The Morning Upgrade Podcast Featuring Audreyanna Garrett

Welcome to episode #20 of the Morning Upgrade Podcast. This week I talked to Audreyanna Garrett, a writer and blogger who also enjoys reading and traveling.

Top Talking Points

• A large part of happiness is making the choice to be happy.
• Try to find a lesson in every experience.
• Tips for new writers and how you can overcome your writer’s block.

Resources & Links

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Connect With Audreyanna at audriwrites.com

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Episode Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to the morning upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote. Where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.

Ryan Cote:

Hey everyone. This is Ryan Cote with the morning upgrade podcast. Today, I’m super excited to be speaking with Audreyanna Garrett. Hey, Audreyanna. How’s it going? How are you?

Audreyanna Garrett:

I’m doing well. Can’t complain at all. How about yourself?

Ryan Cote:

Excellent. Yep. Doing really well. So why don’t we start out by you telling us what you do and then what you enjoy doing what your interests are?

Audreyanna Garrett:

So I’m a writer, a published author, and a blogger, but outside of that, essentially I work in public service. So I literally just kind of help people for a living. And I find that I enjoy doing that most. I do that through my blog and also through my work. But outside of that hobby-wise, I also enjoyed reading, traveling, you know, and spending time with my family and my girlfriend.

Ryan Cote:

Have you always enjoyed helping people? Like what attracts you to help other people? Have you always been like that?

Audreyanna Garrett:

I have always been a people person. I’ve always been very passionate about it, and I’ve always had a job where I interacted with people. I always have gotten a positive response from adults and children, you know, in all of my interactions with them. So it’s just something that’s fulfilling to me. You know, I enjoy doing that. I’m always complimented on my ability to connect with someone. You know, people always appreciate being able to share different things without being judged or whatever the scenarios are different obviously. So it’s just nice, you know, for me, I get a sense of happiness from that, gratification from that. So I just really enjoy doing it.

Ryan Cote:

That’s actually a great transition to a question I don’t normally ask. And maybe I should because this is a personal development blog and the question is on happiness. You’ve got a blog post on your blog that I thought was really well done on the keys to happiness and you have 10 points on there. So I recommend everyone going over there to read it. And that will be linked up in the show notes page. But if you could summarize happiness in one or two sentences, like what is the key to happiness.

Audreyanna Garrett:

In one or two sentences or more because I am a writer, so I can be a bit long-winded, but essentially happiness is a choice. All of the points that I’ve mentioned, there’s an element of choosing to be different or choosing to be intentional with one of those 10 things. So you have to make a choice to be happy and do what it takes to maintain that happiness. So if I had to just sum it up in that, that would essentially be like the overall tone. But a lot of people typically don’t realize that your happiness is essentially a choice for you, but that’s pretty much all it is for me. Like you just have to choose, choose to live in your truth, choose to be honest, choose to say, Hey, I’m not gonna deal with this, or I’m not going to go there today. I’m going to be present and happy in a better place and do what it takes to maintain that.

Ryan Cote:

Yeah, that answer really resonates with me because I agree with you, happiness is a choice. You can’t get happiness from external things and maybe we can temporarily, you know, you get a new car, I guess you feel a little happy for a little bit, but really it has to be with inside you. And it’s a choice you have to choose to be happy, even when things are not going that well, it will pass. And I think it really is like a mindset shift choosing happiness. So I’m glad you shared that. Audreyana, let’s talk about morning routines. Do you have one?

Audreyanna Garrett:

I would say at the time that you asked me, yes, I had newly started developing some morning routine, but before I didn’t really have any of those things in place. So now I might get up at about six o’clock and start reading my devotionals and just kind of clear my mind and just let some stuff go because sometimes we don’t always wake up in a good space, but by reading my devotional and taking some quiet time before I really just start getting ready for my day, I just shift my attitude, shift my focus. And I find that I’ve ended up having better days since I’ve started doing that. And so, yeah, essentially, that’s what I do during the day, just wake up read my devotionals and that’s it.

Ryan Cote:

Good. Yeah. Everyone’s morning routine is different. I’ve been doing morning routines for years now for a few years, and it’s changed a lot, kind of been doing the same routine for a little while now, but it’s definitely not what I started with. So everyone’s got a different routine, whatever works for you to start the day off right. Have you ever tried meditating?

Audreyanna Garrett:

I have. I don’t do it as consistently as I would like to, but I definitely do have moments of stillness and quiet and I just sit, it’s very peaceful for me. I usually will do it in moments where I’m like highly anxious or highly stressed and have a lot going on. I should probably try to incorporate that more into a daily thing, like 10 minutes here or five minutes. But I do it definitely when I’m overwhelmed or highly stressed out, I will take time to meditate.

Ryan Cote:

Yeah. I only do 10 minutes. I read that you have to do it for longer like 20 or 30 minutes, but just 10 minutes I still find I get benefits from it. And 10 minutes when you’re sitting there not doing anything and just trying to keep your brain quiet, 10 minutes actually is a decently long time. It feels like it. So, you know, 10 minutes is what I’m able to stick with consistently every morning. So that’s what I go with. Do you have any habits like personal development habits? Obviously, you write a lot, but do you have any personal development habits that you’ve tried and true for you?

Audreyanna Garrett:

I typically try to learn from every situation and every encounter that I have, you know, any trial that I go through, everything. I try to find a lesson in everything because those are my areas for improvement. Assessing those situations give me the opportunity to identify areas of improvement. And so I like to do that in everything, and maybe the situation didn’t end bad but I could have communicated something different or approach someone better, something like that. So I usually try to use every encounter that I have every trial that I have, every experience to just identify areas of personal improvement and development, and then just make the choice to do those things better. So I like to typically say the more I learn the more I grow and the more I evolve, you know, and I just choose to allow every single one of my experiences to make me a better person. I try to be as compassionate as I can be. I’m a very loving person already, but I also try to be empathetic as well.

Ryan Cote:

I think being a kind person is so important. I try to really instill that in my three daughters cause I feel like they’re still young enough where they’ll sort of listen to me. And so I’m trying to like get that into their brain to be a kind person. But I think the point you made on there, I think is important to pull out as being a lifelong student. You never know everything and you always have to keep learning from experiences from other people. I love the fact that we live in a day now where you’ve got all these people that like experts in their fields or whatever, sharing all this content, whether it’s through podcasts or through books. Literally, for $15, you could buy a book from the CEO of whatever corporation that has 30 years of experience running the company and he or she will instill the lessons that they’ve learned in a $15 book. I think it’s just incredible.

Audreyanna Garrett:

Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan Cote:

So speaking of books, let’s talk about writing. What does that look like for you? Like what’s your routine for writing, for keeping up with your blog?

Audreyanna Garrett:

So my blogs specifically, I usually reserve the weekends for my blog posts. Because of the content, how I structure the content, and how I come up with the topics, I don’t always… I have in my drafts just a list of topics. So sometimes I start with the topic and that’s it, the content comes to me at a later time. So I usually try to work on that stuff during the weekends, but it takes me a while to develop some of these posts. And yet they might be three-minute reads or five-minute reads. But for me, that’s like a week’s worth of work just to make sure it’s flowing, it’s hitting the high notes and it’s got everything that needs to be said in there in a very understandable way. So I heard in this movie, I think that 90% of writing is like rewriting and it didn’t resonate with me until I heard that. And I’m like, oh yes, it kinda is because I’ll start out writing but then I spend most of my time rewriting it, polishing it, trying to make sure it’s reader-friendly.

Ryan Cote:

Have you learned anything about yourself through all the writing that you’ve done?

Audreyanna Garrett:

Yes. Some of the ways that some of this content comes to me, it’s weird. I’m not learning some of it until I’m actually writing it and composing the post. So I’m like, oh yeah, like that was essentially the point of that lesson. You know, you can go through something and experience something and still not truly always understand what the point of it was. But a lot of times with me writing, I get to understand what the point of those experiences was for me. So I enjoy that. It’s kind of like, oh, the light bulb went off. I get it now. Okay.

Ryan Cote:

You have a hard time coming up with topics to write about or is it like a muscle you’ve done it so long that the creativity muscle, you’re walking around your normal day and you just see topics to write about like all around you or is it still like… I guess like, what’s the hardest thing about writing?

Audreyanna Garrett:

So for me, it’s not really hard. I kinda explained my ability to write as like a God-given talent because I’ve always been able to do it. It’s not something that I ever went to school for. It’s not something that I ever felt like I had even really take courses in because I’ve pretty much always done it well. So writing for me has never really been a challenge. I’m like, you know, what you described earlier, someone who’s, my creativity is always going. In any conversation I have, any counters, if I’m walking down the street, you know, content will come to me. A title essentially will come to me. And then when I go back after I’ve completed one post and look at those titles, I just kind of go to the one I’m drawn to intuitively to write about, and then I’ll write about it. I don’t force my writing. So everything that I write comes naturally for me. Even with my books, I’m sometimes shocked that I’ve been able to write so many books within a years’ time and self-publish them. Because the way the content comes, I mean, if it’s flowing, it’s flowing, but I might go a month without writing anything or two months. And then at month three, I’m intuitively drawn to write and my creativity is just going and then I might write three chapters. So it just comes from me. And I usually just act on it as it presents itself. And then if not, I don’t force it. I try not to force it at all.

Ryan Cote:

Well, I love that you’re using your skill to write about some of the topics are personal development. Like I mentioned, the beginning of this podcast, the key to happiness, that blog post. I recommend everyone go into your blog to read it because I think it’s really good. And I think just writing in general, like I’ve got this podcast morning upgrade, but I’ve got a blog to morning upgrade.com. And so I write content for that and I do this podcast. And so I look at it as like, you’re creating an asset that it’s like you can have an impact on people that read it, help people. It’s there forever. It’s there for your family to read. So I encourage everyone listening to write and create content. I’ve got one more question for you and then you can tell everyone what’s the best way for them to connect with you or to learn more about you. I want to talk about your perfect day. What does that look like?

Audreyanna Garrett:

A perfect day? That’s a really good question. I’ve never really thought about it. But I guess for me in the simplest way possible a perfect day would just look like a day of laughter, sun because I love the sun even though I recently discovered I’m kind of allergic to the outdoors, but a good breeze. And you know, I love the sound of the ocean. I have always been a water baby. I love the pool during the summertime. I love the oceans. I love the lake. So whenever I’m around water, I find that I’m the most peaceful, you know, sun and water essentially. So that’s what a perfect day would look like for me, If I could have all those elements together, that’d be great.

Ryan Cote:

Yeah, it does sound perfect. Can I admit something? I go to sleep with like a sound machine thing and there’s like waves, I’m like a baby, you know, so I like the sound waves too.

Audreyanna Garrett:

It’s so relaxing. Like it’s just peaceful and calming. I love it.

Ryan Cote:

Okay, great. Well, I really enjoyed this conversation Audreyanna. What’s the best way that someone can connect with you or learn more about you if they want to learn more?

Audreyanna Garrett:

audriwrites.com is my website, it’s my blog. You know, it has my literary projects listed, services I provide, any features or press that I’ve done. Everything’s there, it’s a one-stop-shop. You can contact me through there as well. So again, that’s audriwrites.com. So A U D R I W R I T E S.com.

Ryan Cote:

Excellent. And we’ll link that up in the show notes page, everyone. Thanks for listening. And it was really great talking with you.

Audreyanna Garrett:

Thank you.

Announcer:

Thanks for listening to the morning upgrade podcast, please subscribe and review, and don’t forget to visit us at morningupgrade.com for more content.