April 6, 2020
Transcript
Crystal Washington: Hello, I’m crystal Washington technology strategists and futurist,
Karen McCullough: I’m Karen McCullough and I get people excited about change and working with millennials and today, we want you to rethink it forward.
Crystal Washington: And when we say rethink it forward, what we’re talking about is the fact that there are many things that have worked for you in the past that just will not work for you in the future. And for you to be really honest, they’re not even working for us right now anymore.
Karen McCullough: Not now. So what we’re going to talk about today is top of mind what everybody is thinking about, and that is their thoughts. They’re stressing out and they want to distress, but they don’t know-how. And when I say they don’t know how that’s really not true, because people know how to distress. They know they’re supposed to. What? Crystal.
Crystal Washington: Breathe. Deep breathing.
Karen McCullough: Listen to calm music, take a bath with lavender, right? Uh, unwind. But how can we do that when our mind is constantly full of all of this news that is going on? You see it’s up here in our heads and our thoughts, our thoughts really control our emotions. And I let me tell you about emotions. I’m Italian and I have a lot of emotions. So this one, because I think if I had to learn anything in life, I haven’t had to learn how to take it slow tune it out and distress. So I thought today that’s what we would talk about. Uh, crystal, you have anything to add before I get into my story?
Crystal Washington: No, go ahead and get, well you know, I’ll say this. So I’m one of those people that I know I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to meditate and do all those things and sometimes I do a great job hearing, but you know what? Some days I just don’t feel like it. Like sometimes the thought of someone telling me to sit down and meditate for 10 minutes, like I want to punch them in the jaw. So that’s just my honest truth, right? So sometimes just not feeling it.
Karen McCullough: It’s weird because we know what we’re supposed to do, but we don’t do it. And I figured that one out a long time ago because I resist everything. Like no matter what, if I say I’m going to meditate, I would only meditate for five minutes. I get up ready to meditate, and then as soon as I’m going to go sit for that five minutes, a little voice inside of me says, not today. Go have some coffee. Go turn the TV on. It’s almost like we’re fighting it to not distress. So I thought what we would do today is talk about fun things that we do. I’m not saying that meditation isn’t fun because I have learned how to meditate using Andy on Headspace. I don’t know if you’ve ever done Headspace. I love Andy’s voice. Um, but even Andy, uh, the guy on Headspace, he doesn’t really do it for me.
Karen McCullough: So we’re going to talk about things that we do, that we do that help us relax, turn off the noise in our head, and start really putting our focus onto something else. The first one that I do is I love, I love audible.com. I work by myself here in this office all day and I need to take breaks. And so I take audible breaks and I listened to kind of scary stories. It’s weird because I’m not afraid of serial killers. Like I’m afraid of paying my bills. But uh, once I get my headset on my little like your pods that we talked about the other day, I can get lost for 15 minutes, 20 minutes. I remember the very first one that I got, an audible.com the very first book was a girl with the dragon tattoo. It’s like about this thick, I don’t know. Oh my God.
Karen McCullough: I think it was for me because I’m a little dyslexic and I couldn’t read all those big words, but I used to walk my dog Wally and it was amazing. I did it to actually get dinner and to relax and it was amazing how thin Wally got cause we want and we walked and we walked anyway. So I love audible.com and if you don’t want to pay for audible, because we are trying to be cautious with our money, there is a thing called Libby. It’s an app lib, D Y and it’s the library of all things and the library has really cool books online. So you have to pay the fee for audible, go to libby.com get the app, and start listening to some books. So do you want to put one in or should I keep going?
Crystal Washington: You keep going and I’ll throw some in too.
Karen McCullough: Okay. So I need people. I am an extrovert and I need a lot of people. So I had to figure out what do I want to do with people. I wanted to create something that was fun. So, um, I love poker. So I am in three groups, all women and I’m like addicted to poker and I’m really having a hard time right now because we can’t play poker with each other right now. We, we made that decision not to play, but poker is a game. And, and I know, don’t think I’m weird, but it helps my brain. And it helps me think and I can read people with poker and it’s really helping me in my connections with others and how I read audiences. So, uh, right now our poker groups decided that we would have happy hour. So I have been three happy hours. I am really enjoying the vodka guys and I am enjoying the company. Right. Oh, look at you got the bottle there, right? It’s so funny. I used to drink wine, now I drink cause I’m on Quito. Anyway. Anyway, so those are the things that I do. I, of course, loved dancing and I heard you were talking about dancing. So I want to hear what happened to you,
Crystal Washington: Karen. The most brilliant thing ever. So there’s a DJ who, he’s a DJ in real life, but he also has an Instagram account. His name is D-Nice. He started having these amazing parties on Instagram. And this past weekend he hosted an online mix for nine hours. Karen, he had over 100,000 people were, were listening to him and you’d see the names pop up for all the different accounts. So Ellen was there, Michelle Obama was there, the NFL was there. ESPN
Karen McCullough: LOL, not going to do this.
Crystal Washington: Everybody was there and he’s just deejaying and he’s doing these call-outs with everybody all over social media, on Twitter and Facebook. We’re talking about like, they’re like, are you in club corn team too? I’m at club quarantine right now. Where’s the after-party? And he brought together over 100,000 people dancing and having a good time in isolation in their own homes. Right.
Karen McCullough: That is amazing. I’m going to get on the next one.
Crystal Washington: Yeah, it’s come to club quarantine. I’ll give you the detail of quarantine. Other things you can do to distress. One of the, I don’t know about everyone listening, but I know for me one of the things that can cause stress is worrying about other people. Right? And so I have a family that is extremely spread out all over the country, some even outside of the country. And so yesterday for the first time I hosted a family zoom and I had to give very, very detailed directions because not everyone’s technical and we have all age ranges on the zoom. But it was such a blessing to see all my family members from the East Coast, West Coast, overseas, um, the, you know, mid-Atlantic, other parts of the South and we’re all seeing each other’s faces. We’re all telling each other what’s going on in our cities, how we’re doing, just such a relief for everybody. So I think we all collectively side, you know, when it was over, cause we knew everybody was okay. That’s a great idea. Other things that I do to distress is that because I’m not going to the gym and I am someone that goes to the gym regularly, I rent stairs. So I live in one of these little skinny houses that has three floors and some little workout clothes. And I just run up and down the stairs until I’m exhausted. And what I find is that any type of vet, that nervous energy gets out.
Karen McCullough: Yeah. Connecting your distress to something you love to do. I was just watching the food channel the other day and they’re talking about cooking and they’re talking about cooking for your neighbors. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, you know, we’ve got to put the gloves on when we cook. But if we can begin to think about things that we need, that we need for me, I need people, I need people. So I get outside to talk to people, we’re far away. But you’ve got to figure out what you need and bring it into your life. And that’s going to be the biggest de-stressor besides only watching the news once a day.
Crystal Washington: And I think it’s powerful and make sure you’re having fun. So for instance, I mentioned the three stories in my house. I office out of the third story, my husband offices out of the first story. So every now and again when I’m really focused and I’m like, and I’m like, okay, let me just loosen up. I take a piece of paper and I ball it up and I run down the stairs really, really fast. And I open his office door and I just pop him in the head with it and then I take off running upstairs and I lock my door in my office and that there is enough.
Karen McCullough: I love it. I love it. So, guys, I hope we gave you some ideas. I’m going to go get on Instagram and listen to who is it again? D what?
Crystal Washington: DJ D-Nice.
Karen McCullough: DJ D-Nice and you do the same. And maybe I’ll see you guys on Instagram.