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Spill The TEA
If you missed your initiation into womanhood, you’re not alone. Truth tellers spill the tea about the misguided trappings of what it means to be a woman. Listen in as they tackle the myths and realities of being a daughter, sister, mother, wife, and friend. Find a sense of community and inspiration with these podcast creatives. You are bound to recognize yourself in their collective experiences.
Spill The TEA
Navigating Life's Doorways: Memory Mysteries and Affirmation Secrets
Ever wondered why you forget what you needed the moment you step into another room? Join us in "Spill the Tea" as Tracy, Mary, and Kerri uncover the mysterious "doorway effect" and how it plays tricks on our short-term memory. We discuss how Olympian Michael Phelps transforms doorways into powerful moments for positive affirmations, helping combat negative thoughts. Along the way, we share our own hilarious memory lapses, tackle concerns about aging, and reveal strategies to stay focused and present in our daily lives. This episode is packed with practical tips for managing forgetfulness and a deep dive into the brain’s natural quirks, offering reassurance and solutions for anyone worried about their memory. Whether you're fascinated by memory science or just looking for a laugh, this episode offers a light-hearted look at how modern life impacts our minds.
Video we are discussing in this episode:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/NTdyBp4b5PFCZomN/?mibextid=UalRPS
Grab a warm drink and join us- we saved a seat for you. Don't forget to stay updated with Spill the TEA by following us on Facebook at Women Gathering and Growing with TEA or on Instagram at Grow with TEA.
All right, so welcome back to Spill the Tea. I am with Tracy and Mary today and, to be honest, I glanced at our topic and I just heard Mary or Tracy. One of them said it was about memory. So here we go. We're going to talk about memory. I felt like our topic had something to do with anxiety too. So I don't know. Tell us what it is. One of you, okay? I?
Tracy:sent a video a few weeks ago now with Michael Phelps and he was talking about walking through doorways. Every time he walks through a doorway, he uses a positive affirmation, right? Yes?
Mary:Yes. So when he's feeling negative thoughts, he stops at a doorway and does a positive affirmation to manifest and to drop those negative thoughts.
Kerri:Right the word anxiety. That's what I remember.
Mary:Yes. And then after the clip it goes to a woman who is talking about the doorway effect, that that's why she thinks that works for him and for athletes that practice doing that strategy where when people pass through a doorway, their short-term memory dumps what they were doing, what it recalls doing in the one room, dumps it in preparation to go into the next room. And so this is the reason why we forget what we were going to do when we enter the next room. It is based on science and how memory is stored in the brain. That blew my mind. I listened to the clip and immediately looked up what the hell is this doorway effect and I can't believe that I didn't know about this, and I guess I don't have to worry about me getting dementia, and that is proof of my dementia that I forgot why the hell I entered a room and have to go back into the next room to recall what I was going to do. I just did it.
Tracy:Mary, I did it right before we came here. I went to the store, ran into the store, did what I needed to do, came out, had no memory of where I parked none at all and even was like wait, did I bring Eli's car or my car?
Mary:Don't even know what vehicle you came in.
Tracy:That's amazing. Thought about going back in. And then I was like, oh wait, wait, wait, wait. I brought my car and it's over there. Until I saw that video, I was actually starting to panic that there was something wrong with my head or it was perimenopause. I've just been dumping all those types of things into a little perimenopause bucket that I'm like it's probably that.
Mary:It's probably that I can't control it. It's happening. What am I going to do about it? Yeah, it set me free. It gave me the grace to say, oh, this is something that my brain does to survive.
Kerri:So are you doing what he said in those moments? Like are you? Are you going through a doorway and thinking I'm leaving everything here behind, I'm going into this next room and this is the reason why and I will be successful.
Mary:So that that is like next level. What I'm trying to do is remember why the hell I came into the room. So that other thing has to do with a different plane, with negative thoughts, but I'm just trying to get through my Saturday and get all my chores done.
Tracy:I don't know. I lose my coffee several times a day.
Mary:Last Thursday was my 50th birthday, and so because it just seems like like maybe forgetting was more frequent, I don't know, maybe because I'm trying to do too many things at once, but when the new year hit, instead of doing New Year's resolutions more recently, like in the more recent years I've done, I've set an intention for the year, and this year my intention word was present, and it's because I was thinking. My mind is always going to other things and this must be why I'm forgetting what I was going into the other room for at work, at home. And so my word this year was present, be present so I can be mindful and focused. And it was all because of this stupid doorway effect.
Tracy:This thing that your brain was doing to be healthy anyway, and it was just this healthy thing that it was. Yeah, I get it. Yes, I get it, but you probably like me, we're having anxiety because it feels like as I'm getting older, I'm more cognizant of it. I don't know if I'm more cognizant of the fact that there could be, you know, underlying issues brain worm, a brain worm. You know there could just be stuff that's scary. There could be scary stuff.
Kerri:I hope you guys are not worried about brain worms.
Tracy:I'm sorry if you are, it's easier to worry about brain worms than like dementia or Alzheimer's right? It's easier to be laughing about it than feel like what's really scaring you like if you WebMD it. Frequent memory loss, right Please?
Mary:don't. So just the science of it was really cool, and I'm trying to think what I was going to say something else this was literally the other, I think, last weekend. So I thought I am going to overpower this brain thing and come up with strategies to remember what I was going to do. So I'm also quite like I always think of efficiencies when I do things right. So if I'm going to go on down to the basement, I'm making physical effort to go down there. So I want to do everything I can think of while I'm down there. I'm doing the laundry, I'm folding, you know whatever folding and the house is just in front of me.
Tracy:I'll take 57 trips up and down the stairs. Me too, 900 trips, and just accept.
Mary:I'm going to do it. And so sometimes I'm just like I'm going to go do the one thing because I'm going to forget the other thing, because it's just healthy, good exercise to go up and downstairs, but because I think of efficiencies just last week and I'm like, okay, I'm really good at remembering three things. So I'm going to remember the three things that I'm going down there for, because this, this is what happens too. I start filling the washing machine and I like to fill it first and put cause it's like a powder detergent. I don't want to put the powder detergent on my clothes, so I put the water in first with the detergent. Do you know how many times I've forgotten to put the clothes in? All I've done was filled it up with water and ran it with soapy water way more times than I can, and you know I earth friendly you are so.
Mary:I'm just, I'm gonna just all of this water because I'm like, how many things can I do while it's filling up? And then I forget what I was doing. So, anyway, I go down and so I'm saying out loud laundry, shoes, vacuum. And I just keep saying that as I'm going down the stairs, going through my doorways, laundry, shoes vacuum. Now I can't remember what I what I told you. And so I finished the laundry. So now I'm like shoes, vacuum shoes, vacuum shoes, vacuum shoes, vacuum until I complete my task.
Kerri:Vacuum, vacuum, vacuum, vacuum, and then my task would be basement, detergent, water, clothes. That would be five tasks, very. Can you remember all of those?
Tracy:break it down to smaller steps is my oh, that's a Bill Murray step, that's baby steps. Oh, baby steps. Yes.
Mary:That is so true, Tracy.
Tracy:Mary, I'm laughing at the whole like washer thing, but I cannot tell you the number of times that I've had to rewash the wash because I've forgotten that I ran a load and didn't put it in the dryer, which is much stinkier than just running an empty load.
Mary:That's true. That's equally as wasteful.
Tracy:I do that so often I do it so often I hate that yeah.
Kerri:I just want to be clean.
Tracy:I've done that before, for sure, and it stinks yeah.
Kerri:Yeah, that's the worst. And then the one time that you're like maybe I can get into the dryer, you pull the clothes out of the dryer and you're like, oh God, no, they're going right back in the washer.
Mary:Yeah, and I'm afraid I've smelled the person that just went with it. You can smell it on their clothes and you're like, oh no been there, yeah you waited way too long you forgot it, just accept you forgot it.
Tracy:Rer, rerun the wash.
Mary:Rerun it. Yes, for sure, thinking of my strategies, of how I am combating this short-term memory issue, so I'll also do what I call flags, like to remember to put up a token. Or I empty the toilet paper roll, but there's none in the bathroom, so I have to empty the toilet paper roll, but there's none in the bathroom, so I have to put the toilet paper roll somewhere. So I'll remember that I need it. Take it with me, whatever or something I need to remember to go to the grocery store and get them, but I need to remember to get it on the list.
Mary:And so I'll leave the empty cartridge out until I put it on my list.
Tracy:Yes.
Mary:I was just thinking.
Tracy:I have plans later tonight and I'm supposed to bring a bottle of wine, but it had to be chilled, so it's in the refrigerator and do you know the likelihood of me getting in the car and going down the road without grabbing that because it's not in my sight?
Mary:It's probably 85 probably yeah, maybe you should think about your foot, in the enormous knobble that you have on top of it as a result of dropping a bottle of wine on your foot.
Tracy:Oh, my gosh, it looked horrendous. Oh, it was so bad it was, so it kept getting worse and worse. So, okay, podcast land, I did not drink a bottle of wine and drop it on my foot. I was cleaning off the top of the refrigerator. There was a bottle of wine that had been drank at my wedding, so it was a commemorative bottle that had a picture of me and my ex and I thought, oh, this needs to go out to the recycling. So I put it with the recycling stuff find down. Because I was up on top of the refrigerator and talking to my son pick up the recycling, walk out. And talking to him trying to keep the dog in the house, he stepped down onto the cement. The wine bottle falls through all of the recycling I had in my hand and it is like heavy side up, narrow side down and drops like a missile, hits my the top of my foot like a direct hit um.
Tracy:Yes yes, of course I squeal, eli's like what is going on? I then I'm crying. I'm crying more at that point because it really it hurt so bad. But then I was also so angry that it was that bottle that had just what I thought broken my foot. So I don't know if I was angry or I was just. So Eli is just looking at me like what is this?
Mary:because it looks like just hyperventilating, crying yeah oh my god, I hadn't heard the whole story, I just saw the picture and it wasn't pretty folks.
Tracy:He's like do do you want IV profer? And I'm like. He's like, do you want air? And I'm like, no, I'm so. I was just so mad. He's like, so he gave me ice and he went upstairs and then I calmed down a little bit and realized that okay, I'm not angry. This hurts so bad that tears are now like flowing out of my face. So then I called my daughter and was like I think I need oh, so she comes over and she looks at it and it's not getting swollen yet.
Tracy:It just is like angry and you can see the bump. So she's like, yeah, let's go. Just you know, let's go and get an x-ray, just to be sure. So I have eyes and Eli had to give me a piggyback ride out to the car. I can't put any pressure on it. Piggyback rides me out to the car, get in the car. Can't put a shoe on. Now. I'm like laughing, crying. Erin is trying to keep my mind off it as we go to urgent care and I happen to look down at my foot and I'm like, oh, my god, erin. And she looks over and she's like, oh, don't look at that, don't look at the doctor's orders. I can't quit looking at it. It looks so gross. It looked like a normal foot with a giant golf ball on top of it. Like I'm not exaggerating, it looked like a growth that's what I'm calling the novel novel.
Tracy:It was a novel that's definitely what it was that they took me in in a wheelchair and he kept showing people and the doctors kept telling them come look at this impressive hematoma, because they thought it was broke. And then, when it wasn't broke, it was just, it's a really bad bone burn. Oh my God, it got so big, it was so gross. So gross.
Mary:It was gross. I can't imagine what it was in person.
Tracy:The picture was oh yeah, it looked like it came straight from Hollywood.
Mary:Like, like you, you had some like Ebola or something that you picked up in Africa and it was a skin morphing disorder.
Tracy:It was so gross you said I had a zombie foot I did.
Mary:I think like if you contracted zombie, that is the first thing that would start to happen. You would get lumps like that all over your body.
Kerri:You can't oh.
Tracy:Mary, of everything. I contracted zombie from freaking. Oh, so cruel, so cruel. I didn't even drink the wine that night Like they were coming in. They're like oh, did you get to drink a bottle of wine? Ha ha ha. Like no, was taking out the garbage did the wine battle break?
Mary:no it was of course it stayed together, but not you two.
Kerri:No, I would have thrown it in the freaking street then I probably would have needed to go to the ER. Pulled my car out into the road, ran over a piece of glass, got a flat tire.
Mary:Yes, that's exactly what would happen. You'd get caught on it.
Kerri:Yes, For me it would have just got worse. Yep.
Tracy:Just kept going, the day would have just kept on going. I think I sent one of you a meme that said is mercury still in the microwave? Somebody needs to take it out.
Kerri:You didn't send it to me. That's funny. The microwave.
Mary:Now that sounds like you did drink the bottle of wine.
Tracy:Well, I think the worst time that I ever I don't know why we ended up talking about that story, but I do think the worst time that I ever forgot something was the pin number to my debit card. I went to a grocery store, went inside to grab a couple of things, had my debit card for the life of me, couldn't like. It was completely gone. No memory of my pin number at all and I couldn't press credit. I was almost in tears. It wasn't there. It was like a brain fart.
Tracy:Yeah, I walked out. I couldn't even buy the stuff. I'm sure it was something like this doorway effect. And then my anxiety was like, oh, hold my beer, watch this.
Mary:Let's see what we can do, how we can make you freak out oh god, I get back in the car.
Tracy:Got down there.
Mary:I was, like you know, my pin number, oh, my god this was years ago how long did it take you to remember, or did you have to reset it?
Tracy:no, I remembered. I remember probably with like an hour later. It's like when you're trying to remember somebody's name and then it's like in the middle of the night you wake up and you're like it's Betty. Yeah.
Kerri:I think of something I forgot recently, but I'm sure I do Like. I do the thing where you walk in a room and are like, hmm well, what did you want to do in here? Oh, you could do this instead as long as you're here, right?
Mary:Then you're doing something, then you remember, oh, that's right, yeah. Then it cuts to the local com. I do it with the phone. I think, oh, I'm going to look this up. And then I and this, this is really just a distraction, probably. And then I see I have a text message. And then I go do the text message and I look and I'm like, oh, I put the phone down and walk away when I wanted to look up something, yeah. So then I go back to my phone.
Tracy:Yeah, I do that too, mary. I think that digital stuff has made it worse because I'm more distracted. You know what I mean. Yes, or like if my phone dings and I'm like I'm in a zone trying to, I mean I don't do like the one, two, three thing, but if I'm trying to remember something and I'm like really hyper focused and then my phone dings, it's gone yeah, I keep my rings off on my vacations.
Tracy:I do shut. I shut it off because of that, yeah, and I forget to turn it back on and I miss calls and I try to.
Kerri:Anytime that it comes up and it asks you if you want the push notifications, I always say no, I do not want to know every time. Yeah, life happens to someone somewhere, someone I need to know.
Tracy:Yeah, the other day etsy. Etsy asked me if I wanted push notifications. What on earth would I want pushed to my phone from etsy? I get on there maybe once a year around the retreat. I think what's he gonna?
Kerri:tell me from makers. No, some of those things you can like, like or favorite or put on a wish list or you can watch to see if they go on sale. So that's probably what they push. You Like, oh, you like this, and now it's $2 cheaper. Please buy it, or there's a 10% sale at this Etsy shop you visited 14 weeks ago, right? No, thank you.
Mary:So when I was thinking about the doorway effect and I watch a lot of DIY and now there is a trend to have open spaces, what do they call open floor plan?
Tracy:Yeah.
Mary:And I thought, oh, they're getting rid of doorways, and so I bet those households have better memories than my household.
Tracy:Or their brains are overwhelmed because they're not dumping. The nonsense.
Mary:Oh, I like that You're looking at it from a healthy perspective.
Tracy:Yeah, that's the reason your brain does it is to dump all the stuff that you don't need. It's just not a real great filter filters everything it's room by room.
Mary:Yeah, yeah, so maybe it's more chaos in their brain. They're gonna be forgetting those key codes they are, because they're gonna.
Tracy:There's gonna be anxiety, not memory. They're gonna be anxious, those open floor plan people you thought you had it good did.
Kerri:I've never had an open floor plan, so I don't have a point of reference to how that might feel yeah.
Mary:I think mine sort of is, because you know you have the great room attached to the kitchen. You know sort of that's as close as you get. But when you see them on with their taken down walls and just do you ever get words that are overused and you're like, and you hear them and you think, oh, that's so annoying. So I watch a lot of DIY shows and I hate it when they say I want something open and airy. I hate the word airy, it's dumb.
Tracy:It is because you don't want your house to be airy, moist and airy it's dumb. It is because you don't want your house to be airy, moist and airy airy doesn't reach the level of moist, but it is stupid for your house because you obviously haven't lived in a house with like old windows or a trailer where the wind blows right freaking through.
Mary:That is airy.
Kerri:Spacious, I think, is the word they should be using.
Tracy:They could say spacious, but airy means you have issues.
Kerri:Yeah, airy is a different concept.
Mary:Yeah, those are single-pane windows that you got there.
Kerri:Plastic wrap over them. Let's be honest.
Mary:Oh yeah, old school With a hair dryer Back in the day you had the hair dryer thing.
Tracy:Have you never lived in poverty, people In Western New York? When the wind just blew through your very house, blew through your dairy house, you were putting stuff that looked like saran wrap on there and you were using a dryer to shrink, wrap it. Yep, and you?
Kerri:can kind of see through it and it worked great, sometimes Until your cat went over to it and scratched it and put a hole in it.
Tracy:Then you'd get frustrated and just get the regular plastic and the staple gun.
Kerri:You were really classy. You put some duct tape over it.
Mary:Allegheny County. Chrome right.
Tracy:Yes, how did we survive, we did, we were resourceful. This is why we forget things when we walk through doorways, because we had to live through airy houses.
Mary:Exactly, and so now we have airy thoughts. They just oof coming up, yeah, they just float right through one ear out the other and like most things right now.
Tracy:I was just chalking it up. I was like it's perimenopause, that's what it is. I sneeze, ron. Perimenopause, I'm tired.
Mary:I'm tired. Peri, is it first name, last name? Perry, you're in a pause.
Tracy:It's all the things it is all well.
Mary:Now you have another. It's the doorway effect.
Tracy:I love that. I love that we found that I do want to and it's probably going to be love that we found that I do want to and it's probably going to be our how to make tea. But I do want to try the affirmation thing with. But we have to be honest, I've wanted to try it since I sent the video and I keep forgetting how ironic I need somebody to remind me that, hey, when you're walking through doorways today, you're supposed to say a positive affirmation. That's so funny.
Kerri:I recently was thinking about money and how I'm getting better with money, Like, oh my, you know I've got all my bills taken care of, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's that money that I can use for whatever I want, that I don't really track how I spend it. And I was thinking I want to get better at knowing what I'm spending that money on. And so I thought, oh, maybe I'll start every time I use my debit card or my credit card or whatever. I hardly ever have cash, so I'll just send myself like a text message about what I bought or where I was, at least so I could track it. Then I was thought well, shouldn't that all be in my bank statement?
Kerri:But for some reason it would sort of, but I don't know. I just thought maybe I could track it that way. But do you think I've sent myself a single text message when I've left a store?
Mary:Maybe if you took a picture of it, yeah, the bank statement would tell you where you made a purchase, but not what it was.
Tracy:Right, yeah, yeah, even if you did it for like a couple or like a weekend. Like I know, I spend more on the weekend than I do during the week.
Kerri:Me too.
Tracy:Yeah, that would be a good experiment. I love these experiments. So a friend of mine sent me a video. It was a military video about leadership and like the 12 things that he's learned about leadership. And he was this big, huge AV admiral. He had all the things on his white uniform. It was beautiful uniform and he was talking about the 12 things he's learned. His very first thing was when you get up in the morning, you should start every day with making your bed, and if you are an avid listener of this podcast, you know I don't make my bed, me either. I just haven't. Mary does, mary does.
Kerri:Of course I do.
Tracy:So this person was sending this to me, knowing that I, you know, don't make my bed, and have been like, haha, I don't make my bed, I'm not going to, I don't have time for that. So I listened to the video and actually I'm going to use it in a youth program that I have. But little did he know. I was like, okay, I'm going to try an experiment, I am going to try making my bed for a couple of weeks. And wouldn't you know?
Tracy:The guy in the video said that you would feel like you've accomplished something and if you had a bad day, at least your bed was made. But for me it hasn't really been that. It just looks pretty, it feels nice. And then I spent the night at a friend's and I made the bed. And I was like, if I am making beds, like if I go to Mary's and I make the bed at her house, I'm doing that to show her appreciation. Why am I not doing that for myself? Is self-care feels so pretty when I walk in my bedroom like that. So I was like I'm going to keep doing it. For a month, did it for a month, then it became a habit. So then I reported back to this person. I was like listen you, son of a puppy, I'm making my bed every day, look at you. I got to like add a girl.
Mary:But make the bed challenge. I love it.
Tracy:You know I am not going to say anything to anybody about feeling accomplished. I just I also redid my bedroom and Carrie helped me hang up like pictures and we made it mine and I don't think I've ever had like a grownup woman's bedroom bedroom. I've always had like a collect all when I had kids that were younger.
Tracy:Yeah, yeah, and a mine in yours that yours was always a mess. Why do I even care? It's not pretty. The bedroom's really pretty. Now the care came over and helped put things up and it's just really pretty. So if the bed's not made, it's not as pretty. Yeah.
Kerri:So my saving grace about making my bed is that ever since I got a weighted blanket, it's the only thing I sleep with. I make my bed and sleep on my bed with my weighted blanket, so my bed is actually made all the time. I just have this small weighted blanket. That is the only thing I sleep with, and often it's on top of my comforter, so I don't even really have to beat my bed you don't, yeah if.
Kerri:I get back over it, mish mash, whatever, and every once in a while I have to straighten up my bed, but probably not the greatest thing. It's like I'm using my comforter as a sheet.
Tracy:You wear out the top part of a comforter, which nobody ever does.
Mary:Yeah, I bet it looks like a throw, like an intentional throw. Yeah, when they're talking about the doorway effect, it made me think of Priya Parker's the Art of Gathering and how the part of ushering in and the most logical place to do it is at the doorway of your gathering, and I wondered if there was some sort of connection with that, with this doorway effect. You are ushering people through into your world. They would dump their things at the door to be open to the gathering that you have, and so when I was thinking about this topic, I thought of Priya in her, in her book the retreat in our our archway.
Tracy:Yes that was it.
Kerri:I just got everybody coming through our arch, and that's exactly everything there.
Tracy:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that me too.
Kerri:I think that's a good place to stop. I think so too. You want to tell us how to make tea, though, trace, you said you were gonna.
Tracy:You had one, oh yeah yeah, I think everybody should try an experiment, whether it's an experiment of making your bed or an experiment of doing the affirmations when you walk through the doorways. But knowing that many of us are around this age where it could be perimenopause or it could be the doorway effect, I think that you need an accountability partner to report back to. So whether Carrie is going to take pictures of what she spends all weekend for her experiment, she needs to like say, hey, mary, I'm doing this. I'm going to send them to me and you.
Mary:You can ignore it if you want to, but hold me accountable, please. I like it and I would suggest, Tracy, that you put stickies up in your doorways, so that you would remember to do an affirmation.
Tracy:Well, yeah, then I could read them, because I wouldn't have to have the angst of what affirmation it would be right there.
Kerri:I have an affirmation right next to my mirror in my bathroom.
Tracy:So I see it. Information right next to my mirror in my bathroom, so I love that okay.
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