Hey CFS Warriors, it's Victoria coming to you from a winter wonderland in Lake Tahoe and I just want to show you the Scorges Court yard. We've had a blizzard for three days and even the snowing now and it's so pretty and I want you to see those pretty trees over there and yeah it's just gorgeous. The ski mountain is right behind that villa which you can't see it right now and yeah I just wanted to talk to you about getting out and about so you know training the nervous system to do this and it's a big deal in recovery when you start incorporating outings. So I just wanted to share some strategies that have helped me on how to do this because it came up with our Warriors and you know in the comments about you know how do I start getting out and not overdoing it and so hopefully this will help you depending on whatever level of recovery you're in that you can apply some of these principles and so basically for me when I started doing it I based it on three things I built it incrementally I did it with a time limit and I also took into consideration the stimulation of the environment that I was going into so let's say that I started off you know once a week with a half hour to the coffee shop very mellow atmosphere short amount of time and then went home then I began to expand that time to an hour and then to two hours and that eventually I was able to start incorporating two hours a two outings a week in the same way I would start that second outing in a very low amount of time in a very low stimulation environment and start increasing it so that's done incrementally now you want to be prepared I want to share with you some strategies on getting prepared for the outing before, during and after and so for me it was really important to prepare before by preemptive resting and also planning a landing time that when I returned I knew that I was going to have time to rest to meditate to stretch to do whatever restorative activities that I could that would rebuild my body and so another thing I would do was also making sure I'm well fed and that might sound funny but you need to have that food in your body because food is fuel as one of my mentors would say and you want to make sure that you're not hungry getting out of the house now during the event whatever it might be I would always bring snacks and water so I would always hydrate I always kept actually a cup of water in my car that I would have to finish by the time I got home so I would drink it on the way and drink it on the way back because it's amazing what just hydrating your body will do for you and then the snack is because you know your blood sugar level can drop so you really want to keep that stabilized so I would never depend on other people or places for snacks to make sure foods to think that food would be available I always have what I would need in my purse so that was one strategy another one was centering when I was at the event I remember when my daughter graduated and we were having a party at a restaurant and you know we had invited all these people and so I would take breaks into the bathroom to breathe deeply to center myself to calm that nervous system down this is a great time to use if you're doing a brain retraining to do the stops and just to relax to go for deep relaxation so another technique that I employed was the 80-20 rule so when I was out and about I remember this at another event at school we were at a big table with all these people and I usually feel like I've got to be Oprah I've got to be the hostess even though I was it so instead I started employing this 80-20 rule where I put 80 percent of attention on myself and only 20 percent of what was going on around me and frankly that used to be reversed for me I'd be more like 80 percent focused on everybody else and only 20 percent of what was going on in me and so my thoughts my feelings how my body was doing and so this was a real shift for me in recovery to begin to focus on me and allow myself to be centered in the moment when I was in an environment with a lot of other people and another thing too is similar to that is not merging because I'm a very social person and people person it would be easy for me to merge and to talk to people and get really you know we've taught I've talked before about energetic boundaries and being an impact and taking on other people's energies and I have a video on that with strategies for it but that's really important when you're out and about to have those energetic boundaries really solid and in place really before you leave the house to keep that in mind when you're out with other people and so those little breaks to the bathroom are really going to help because you're going to remember you can eat I used to even like have a little list you know no merging 80-20 rule little things to help me remember in the moment because when you're with people you kind of get caught up and you can also get very adrenalized all of a sudden you're out your dress your chatty you know you're having a ball and you can get really adrenalized and going on that adrenaline which is not good for recovery because that's not real energy that's not your body's resilient energy right it's actually like you're burning the adrenaline so you want to have a time limit I would laugh and call it my expiration date and you want to actually set that up before you leave the house how long do you want to be out for and then expect to maybe go over it a bit but what you can do and I used to do this is having a accountability partner whether it's my husband my mom to say you know what you need to go you've been here for two hours and you know you're like my husband came in one night and I was talking to somebody and we were so animated and so excited he's like man you are way up here you got to go you need to chill down so that kind of happens something if you've ever happened that was CFS but you can go from like totally like this to totally adrenalized and hyper so anyway those are just some strategies for during the event and then after the event would be following through with that rest time that you planned doing a counteractive like a counterbalancing restorative activity I like to go stretch on my big bounce ball that gives me a really good stretch and it's very centering for me and let's see what else afterwards I'm just really chilling out given yourself that time oh and also what's really important is doing the neural retraining on those thoughts that will come up that will come up and tell you oh no you went out and you did this and you're really going to pay for tomorrow and it's amazing how those thoughts are going to come up and so basically you want to really stop those and you want to give yourself rest and relaxation and say I'm going to feel well tomorrow because I'm resting now and I'm going to feel so much better in the morning and so you know I have a visualization that I that is on my channel called replenishment visualization and that's something that I incorporated a lot every time that I went out and I would come home and I would do that visualization of my energy being replenished and restored and that really calms the system down after you've been out on an outing so anyway warriors I hope this helps as you're getting out and about it is amazing what you know getting your life back is an amazing thing you know just from the day that I would go to the bookstore for an hour I remember the day that I hit and I'd been out of the house for six hours and I was like yay it was doing great because I'd built up to that the nervous system was not overstimulated and I do want to mention that again that it's so important where you go like for me right now even big events like I went to an event the other night for my son and it was like 800 people in a big conference room being served in her with video and music and announcements and then a speaker and so I went for about two hours and then that was about my time limit I was like you know it's a very stimulating environment and so I excuse myself before the main speaker started and I was very happy because I was able to bend the event and joy chatting and joy catching up with people you know really being on and yet leaving and going home and chilling out and having a great evening and just that's just a part of life now so anyway I hope that helps warriors and remember life is not over it's starting again and I speak live health and wholeness over you can