How do you find a self-care practice that fits your busy schedule and actually works for you? Vivianne offers a practical starting point for anyone who wants to manage stress but feels short on time or unsure where to look. With her signature energy and humor, she walks through ways to discover options using online searches, AI tools, and resource lists, along with what to check before trusting the results.

Drawing on more than 20 years of personal exploration, Vivianne introduces her Wildly Busy Humans Self-Care Shortlist, featuring favorite practices with a range of time commitments. She also shares a simple approach to choosing one, giving it a fair test, and deciding whether it fits your everyday life. You don’t have to try everything at once. This conversation invites you to find a manageable place to begin.

The Stress-Busting Good Stuff:

• A more focused online search offers a starting point for finding self-care practices that fit your schedule.
• Searching with AI brings useful possibilities, along with a few things to check before trusting its suggestions.
• Vivianne opens her personal shortlist of favorites gathered through more than 20 years of exploration.
• Choosing your first practice involves more than finding the shortest option.
• Giving a practice a fair test helps you discover whether it deserves a place in your everyday life.

Prompts:

Complete AI prompt:

Perform as though you are well versed in self care and meditative practices, and look for practices that take less than 30 minutes time. Provide the URL, the name of the practice, the amount of time to perform sessions of that practice. How the information for the practice is delivered. Sort the results starting with the shortest methods first. Do not guess. Cite each resource.

Regular search engine queries:

"self care practices" + "less than 30 minutes"

"meditative practices" + "less than 30 minutes"

"meditation practices" + "less than 30 minutes"

Get your copy of The Wildly Busy Humans Self-Care Shortlist - A self-care advocate's 20+ year curated list of powerful self-care methods at https://wildlybusyhumans.com/shortlist

About the Host:

After nearly 50 years as a critical care R.N. and first responder — and her own battle with breast cancer — Vivianne Winters Israel knows crisis from every angle. Now she teaches wildly busy caregivers, parents, and teachers a neuroscience-backed, two-minute stress-release practice that fits into any schedule, no matter how chaotic. She's also the award-winning author of Tender Moments: Diary of a First-time Mother, winner of the Author of Impact Award, and currently writing the Abby Hart children's novel series, helping young readers navigate today's social and emotional challenges. Her podcast, Stress Busters for Wildly Busy Humans,— proof that real relief doesn't require an hour to spare.

Connect with Vivianne:

Website: https://wildlybusyhumans.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/wildlybusyhumans

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WildlyBusyHumans

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Welcome back to Stress Busters for Wildly Busy Humans. If you're ready to release your stress and reclaim your joy in life, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Vivian Winters Israel. Let's get to it. This is episode two: True Self-Care for Busy Humans. Find what works for you. Predominantly, self-care and meditative practices require more time than many of us have these days. Many of them can require a different clothes, a change of clothes for flexibility in motion, and/or body positions that we aren't yet, or possibly not at all, interested in struggling with, or they can't

be woven easily into our day, kind of on the spot between meetings, activities, going from point A to point B, so today we're going to discuss how to find a practice that is both a fit for you and a fit for your wild schedule. Now, one way are resource lists that you may learn of or happen to cross generally online, but could be offline. Now, presumably, whoever put these their list together did it in a clear manner, presented it cleanly, and verified the sources. But you will need to dig into any given resource list to answer that question. Next up is using your favorite search engine. Now,

for using your regular search engine, Google or the like, you might be putting your search query in as a long worded question, as though you were speaking to someone else, or maybe you're using keywords. If you're using keywords, or there's a better chance for less than 50 gazillion returns. So if you're not using like long tail keywords, which are collection of keywords together, or grouping them in a different way to improve your returns. I'm going to give you three options to try for this particular kind of search. Now, some of those words are going to be grouped together, and

I will be doing them in air quotes, which you're only going to see if you're watching YouTube and plus sign. But you will find the text of these in the show notes, and I will read these so that I can get them absolutely correct in how I had worded them. Now, this is how I searched for it before AI engines were here, and I recently went back and searched this way again to see if these search query strings actually still work, and they do. So, the first one. Now you're going to group a couple of three words together. First string is going to be self care practices. Now, some people put a hyphen

between the word self and care, and some people don't. Same goes for search engines, but for search in search engine wise, it it doesn't matter if you put the hyphen in there or not. 90 to 95% you're going to get the same results. So repeating our first string, our first query, in quotes, self care practices with or without the hyphen up to you. Then a plus sign, then in quotes less than 30 minutes. Okay, that whole thing, those two groups in quotes, and with the plus sign in between them, that was one query. Next query is meditative practices in quotes. Then plus sign. Then again in

quotes less than 30 minutes. That's your second query option. Third query option is meditation practices in quotes. Then the plus sign. Then again in quotes. Less than 30 minutes. Okay, that's your third one. Now this should reduce your 50 gazillion results to merely 10 million. It will reduce it. Now you can use all three of them, just not all at the same time. You may get some different variation of results doing this, depending on how the content of each of those things is how they exist online. So if you want to do all three, fine, do them all. All three, just don't do them all at

the same time. Look down through a screen or two of the returns to see if there's anything shows up in one or the other that was more interesting than the first query that you ran. Now a. Regular search engine is going to give you clear, clickable results, though there is not going to be any consistent format. And what I find is that most of them, even though you ask for individual times, they're not going to come back with verified individual time durations.

But that is the deal with search engines, regular search engines. Now, going to using AI engines, AI artificial intelligence or alternative intelligence, if you prefer that term. Now, when you're searching with an AI engine, instead of not that it isn't correct, that it is still a query, but the more correct term for what you're putting into it is called a prompt. P R O M P T prompt. So I'm giving you a prompt recommendation for an AI engine, which would be AI engines are like ChatGPT, Claude AI, or Gemini. Chat and Claude each have paid and free accounts. I have to say, I have not

actually used Gemini, at least not intentionally. Sometimes you're at Google, you're not sure what you're using, but I don't know that they have a free account. I would get imagine they do don't even know if they have paid accounts. I would imagine they do. So whichever AI engine, and there are others. It's the only ones I'm talking about here. I'm going to give you a prompt recommendation. And again, I'm going to read this. Okay, quote: Perform as though you are well versed in self care and meditative practices, and look for practices that take less than 30 minutes time. Period. Provide the

URL, comma, the name of the practice, comma, the amount of time to perform sessions of that practice. Period, comma. Excuse me. How the information for the practice is delivered. Period. Sort the results starting with the shortest methods first. Period. End quote. That whole thing was the prompt, which is no pretty much a paragraph. Now, a prompt for an AI engine could be many paragraphs. It could be a long, drawn-out document. So, the difference between searching an AI engine and a regular search engine. Now, the results that you're going to get with an AI search, the returns as they

come back, they'll be clean. They'll be well organized. We've formatted some similarly, and have plausible sounding practices and times. However, AI does have some issues, even the fancy-dancy, most recent and escalating versions of the agentic AIs, agentic generative. Excuse me, AIs, and that is that assuming some manner of life existence or an existence at all for an AI is that its mission in its little electronic life is to provide an answer to your question. If it can't find an answer, it'll make it up. That is one of the problems with AI. It's the biggest problem with AI. So, to the

prompt that I already told you about, I've got two little additions, tiny sentences to add to the end of it, and you can also use these two little sentences at the end of any prompt that you're using for whatever AI search you may be doing, the first sentence is "Do not guess. Period. You just tuck it into the your original prompt, and what this does is it reduces the false returns, the false returns that the AI makes up because it so badly wants to serve you an answer are referred to as hallucinations. This helps reduce the hallucinations. Secondly, second sentence, short little sentence,

put in cite each resource. C I T E cite each resource. Cite being derivation of citation, which is the source of the information. This will allow you more quickly to be able to review whether the identified resources it's giving you actually exists and contains the information you're looking for, so those two little things will help you with your AI searches if you're not familiar with using AI searches. And as I mentioned, you can find the text for the search engine query, string query, and prompt in the show notes. Now, when it comes. Resource list, wouldn't you know? I have my own

resource list. You knew that was coming, right? Over the last 20 plus years of my own exploration of self care practices, I created a list, curated a list of my favorites, the ones that I found to be most powerful, and the ones that I continue to use. Now, are they that the list is clean? It goes beyond being merely verified by what I've just explained, and the list does not include my own two-minute method or any affiliate links. Simply my 20-plus years of curated favorites.

You can save yourself a lot of time by downloading the wildly busy human self-care shortlist to begin your exploration for a practice that is a fit for you. The shortest methods are listed first. The link to the short list can be found in the show notes, of course. Now, regarding lists being clean and clear, is mine. I think so. Here's why. Each resource has a brief description, a link to the source, and also an image next to the description of the source, either the logo of that company so you can recognize it on the website, or of the cover if it's a book, so you can be certain you're in

the right place. So let's do an overview of the methods in my short list. The first two methods are the awe method, as in awe, and the laser focus method. Each of these take only two minutes once learned. The third and fourth on my list are the two proprietary audio technologies that I learned of. The third one is Hollow Sync, my first and quite unexpected self-care tool discovery. They used to be only long programs, 30s, but usually 6090, minutes. However, over the recent years, they have developed some shorter Life situation specific meditation tracks ranging from 22 to 26 minutes.

Fourth on the list is paraliminals. There is a vast library of life situation specific tracks which run 20 to 26 minutes, and one that is only 10 minutes. Fifth on my list is Spring Forest Keigon. Kegon is a gentle method of directing energy through your body. It has been around longer than Tai Chi. There are many Kegon practices available. A wide range of prices, including even free ones online. This one, my favorite, is pricey, but incredibly powerful. And part of that comes from the different conditions, situations, some chronic things that they discuss health-wise and how you can

direct your Kegon to work with those issues, but it is hands down my favorite Kegon method, which is why it's on my short list. The sessions, the Kegon sessions, are 26 minutes. Next, let's dig into how to use the short list to discover your first method to choose. Know that this process I'm going to go through with you will also work for any other resource list you come across and want to explore. First, read the description on the short list to find one or two that interest you, and the length of time for that method that would fit into your schedule. Second, explore that or those

methods via the link to learn more about it. Them, iter them. Next, very important, pick 1o n e1 and only one to start with. Allow yourself one to two months to intentionally, intentionally evaluate how it's working for you. Now, what doesn't? What do I mean by intentionally? Doing it once a week over a month or two isn't going to tell you enough. Absolute minimum, at least twice a week. Better three, of course. Daily is optimal, and that just may not work for you. I totally understand that, but you got to give it at least two. Better three. Days a week over the one or two months to

understand that this is really going to work for you. Now, if that first choice doesn't work for you, or it did but you wonder if there's something that might work better for you, try another, allowing that same one to two months of intentional evaluation to discover, determine if that's working for you. Now, don't do the two at the same time. When you, if you, that first one you pick, you want to try another one. Don't do both of them. Stop the first one. Start and be intentional with the next one. Okay, when you find the one that the practice that really resonates with you, practice

it regularly, optimally. Regularly is daily, but at least three days a week. Okay, regular practice of your chosen method is what will result in the benefits across several areas of your day-to-day life experience. Got that? Okay. Now, as I mentioned, or maybe I didn't, you can find a link to the wildly busy humans self-care shortlist in the show notes. That's all we're going to cover today. So that's it for us for now. Until next time.