Mindfulness for Overthinkers and Perfectionists with Dr. Alice Rizzi

Self-LeadershipMindfulness
Written By Sara Lobkovich

Are you an overthinker who can't seem to quiet your mind? A perfectionist struggling to find peace in a chaotic world?

Then this episode is for you. Dr. Alice Rizzi, a licensed psychologist and mindfulness coach, breaks down the myths about mindfulness and offers practical, accessible techniques that even the busiest minds can embrace.

Discover how just 30 seconds a day can transform your mental landscape and why traditional meditation isn't the only path to mindfulness. Whether you've tried mindfulness before and given up, or you're completely new to the concept, this episode promises to revolutionize your approach to mental well-being.

Episode Highlights:

  • Dr. Rizzi's refreshing definition of mindfulness that goes beyond sitting still

  • The surprising difference between mindfulness and meditation

  • Game-changing mindfulness techniques tailored for overthinkers and perfectionists

  • How to start a mindfulness practice when you think you have no time

  • Simple grounding exercises that can calm your nervous system in seconds

  • The overlooked importance of self-compassion in mindfulness practice

Common Questions Addressed:

  • What is mindfulness, really, and how is it different from meditation?

  • Can overthinkers and perfectionists actually benefit from mindfulness?

  • What are some quick, no-nonsense ways to incorporate mindfulness into a hectic life?

  • How can mindfulness help manage the overwhelming stress and anxiety of modern life?

Notable Quotes:

"Mindfulness is the quality of being present in this moment with awareness, acceptance, kindness, compassion, curiosity, and non-judgment." - Dr. Alice Rizzi

"It's better to do 30 seconds every day than even sit for 10 minutes once a week." - Dr. Alice Rizzi

"Right now, in this moment, chances are you're actually okay." - Dr. Alice Rizzi

Episode Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Thinkydoers Podcast 

01:27 Goal Fridays: A Series for Changemakers

02:45 Meet Dr. Alice Rizzi: Mindfulness Expert

04:35 Understanding Mindfulness and Meditation

06:44 Mindfulness for High Achievers and Overthinkers

09:48 Grounding Techniques for Overthinkers

16:28 The Power of Self-Compassion and Non-Judgment

21:52 Practical Tips for Mindfulness Practice

32:11 Conclusion and Resources

Key Takeaways:

  1. Forget long meditation sessions; brief daily practices can be more effective for busy minds.

  2. Learn the "five, four, three, two, one" grounding technique to instantly reconnect with the present moment.

  3. Discover why self-compassion might be the missing piece in your mindfulness journey.

  4. Explore how a simple self-hug can regulate your nervous system faster than you think.

Resources Mentioned:

Sara's Links and Resources:

Whether you're a seasoned mindfulness practitioner or a skeptical beginner, this episode offers fresh insights and practical tools to help you navigate life's challenges with greater ease and presence.

Full Episode Transcript:

 Sara: Welcome to the Thinkydoers podcast. Thinkydoers are those of us drawn to deep work where thinking is working. But we don't stop there. We're compelled to move the work from insight to idea, through the messy middle, to find courage and confidence to put our thoughts into action. I'm Sara Lobkovich, and I'm a Thinkydoer. I'm here to help others find more satisfaction, less frustration, less friction, and more flow in our work. My mission is to help changemakers like you transform our workplaces and world. So, let's get started.​

Sara: Welcome back, friends. We're continuing this week on the theme of mental health support, but today we're going back to basics. This episode was intended as a bit of a "mindfulness basics" episode, but don't hit skip when you hear the word mindfulness. My guest is here to share information and [00:01:00] practices specifically for those of us who might have struggled with mindfulness practices, or even mindfulness instruction in the past. We don't just talk about meditation here. And I have to say this was intended as a basics episode, but I think there's something here for everyone, including those of you listening who already have a solid mindfulness practice.

Sara: Before I introduce our guest for today, a quick note. I'm hosting an eight-week series of free Friday morning sessions I call "Goal Fridays." This series is at 9am Pacific, noon Eastern, and you can join live on YouTube or LinkedIn. Although, to be honest, LinkedIn's a bit more buggy, so YouTube's a bit more of a sure thing. Each session is on a specific topic. We started with a practice for refocusing when you're overthinking. Next up, we're going to tackle overdoing. And then from there, we dive into some special [00:02:00] topics around Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs, the goal methodology I work with closely. You'll even get to see some live OKR audits, and I am looking for volunteers for that. So, if you work with OKRs today and you want some help improving them, ping me if you might be interested in joining. Whether you're looking to reduce overthinking, avoid burnout, learn about different goal-setting frameworks, or see real-world case studies, there's something for everyone in this series. To sign up, visit findrc.co/goalfridays. And yes, replays are available. Visit that same page for links to the replays. And to join the waitlist for my next cohort if you miss this one.

Sara: Now, I am delighted to welcome Dr. Alice Rizzi, a licensed psychologist and mindfulness coach, as our expert today. Dr. Rizzi shares practices for high achievers, perfectionists, and [00:03:00] overthinkers to create some calm and balance in our hectic lives. She'll also debunk a few common misconceptions about mindfulness and offer strategies that work for real people with real commitments and busy lives. In this episode, we'll cover why mindfulness isn't just about meditation, some practical techniques for grounding yourself in stressful moments, how to start a mindfulness practice when you're short on time, and a few tips especially for the recovering perfectionists and overthinkers who might be listening. Dr. Rizzi also shares her personal journey from being an anxious ball to finding balance through mindfulness practices. Her insights are especially valuable for those of us who might have struggled with traditional meditation or who might feel too overwhelmed to try to start a mindfulness practice. So let's get our conversation started. I am very excited to have Dr. Alice Rizzi here with me [00:04:00] today.

Sara: Alice, go ahead and give us a quick introduction, and then we'll go from there.

Alice: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I'm Alice Rizzi. I'm a licensed psychologist in New York, a telehealth provider in Florida, and a mindfulness coach everywhere. I create mindfulness courses, I teach people how to meditate, and I use a lot of the tools that I learned in my psychology doctorate program to just help people live more easeful, less stressful, less overwhelming, less burned-out kind of lives, so that you can actually enjoy some of this experience.

Sara: this is, I think, the third week in a row where we're starting an episode by saying don't leave when you hear the word mindfulness. This is not, we're not going to be talking about sitting still and being quiet necessarily. This is accessible mindfulness. So, we're building those tools for people who might've struggled with mindfulness in the past. So don't go anywhere. Stick around.

Sara: I'm so excited to clear up some of the [00:05:00] misconceptions that people might still have about mindfulness, That's exactly where I wanted to start. What does mindfulness mean to you?

Alice: So, I have my own definition of mindfulness that's come about from doing a lot of research on it, from practicing it, reading books on it. And so, basically the way that I define it is that mindfulness is the quality of being present in this moment with, awareness, acceptance, kindness, compassion, curiosity, and non-judgment. So, that's a lot, especially if you are new to this. So don't feel like you have to remember all of it—you don't. Those are just all the factors that I found to be present when you are practicing. So, the more you practice, the more aware you're going to be, the more kind and compassionate you're going to be. When you practice, we ask that you practice with non-judgment, with curiosity. So these are things that come up naturally, they're not necessarily things you need to think about [00:06:00] doing.

Sara: I am now in love with that sequence of words because it also perfectly describes the mindset that folks benefit from when using the type of goal-setting that I work with. I keep finding new elements of the goal-setting practices I work with, but I had not thought of it as a mindful goal-setting practice. And I'm like, wow, that's actually the same sequence of words. That's really cool.

Alice: Sounds like that's exactly what it is. It sounds like you teach folks to set goals in a mindful way, which is actually a lot of what I do as well. And I talk about values a lot and making sure that people are setting values-based goals rather than emotion-based or fear-driven ones.

Sara: So cool. That just gave me goosebumps.

Sara: I just love to hear you talk a little bit about what was your journey? Where did you start in mindfulness, and then how have you gotten to where you are?

Alice: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I'm going to try to touch on all of those points, and we can always go back if we need to. But this idea of [00:07:00] mindfulness versus meditation is something that I talk a lot about because you can do mindfulness practices and you can live a mindful life without necessarily sitting still and just paying attention to the breath. That is one type of a meditation practice, and there's hundreds, if not thousands, of other ones. So mindfulness meditation is also different from other forms of meditation. Again, one form of it could be sitting still with your eyes closed, paying attention to the breath. But that's just one practice—it doesn't encapsulate all mindfulness meditation and definitely not all meditative practices.

Sara: Right there you're challenging—there's not even aside from there being no one way to practice mindfulness. There's not even no one way to practice meditation. There are a host of practices to experiment with. So if you're someone who has struggled with finding a mindfulness or even meditation practice that's worked for you, this is a encouragement to keep trying.[00:08:00]

Alice: Yeah. And we'll talk about different types of practices as well, but I guess just to give people an idea now, like you can do like a meditative mindfulness practice that is around walking, eating, touching an object, smelling something. There's so many different ways to use your senses, especially in order to be mindful. That can be like a formal mindfulness practice that can have meditative qualities, but it's different from how folks typically picture like meditation, like where you're sitting with your legs crossed, closed eyes like this, like it really doesn't have to look like that. It can look like doing the dishes in a mindful way, and that could be your practice for today. It could be folding your laundry mindfully. And when I say that, using those factors, like you're doing it with awareness, with acceptance, in essence, you're being intentional about whatever it is that you're doing. That's what helps you be [00:09:00] present. That is a mindfulness practice and all a mindfulness meditation is a designated time that you choose to practice being mindful. So I can choose to sit on the couch for five minutes, breathing mindfully, or I can choose to take a five minute mindful walk outside where I pay attention to my senses. Both are still mindfulness. Both are still valid practices.

Sara: You touched on there are lots of different ways to mindfulness. You're familiar with my listeners. So we tend, we skew introverted, not introverted, but we definitely skew introverted here. Lots of folks who are neurodivergent, lots of folks who might feel like they're just wired differently are my listeners. So tell me a little bit about mindfulness for folks like that who might be listening.

Alice: Yeah, let me back up just a little bit because I do want to answer your question about [00:10:00] my particular journey with mindfulness meditation, because I think that will be helpful. So I was first introduced to mindfulness as a concept in undergrad. I was about 20 years old. And it just sounded really interesting because I was introduced to it through the more like traditional way of describing it, like where you can achieve inner peace. And that sounded really appealing to me. In school, I was commuting a lot. There's family drama, relationship drama, all the things that a 20-year-old goes through. And so this idea that this one concept or a principle or practice can help me achieve inner peace, I was like, oh, cool. Let's see what it's about. So I started doing more research on it. And I ended up picking my psychology doctoral program specifically because they had a mindfulness research team. So that started my formal journey into mindfulness. And as part of this research team, we met once a week, and we would start every meeting [00:11:00] with a 5, 10, 15-minute mindfulness practice. And so that's also one place where I learned different ways to practice mindfulness. Now, the person who was facilitating the team, it was the professor. She also ended up being my dissertation chair, the person that supervised my dissertation project over the course of four years. And so I ended up doing my dissertation on mindfulness and on meditation. So I dove even deeper into the research. But the reason I mentioned this is because the person that was supervising me was very insistent that I had to experience like true mindfulness meditation for myself. And so what that meant is that not only was I practicing it daily, I needed to have like my own meditation practice, but I also had to attend a mindfulness-based stress reduction course. So that's an eight-week course where it's like a two, two and a half-hour group that you attend to weekly for two months. And you do these formal, like [00:12:00] 45-minute, 15-minute meditative practices, which I will say even back then was super boring. And to be honest, I still find boring now most of the time. I am not the type of person who would choose to sit still for 45 minutes. And what helped me get so attached in a healthy, fun way to mindfulness is that I didn't have to do that. I didn't have to sit still for 45 minutes. I started my daily practices like walking to and from class and like noticing what I could see around me. There would be a grassy hill, and I would sit on the hill and I would close my eyes for a few moments and take a few deep breaths or listen to the birds chirping or watch people walk by and just notice what I notice. And I would literally take 30 seconds, two minutes, five minutes. And then I would go on with the day, and I started feeling more at peace and things started feeling a little easier. And I started approaching [00:13:00] things with a little bit less urgency, a little bit more space. And so that's when I started realizing that even taking just that 30 seconds or those three deep breaths made me feel a lot better, and made me start approaching other things in my life with that intentional present quality that we were talking about. So I was becoming kinder, less judgmental, more compassionate, and it's all because I was taking those brief moments of mindfulness any way I could

Sara: I'm glad you brought up mindfulness-based stress reduction and partly because a lot of folks who wrestle with some of the things my listeners do might've had chronic stress and been told to meditate or,if at worst, might've been told, "Start meditating," and that's the only guidance they get. Or at best, said, "Do this mindfulness-based stress [00:14:00] reduction sequence." And I think what's really important for people to hear in what you just said is, if those are the only two things we're being offered, there's lots more out there. If those two concepts don't help you resolve your chronic stress or whatever else you are seeking help for, then keep trying, find someone who can help or find a resource who can help.

Alice: Yeah. Because I even remember back in the day, going to those eight classes, like that was stressful. It was a lot of effort for me to actually just show up to those things. I had to drive. It was like between the crazy commuting that I was already doing. So that was a challenge in itself. But then the homework was to practice these meditations for 45 minutes every single day. And I was commuting, I was in class, I was working on my dissertation at times. I was like, I had a job, there was family, and there was so much going on, and it was difficult to commit to even showing up for that 45 minutes every [00:15:00] day. I'm not perfect. I don't advocate everybody or anybody can be perfect. So we do what we can. And so maybe some days that look like 20 minutes. Some days that look like five minutes. Some days I really did show up for the 45 minutes, and a lot of times I fell asleep during that time. So again, it's like part of this is giving yourself permission to show up imperfectly and just to do what you can. Because again, you are approaching this present moment, however the moment is. So sometimes the moment is really boring. Sometimes you're really tired. Sometimes you find yourself judging everything that you're doing or everything that's happening to you. You have those days where you're just super irritable, and nobody can say anything the right way. You can't do anything the right way. Everything just feels like it's blowing up. But you can always take three minutes to look out the window and take a couple of deep breaths. And if even three minutes is hard, just take three breaths. Just start with one breath. One thing that I always teach my [00:16:00] clients is that it's better to do 30 seconds every day than even sit for 10 minutes once a week, because that once a week isn't going to give you what you're looking for. But actually, those few moments that you take every day will.

Sara: You just got us to my next question. I know when we chatted before, you had some specific ideas around overthinkers. So we'll come

Alice: back to

Sara: that in just a minute. But there are two things I want to ask you about. Since you mentioned perfectionism and that challenging our-all-or-nothing thinking, when we're thinking about our practices, do you have any special tips for people who might have that all-or-nothing wiring or that perfectionism streak? Anything you would tell them when they're getting started with a mindfulness practice?

Alice: There's a lot I would tell them. I have an entire program of things I would tell them. I think firstly, is have some self-compassion. Meet yourself [00:17:00] where you are at. Be kind with yourself, be gentle with yourself. Step one is acknowledge that you're only human. Every single one of us is only human. And that's why perfectionism—you can't keep chasing it because that just is going to lead to unhappiness. But you can start where you are now, and where you are now actually is perfect. And I say that because it can't be any other way. Therefore, it must be perfect the way that it actually is because that's how it is. So even just like approaching things from that way, hopefully, can give a little bit more ease, and spaciousness, and grace for you. But then, remembering to that like awareness is a really big component. When people start being mindful, you start by just being aware of your surroundings, aware of your relationships, aware of how you do things. And the three questions that I always encourage my clients to start with, whether they meditate or not, is to ask yourself at least once a day, [00:18:00] what am I thinking? What am I feeling? How does my body feel? Because so many people have no idea. They're so used to, "Oh, hi, how are you? I'm fine. How are you? Great," moving on. But in that moment, nobody is actually checking in with how I actually am. Which is why so many individuals—especially like the high-achievers, ambitious folks, a perfectionist among us —I call myself a "recovering perfectionist" because I still sometimes get carried away with that mindset. And I have to remind myself, "Alice, whoa, slow down. What do you actually want in this moment? What do you actually need in this moment?" And if I can't answer that, "What was I thinking just a second ago? How is that making me feel? What can I feel in my body? Is there like tingling somewhere? Is there pressure somewhere? How is my breathing even right?" Because I might be like, "Why am I so stressed? I don't understand." And it's because I'm breathing like this, and it's like, you're hyperventilating. [00:19:00] And of course, you're feeling stressed and anxious and overwhelmed. And if even in that moment you can just, one long inhale, one long exhale, and you can notice, "Oh, wow, I was breathing really heavily. My shoulders were up to my ears. My chest felt really tight. Something is making me anxious." I recognize that's a sign that I might be anxious and overwhelmed. "What's going on in my day that I might be feeling that way?" Oh, I just got 15 messages from my boss. Or my coworker has been bombarding me with questions all day. Or the kids' school called, and they need me to pick them up, but I can't, and like my partner can't. I have so many demands and responsibilities. It makes sense why I'm feeling this way. What can I do to help you use some of that pressure? Again, mindfulness can just help you take that pause to even just realize, "This is how I'm feeling right now. This is what I'm thinking, and this is everything that's [00:20:00] impacting that," before you ever move on to the next step.

Sara: Your question isn't, "Where do I feel this in my body?" it's a "Check-in with your body." Because the, "Where do you feel this in your body?" question isn't accessible to a lot of us. But when you said, "My shoulders are scrunched up," I was like, "Oh, I can notice that in my body." Like I might not notice my feelings in my body, but I can feel if my shoulders are tense, or my jaw is tense, or my hip hurts. And it feels to me like that's kind of a baby step having more somatic awareness or body awareness.

Alice: Absolutely. Again, we start wherever you are. If it's easier for you to notice, sort of like, even like physically see where your body is, that can be helpful because so many people don't realize that they're walking around like this [demonstrates a tense posture]. Or you might be sitting at your table and you're like this [shows another tense posture], and you might not even realize that you're doing that until somebody asked , "Oh, why are your fists all balled up?" And you're [00:21:00] like, "Oh. I didn't even realize I was doing that." Or you notice, "Oh, my shirt is sweating. Why am I sweating profusely?" That's where you can start, you notice what you notice. And then a part of the practice, especially when you're working with somebody is I ask more of those fine-tuned questions like, "What parts of your body do you tend to notice first?" So many people might notice their chest, their stomach, their throat. For some people, the first I noticed like tingling in my fingers, or I noticed that my feet are scrunched up, or I'm noticing like a headache coming on, or my ears are burning. And then you can build up to, "Okay, you told me that you're feeling overwhelmed. Where's overwhelmed located in your body? Or you feel frustrated? Where does frustration show up in your body?" But like you said, sometimes it takes a little bit before you can get there.

Sara: Yeah, that's really helpful. So then you also have some tips for overthinkers which we might have a few of.

Alice: [00:22:00] Yes! Yeah, so the overthinkers are the people who are always like, "Why am I feeling that way? I shouldn't be feeling that way. Do I look like I'm feeling this?" You almost start being like, you're hyper-aware, but you're also hyper-critical. The overthinkers tend to be really hard on themselves. They tend to judge themselves. I don't know necessarily if like scientifically it overlaps with introversion, but I think that introverts among us, which I definitely am, we tend to spend more time by ourselves recharging. And what do you do when you're by yourself? You think. And that you have time to overthink. So many of my clients get themselves in trouble in a way when they don't give themselves enough things to do to actually live and be present in life. It's like when they're home sick, that's all of the different thoughts come, and they start like spiraling. Or even when they go on vacation, they can't relax because their brain is thinking about everything they left behind at work or everything they're going to have to get to when they [00:23:00] come back. And it's hard for them to even relax in the moment. So that is actually when it is important to do more of those somatic practices —the body practices. To shift some of that energy from everything going on in your mind to either things that are going on in your body or things that are going on in the environment. I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with grounding practices. So grounding practices are basically those exercises that help you be more present and grounded in your current reality. One brief definition or I'll give you an example of a concept that people refer to as time-traveling. So our minds, especially the overthinkers, we time-travel a lot. And we either time-travel into the past or we time-travel into the future. We don't spend as much time in the present as we think we do. So every time you think, "Oh, I should have done that. Why did I say that? What did you say to me? Why did you think that about me?" That's happening in the [00:24:00] past. And then when you're thinking about "Oh, what am I going to do? And I have laundry to do, and then I'm going to have to go on that vacation, and I have to make sure I pack the kids. And are we going to have enough to eat? And did I save up enough money for that? How am I going to be able to afford that? I know the debt that I'm going to and then the creditors are going to come after me." That's all in the future. So your time-traveling; you're not actually here right now. Is this sparking something in you?

Sara: Yeah. Alice is observing my body language the video right now.

Alice: Yeah, so you're noticing your body is scrunching up, right? Because this feeling is so familiar. It's familiar to me too. I think most of us have been there, at least at some point in our lives, if not frequently. And you can bring yourself back into the present by doing some grounding, by practicing some mindfulness, whether that means meditation or not. The easiest way to do that is to notice the five senses. A really common grounding practice is [00:25:00] the "five, four, three, two, one" which you might've heard of before, right? So name five things that you can see in your environment, four things that you might be able to touch, three things that you can hear, two things that you can smell, one thing that you can taste. And because all of those things like your sensory perception is only happening in the present, so it helps you get grounded and be with this moment. So even just as an example, the water tastes cold, the glass feels nice on my hand, if I put my lips against it, I like that sensation and I can close my eyes and just be with that for a moment. I can smell it. I can see what can I hear? And again, just doing that, taking one minute, two minutes to do that, you'll feel a lot more present and you will realize that all of that overwhelm, the anxiety, maybe the excitement, That was all your mind time-traveling either into the past or into the future, [00:26:00] because right now, in this moment, chances are you're actually okay. At least when it comes to physical safety, you are fine. You are safe. There's no immediate danger right now. Even though so often it feels that way, when your imagination throws you into what could be or what was.

Sara: Even when you say "grounding," I obviously had a little bit of identification with some of what you just described in terms of the ways that overthinkers time-travel. And when you said the word grounding, and this is interesting, because I struggle with somatic and body practices. I'm a really big brain connected to something that doesn't always register. But when you said "grounding," I felt my feet. It can be that simple of just that wasn't me grounding, quote unquote, but it was my system heard the word and then said, "Yep, my feet are touching the ground." And even that is a [00:27:00] cool for someone like me, who struggles with body-based practices, you don't have to do it "right."

Alice: I would actually argue, Sara, that you did it exactly right, because your body intuitively knew how to ground. And the way that felt maybe easier for you to is to pay attention to your feet. And that is a grounding practice. You can literally just bring your attention to your feet, your toes, your heels, your ankles, and just notice what's going on there. You can stand up and take a gentle walk, pacing just back and forth a couple of times, wherever you are. You can go outside and plant your feet in the dirt or in the grass and notice what that feels like. And something that I even like to do is I'll go and I'll touch some leaves— whether it's weeds or grass or basil, whatever is around—like, touch something living, that can help immediately ground your body in this moment. So, it doesn't have to be just through your feet. It could be through any [00:28:00] body part. And that's why, I think so often we say "stop and smell the roses" because that. can be a grounding practice. It connects your sensory perception to something that's happening here, like the flower in your face.

Sara: What this is calling my attention to is, in the mechanism that I was introduced to meditation, of course, non-judgment was one of the principles that I taught. And I don't think I ever realized that doesn't just mean a lack of judgment externally. It's also being non-judgmental of yourself or that to yourself. So, that's also what I hear when you talk about different approaches to practice and different ways to practice perfectly imperfectly human, is that we can the non-judgment that we may be working on cultivating toward others and also give ourselves that gift [00:29:00] too.

Alice: Yes. absolutely. And that's why I think like the kindness and the compassion tie so closely with it, because if you can be kind and compassionate towards yourself, it will help you judge yourself less. So not only will you likely be less critical and judgey of other people, but hopefully you'll also do the same for yourself.

Sara: Yeah. Awesome. Alice, is there anything I haven't asked you that you'd like to share today?

Alice: One thing that I wanted to mention, because you said that sometimes you have a hard time connecting to your body— outside of even just grounding in your senses or the physical and connected to what we literally just spoke about with self-compassion—is I often like to teach people like the self-hug. And so for some people, that might sound really cheesy or corny or silly or stupid or notice all of those words that even as I said, that might your brain offers kindly to you, right? And try it anyway. And I [00:30:00] actually learned this from another therapist on Instagram. Go figure, sometimes there's useful tips there, but use with caution, right? But this is what it looks like: You take the palm of one hand and you put it on under your armpit—so like for women where the bra strap would go. For men, it's like the rib cage. And the other hand goes on the outside of your shoulder. And so take a moment and then if you can even close your eyes, and if you want, you can even slowly sway back and forth, and you can even move one hand a little bit up and down your shoulder. And I don't know about you, but my breathing immediately slowed down, and my voice immediately slowed down because there's something just so soothing and comforting about this. So, Sara, you can open your eyes. But literally doing this for just 10 seconds has such an immediate grounding and soothing and compassionate effect. I immediately feel my own presence with myself. I [00:31:00] am here, and I offer myself this kindness, this gentleness, this love in this moment.

Sara: Yeah It's really cool. I think when people hear "self-hug," they think, like woo-woo emotion, but when I just practiced that with you, what I felt was physical compression, and that felt good to my body.

Alice: It regulates your nervous system, literally. And it's so immediate. It's mind boggling how quickly it can work. But it's actually really similar because so many of us can get dysregulated so quickly. You might smell something, and we know smell is a really strong connector to memory, and it might bring up really negative memories, like sadness or grief or anger. But actually just as quickly, you can offer yourself a self-hug, and that will almost just as immediately regulate your nervous system down because You're offering yourself that sense of safety. When we are hugged in this way, we feel safe, secure, and [00:32:00] connected. So yes, it feels great if somebody else offers us this kind of hug, but it's actually something that's always accessible to ourselves to do.

Sara: Yeah, that's amazing. Alice, this has been a phenomenal conversation. I know we talked about, we might have another one about when to consider coaching, when to consider therapy, and then what to look for in providers. So we'll back for that episode. But in the meantime, where can people find you if they want to learn more about your work?

Alice: Thank you, firstly, so much for having me, Sara. This was great. I love talking about this stuff. So it's something that I do a lot on my Instagram at Dr. Alice Rizzi. My website is togethermindful.com, where people can find a free mindfulness toolkit, and especially like the overthinkers, the people who are too busy to meditate. And I say that in jest because I've been there, but I have a week's worth of just three-minute exercises that you can practice every day. [00:33:00] So you can't tell me that you don't have three minutes to help yourself feel better, especially if you have problems like chronic stress and chronic overthinking, overdoing, and burnout. You can find three minutes in your day to do some mindfulness practices, and I show you seven different ways that you can do it, only one of which is sitting and breathing. So that's on togethermindful.com, and if anybody happens to be in New York or Florida and is interested in therapy, that's dralicerizzi.com.

Sara: That's awesome. Dr. Rizzi, well, Alice, this has been just a phenomenal conversation. I just can't thank you enough. Really, I wish that I had access to information like this earlier in my practice. So I'm just really grateful that you're here to share with my listeners today.

Alice: Thank you so much, Sara. And totally me too. Like, it was such an accident that I stumbled on mindfulness like when I was 20 years old, and I'm so grateful because I can honestly say that it has changed the [00:34:00] trajectory of my life. For anybody who doesn't know me, I don't think we mentioned it, I used to be an anxious ball. I used to be an extremely anxious individual. I had a lot of social anxiety. I used to have a lot of physical symptoms associated with anxiety, and when I got on the path of mindfulness, as cheesy as that might sound, so much of that changed. And it's not that I don't experience it anymore, it's that I manage it so much better now in a healthy way, where I'm still able to enjoy and actually love my life, whether anxiety is present or not.

Sara: That even makes me, because I have chronic pain and other kind of history stuff too. But it also makes me think if you develop basic mindfulness skills, then you also catch what you're feeling in your body before it becomes chronic or before it becomes worse. So, it just, it makes absolute sense. All the years that I was coached to reduce or told by medical professionals, "You need to reduce your stress, you need [00:35:00] to start meditating," but that didn't sink in for me as much as what you just said: that if you can cultivate some basic mindfulness, you can notice what's going on with your body before it's a crisis.

Alice: Yes, I think you summed that up perfectly. And that literally starts with just like taking one mindful breath, going to the window and just looking outside, sinking your toes into the dirt. That's literally the start of your mindfulness journey, and it's so cool to see where it can take you.

Sara: I can't thank Dr. Alice Rizzi enough for joining me for this episode, and I hope you have a few helpful takeaways to help you de-perfect and not overthink your mindfulness practices. Alice's contact info is in the show notes at findrc.co/thinkydoers. And don't forget to join me for Goal Fridays or the replays.

Thank you for joining and listening. I [00:36:00] really can't wait to hear from you about what in this episode resonated, so I would love to hear your feedback. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter at findrc.co/newsletter, so you can hear about everything happening all at once before the general public.

 you can find me at Sara Lobkovich pretty much everywhere. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one. You're always invited to contact me by email. The easiest one to spell is sara, S A R A at Thinkydoers.com. If you have other Thinkydoers in your work world, please pass this episode along. We really appreciate your referrals, your mentions, your shares, and your reviews.

Thank you for tuning in today. And I look forward to hearing the questions this prompts for you.

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