right? Green, yellow or red right now. Become aware multiple times an hour if you can or at least once an hour. And then secondly, commit to the constant practice of bringing yourself back into green. And again, I welcome you to comment below what activities help you to get back into green? Whether it's an activity that takes you 30 seconds or 30 minutes, feel free to comment below. I hope you have an activity that only takes you 30 seconds to get back into green or helps to get you back into a good state. And of course, you have also longer activities that helped renew you. I hope this is helpful. I hope that you will commit to these practices because I think the world is a better place when more of us are in a green state more often. People are kinder, more optimistic, more innovative and creative. Wonderful things happen in the world. So if you found this to be helpful, and you might wanna share this with others, I don't usually say this, but I do think this is a really important message for just about anybody who can benefit from green, yellow, red awareness of internal states. So I wish you well. My name is George Kau, authentic business coach, love helping people who are looking to become self-employed successfully and to do it from the heart, to do it with joyful productivity. And anyway, I will hopefully see you in the next video. Thanks for joining me.