Personal Lessons from Lockdown 2020 - Fat, Loneliness, Mind Games, Minimalism and Happiness — Rent 2 Rent Success

Hello, hello, hello it’s Stephanie here.

Welcome aboard episode 53 of the Rent to Rent Success Podcast.

Oh my goodness this is a different kind of episode today.

In this more personal series of episodes I’ve been talking about what’s happening in our businesses and today I’ll be talking about me personally, which feels a mixture of liberating and terrifying. Let me know if you like this type of episode and you’d like more like this or if you’d prefer we keep it on the property tack in future!

Before I dive in today, if you’re listening when this episode goes live and it’s before midnight on 21st January 2021, then you might be in with a chance.

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If you’d love to have ongoing support as you implement the Rent 2 Rent Success System,

We’d love to invite you to join us in our Rent 2 Rent Kickstarter Programme.

And now is a great time, it’s exceptional value, don’t leave it too late.

If you want to join us to get your first deal now and get started in property, then go here to find out more and get started!

Let's jump in…

2020, the year the world surprised us.

For many of us, 2020 was a masterclass in uncertainty on a level most of us have never experienced before. We were asked to ‘lockdown’. We were asked to live differently. We don’t know when this will end. Many of us are working at home. Some of us with young children home too. Or teenagers even! I live alone but I’ll come on to that in a moment.

We’ve become adept at waist up dressing, saying ‘you’re on mute’, overeating licorice and going braless. Oh, OK that’s just me! In the previous few episodes I’ve talked about the challenges and successes in our businesses in 2020 and in this episode I’m getting personal and talking about fat, mind games, minimalism and happiness.

Fat

First let me talk about fat and what I learned this year. Before I move on, I want to explain that I don’t think there is a weight that you should be. You can choose to be happy at whatever weight is best for you. For me though, I’d like to be healthy and fit and look amazing and for that I like to stay at a certain weight…

After a lifetime of struggling with my weight, I met Brooke Castillo in 2019 and found I could have urges and not eat. Wait what?! Why did I never receive that memo? Possibly I was too busy eating raw cashew nuts or proper liquorice?

When your favourite deliciousness speaks to you from its cupboard, you don’t have to answer? This was big news! And I lost weight and I felt good. I started 2020 weighing what I did when I left school and knowing I’d found the secret. Reflecting on it, it’s the same mind skills that helped us succeed in business that helped me lose weight.

Er, then lockdown, my brain was too busy freaking out and creating 90 day plans and communications plans to stay on track and things went south. I started indulging my love of liquorice and raw cashew nuts on the regular. And yes raw cashew nuts are good for you but I somehow feel a 200g minimum is overdoing it! And I might have continued on that trajectory but two things happened which got me off the slippery slope.

My sister Nicky started talking to Brooke too and doing really well. She is looking good! So now my mind is focussed, I’ve got to get back on track or be ‘the fat one’.
And a friend was missing the gym and indulging in comfort food so I suggested Brooke to him. He was keen to give it a whirl and I said I’d do it with him.

And this second time around I was on fire! This time I got it. It felt so much easier this time because my brain knows what to do now. The biggest change is I know I can rely on myself. I know that I have my back. For decades, if I made a plan for what to eat, I wouldn’t know for sure that I’d stick to it. Now I know. And the feeling is freedom. It feels incredibly liberating.

I’ve learned that not only can I not overeat when I’m home with my kale. I can not overeat anywhere, even when I’m surrounded by any flavour of deliciousness. Because of my brain now.

It’s a bit like Pavlov’s dogs, they hear the clop of clogs as people come to feed them and they learn to salivate at the clop of the clogs. Later the clop of clogs was replaced with a bell.

Here’s how it goes.

After the bell rings - the dogs are fed

Eventually what happens is the dogs associate the bell and the food and begin to expect it.
When the bell rings – the dogs salivate - the dogs are fed

When the bell rings – the dogs salivate - the dogs are fed

What’s interesting though is if you keep ringing the bell and stop bringing the food you start a new feedback loop.
The bell rings – the dogs salivate – the dogs are not fed

The bell rings – the dogs salivate – the dogs are not fed

After a while the dogs stop salivating when the bell rings.

If you’ve been an overeater like I was.

Your bell is always ringing!
You are constantly trying to ring your bell.

Looking for opportunities.

Food feels like a really important part of your life and you get so much pleasure from it.

That feedback loop is on autopilot.

Brooke helped me break the circuit because she told me that I could hear the bell ringing. In fact, I could hear multiple bells ringing all at the same time and I could choose not to eat. The urges feel so strong and so compelling that I’d never considered this totally obvious solution. And when I hear the bell ringing, and don’t eat, I stop wanting to eat as much and I stop hearing the bells. I actually don’t get as many urges to overeat because I’m no longer rewarding the urges.

Imagine how easy it would be to lose weight if you didn’t want to overeat. For most of us, if we don’t overeat, we aren’t overweight. But not overeating is SO hard because your mind and body are so wired into the feedback loop that gives you negative results. The urge – eat – pleasure loop that you love but gives you results that you hate.

Now my brain is trained, I can feel the urges and not eat. And miraculously my desire to overeat has evaporated.

After being on autopilot to fat for the last 40+ years.
It’s so liberating to be able to be the weight I choose.

I didn’t believe it was possible for me.

But it absolutely is!

And being healthy and slim as I turn 50 feels so delicious!

So number 1 thing I learned is I can stay slim easily with my mind

Let’s move on now to number 2.

I live alone.

And in a pandemic I learned a lot of things about alone-ness and loneliness. I’ve seen a lot of people struggling with loneliness. And I used to have this experience too. I’ve lived alone for the last 5 years. I’m not an expert at this but I do want to tell you about one simple mind hack that makes being alone feel glorious to me. I’ve shared this with a few people and they said it worked for them too, so I hope it works for you as well, if you live alone and feel lonely. Or even if you live with others and feel lonely!

When you think about people whose company you love. You just love being around them because they make you feel good. Think of why you love spending time with the person you most love spending time with.

Sometimes when we don’t enjoy our own company it’s because we’re not making ourselves feel good. All the mind chatter is terrible, ‘I can’t believe you did that again’, or ‘why on earth would you think you would be selected’ ‘of course you let yourself down again’ or myriad other negative thoughts.

If your best friend came over, you’d welcome them excitedly, you’d be pleased to see them, you’d encourage them over disappointments, laugh at their bad jokes. You’d enjoy just being in the same room with them even if you weren’t talking to each other.

NEWSFLASH: Your best friend is always in the room with you!

But are you being a good best friend to You?

Are you being supportive, encouraging, friendly, funny? Are you cooking the food you enjoy? Are you doing the movement you enjoy? Are you doing the things you enjoy? Are you really listening to you?

When you do this. It feels glorious. The same dinner that previously felt lonely, feels beautiful when you acknowledge that you’re eating it with one of your favourite people.

You! You can cook something you love to eat. You can get out your fancy plates for your special guest. You can listen to you, you can encourage you, you can love you.

Treating yourself more consciously like someone you love being with will help you enjoy spending time with you more. And it makes you a better friend to others as well. When you can be more loving and compassionate and fun to yourself, it’s easier to be those things for others too.

So number 2 thing I learned is delight in the beauty of being your own best friend

Mind Games

We’ve had a lot of stuff on this year between launching Property Gamechangers, completely updating our Rent 2 Rent Kickstarter Programme, launching The Rent 2 Rent Success Podcast and writing our Rent 2 Rent Success book all while running our businesses HMO Heaven and Rent 2 Rent Success plus managing refurbishments. Like you, we’re busy and it can sometimes be difficult to keep my mind on track.

There have been days where I’d sit down at my computer to write our book and I wouldn’t want to do it, I’d get so much resistance. I’d have a strong compulsion to…

Fill the washing machine
Make a coffee
Urgently wash a spoon
Water my plants
Stick pins in my eyeballs
Do anything else!!!

It’s a fact that for most of us. Our minds will try to f*@* us up. Whenever, you try to do anything scary. Because the safe human thing to do is hide.

Your Toddler Brain’s job is to

Avoid pain
Seek pleasure
Do 1. and 2 using as little energy as possible

I go into more depth about how we sabotage ourselves so well in episode 6 if you’d like to understand more about Toddler Brain.

One of the powerful things I’ve learned in 2020 is how to get your toddler on board! And gosh it’s so simple, I love it so much.

Know that you’ll feel all these urgent urges to do other things. It doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means you are a beautiful imperfect human working exactly as you’re designed to. Let the urges be there and do the work. It sounds too simple, but it totally works.

There are two parts:

Acknowledge the urge (or the fear) and say it’s OK. That calms your toddler. So if your Toddler Brain comes up with the automatic thoughts ‘why would anyone listen to you?’, ‘what gives you the right to write a book?’ ‘you can’t do this!’ you can say I hear and then move on to step 2.
Choose a thought which helps you. Have a helpful thought ready in advance and you keep replying to your toddler brain. Here are some ideas. ‘This book will help lots of people change their lives and I’m so excited to write it’ or ‘this is the book that I’m meant to write’. You must choose a thought you believe so it might be ‘I know I can write a chapter of my book’ or ‘I will write 500 words every week day’ or ‘I will write even when I don’t want to.’ The important thing is that the words you choose help you feel the feelings that make action inevitable. Try words on. If you don’t choose helpful thoughts, your Toddler Brain will choose your thoughts for you. And they’re not usually helpful unless you want to hide in the cave.

You can see how choosing a thought like that generates such different feelings to the fear-based toddler thoughts. The actions we get from choosing thoughts that generate positive feelings and actions, drives positive results.

So number 3 thing I learned is I can control how I get things done by consciously choosing my thoughts about them

Minimalism

I feel so drawn to minimalism and the idea of keeping only things you love in your life. Marie Kondo’s best-selling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up first came into my life 5 years ago when I moved from Edinburgh to Bristol and decided to get rid of almost everything. Her book became hugely popular and a core principle is only to keep things in your life which spark joy.

I moved to Bristol with things easily able to fit in my VW Golf. And I was amazed how light I felt. Admittedly I moved some boxes into my Mum’s loft. I haven’t seen those things in years, or missed them so it just goes to show how we don’t need most of the things we choose to keep in our lives.

Why this came up again in 2020 was to do with my home. I need to give you a bit of context here so I’m going to wind the clock back to 2016 when I moved to Newport. My intention was to rent for a while until I found somewhere to buy.

Now I know that some property investors prefer to rent their own home because their own home is a liability (ie takes money out of their pocket each month) and they want to spend their money on property assets (ie property that puts money into their pocket each month).

I’ve been clear from the start that I want to buy my own home, for two main reasons

Property in Newport is affordable, therefore the amount of cash I’d need to tie up to buy my own property is much smaller than it’d be for investors who live in Central London. For example, the average house price in Newport is £190k compared with over £1.2m in central London. In Newport I can buy an average property with a 10% deposit of £19k where in London I’d need to tie up £120k which as a property investor I’d much rather put to work!
I want it my way, I’d like the flooring I like, I want to drill holes in the walls, I want to make it mine. And there are constraints on that when you’re renting so I feel it’s worth more than £20k to me to be able to make my home my own.

Fast-forward back to 2020 and I've been in Newport almost 5 years, I say I want to buy and yet I’m still renting!

I was so comfortable in a lovely top-floor flat I was renting on the River Usk that I made only half-hearted attempts to look for somewhere to move to. I loved the river views, the light on the river and my balcony. I told myself that if I’m buying somewhere it must also be top-floor, it must have river views, it must have 2 bedrooms, it must have 2 bathrooms. So I limited my options. And I stayed renting.

I’d probably still be renting. But I asked my landlord to redecorate after 4.5 years. In that time I’ve never been even a day late with my rent and it’s only a very few times I’ve contacted the letting agent. The landlord said no. I was disappointed in the moment, but thank goodness he did say no. Because had he said yes, I’d still be comfortable, I’d still be coasting. When he said no it was the push I needed to move out and find a home I can make my own. I gave my notice immediately.

Then I pondered what to do, it was unlikely I’d find somewhere I wanted to buy and complete on the purchase within a month. Coincidentally, when I gave notice, we were weeks away from completion of a refurb on the 4-unit conversion we own. (You can read about that in episode 50). It made sense that I moved in.

And that is where minimalism comes in.

The flat is small, there's a kitchen/lounge which is 18sqm and a separate bedroom which is 8sqm. And it’s been so fun and so freeing going through all my things and letting go of everything that didn’t spark joy. Everything I didn’t love. It was a glorious feeling. All of my clothes now fit in a single wardrobe. And I love everything there. I’ve got rid of the half dozen electricity extension cables I was keeping just-in-case. We keep so much junk, storing things for 2 years until the time we need one use. We can buy or borrow if we have a need. We don’t need to have everything in stock for every eventuality. We’re not a warehouse! As Matt D’avella said recently most things can be bought or borrowed for £20 within 20 minutes.

I’ve moved in now and on my Instagram I have a Series called Tiny where it’s a look at my gorgeous little pad from before I moved in until now.

Previously I wasn’t good at interiors and wasn’t very intentional about furniture buying etc. Having now worked with interior designers in our property business and seeing the magic that Rohanna Roberts has created I knew I wanted to have her design the interior for my home.

You can follow along on Instagram @stephanietproperty

So number 4 thing I learned is less is joy

Happiness

This is the big one.

I thought happiness was things around me like living on the river. Like my family. Like my business doing well.

2020 (OK and Brooke Castillo) showed me happiness is in the thoughts I choose. This is liberating because it means I can be happy anywhere, under any circumstance, no matter what anyone else does.

This sounds ridiculous doesn’t it. How can it be true, so let’s start with an example. I moved into a small flat and I choose the thoughts:

I embrace minimalism and keeping only the things which spark joy
I’m excited to work with an interior designer and be very intentional about making my new home totally me
I love the beautiful light when I’m working from here

What if I hadn’t gone with the thoughts my toddler brain auto-suggested for me

You won’t be happy if your office doesn’t look out on the river
You won’t be happy in a smaller flat
You won’t be happy

Your toddler doesn’t like change or growth. And if we do, we need to supervise our toddlers by choosing thoughts that help us to grow and change!

This simple skill with thoughts has been a gamechanger. I know I can be happy whatever happens because I get to choose how I think about it.

And happiness isn’t about ease, it’s often about the satisfaction of doing hard things.

So number 5 thing I learned is I can choose happiness.

Let me know one thing you’ve learned in 2020.

Let me know what you think of this episode and if you like the personal insight or you prefer we stick to property!

If one of your goals this year is that you’d like to start your property journey and join us in Kickstarter and get your year off to a flying start, then it’s your last chance to join us before our prices go up at midnight on 21st January.

Get me started now!

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Until next time, have a great rest of the week.

And remember,

Believe Bigger, Be Bolder and Be a Gamechanger!

See you soon!
Stephanie & Nicky
xx

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