Episode 5 : Is it Self care or Selfish?

In today's episode I will talking a bit about Self-care - what it is, why we need it and give you some examples of what I do for my Self-care. I also announce what the book of the month will be for November. 

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to my podcast here in your life. My name is Odelia and I'm your host. If you've been listening to my episodes, thank you very much and thank you for returning. And if this is your first time with me welcome to your safe space. I know that I've been promising you a show on emotional eating, but to be honest, this topic is so important and relevant to a lot of people, it's gotten slightly bigger than what I'd initially planned.

And so I'm going to be postponing this until January. This is because I have a whole month of content lined up for you on this topic, as well as a book of the month. I figured that January is probably the best time, because we are also motivated with our New Year's resolutions. That'd be a great topic to focus on, and I hope you're not going to be disappointed.

In today's episode, we're going to be talking about the importance of self care and looking at some examples. For me personally, this all started because I've been in a very chaotic energy over the last two years in an attempt to try and find my life purpose. And like most people, I've made the mistake of thinking that life purpose is equivalent to what work I'm supposed to be doing for a living, that is, what is my ideal career or my calling.

But that's not what life purpose is about. The life purpose could be as simple as just going to therapy and healing your childhood wounds, breaking generational breaking generational trauma, or joining a community initiative to help the environment, or facing your fears in life. It does not necessarily have anything to do with how you can earn your money.

I think that we get caught up in thinking that this is what a life purpose is, and it's important to know that there's going to be so many products out there, so many courses, or people trying to sell you stuff on how to figure out what your life purpose is. But if you're not ready, if the universe is not ready to reveal it to you yet, then it's not your time.

For me, I came to this realization about a year ago when I was listening to a podcast. I can't remember which one, unfortunately. At this point was made very clear. Also, when learning astrology, it becomes clear that the two are very different. And while sometimes you definitely can make a living out of your purpose, that's not necessarily the case for everyone.

And we need to be aware of that and shift our intentions towards why we need to find it in the first place. Now, in a previous episode where I talked about my breath break session that I'd had that was so life changing, oh my gosh, what I didn't talk about was the exploration of life purpose. As I mentioned, I've been on this journey of life purpose discovery for more than two years and at times it's just driven me, not only crazy, but my family too.

I've been all over the place trying different things, but never settling on one. And just when I do settle on one, then I get another idea which I feel I need to try and so I've stretched myself in a million different directions all at once. This has not helped, and this prevented me from really focusing on any one thing for long enough to really know if it's for me or not.

Now in the brief work session, after I had my breakthrough moment, the facilitator then guided us to connect to our higher selves and to ask what our life purpose was. I was so super excited. I was hopefully going to get my answer and then nothing, absolutely nothing came through for me. I was so upset about that, but after coming out of the session, And the facilitator said to us, If you've got nothing, then it is not yet your time.

And in that moment, something struck a chord within me. Like a deeper knowing, or if you will, my higher self confirming that it's just not time, because I need to focus on my healing journey. I got so much peace in that moment. I journaled on it and afterwards I just felt relieved. I didn't realize what an, the extent of my anxiety had been around this and the anxious state that I've been in for so long to try and figure this out.

I've been trying everything to try and figure it out and nothing ever seemed to work and now it all makes sense. It just wasn't my time. So I put an end to most of the craziness and stretching myself in all different ways and directions and I decided to just focus on my healing for now because I know When the time is right, it will come to me.

Let's not overestimate the power of the path that we're on and what we're supposed to be doing in this lifetime. In the next chapter of my healing journey, I'm working on my self care. This is because, although after my breathwork session, I realized that the strong sense of self love that I was feeling was starting to wane.

And that's not because the breathwork was a temporary fix, not by any means. But because I realized, like in any relationship, the love relationship that we have with ourselves needs to be nurtured and cultivated daily, especially when you're on a healing journey. This care for yourself can make you feel in control and loved, even if it's only by yourself.

What a wonderful feeling to know that deep within you, you love yourself and you have your back no matter what. Let's work on this and make it our priority. Now, let's talk about self care, because usually when we talk about self care or self care is mentioned, you will think of manicures and pedicures and spa days, facials and massages.

And although all of this sounds absolutely lush and divine, and is a good way of spoiling ourselves. It is far from what self care is. Unfortunately, these are the things that get marketed to us by companies as self care, as a selling point. Self care, in actual fact, is the action and practice of prioritizing your personal well being, which can have the knock on effect of reducing stress and enhancing your happiness and satisfaction.

Self care is about paying attention to your feelings and making choices. and sometimes sacrifices for the sake of your mental and physical health. Basically it's putting you first, you putting you first. It's important to remember that self care practices are going to look different from It's more about finding what is good for you so that you can feel rejuvenated physically and emotionally as opposed to just simply something to check off your to do list.

We have enough to do lists. We don't need anything else on our to do list that's unnecessary. Here are some of my self care practices so that you can get an idea of where to start. Number one, if it feels wrong, then don't do it. This is our intuition telling us that something does not align with our core beliefs or values.

You don't know, you don't owe anyone that much of your personal peace, and no is a full sentence. I've had to learn this the hard way. Also, it goes back to doing things with good intention. If what you're doing doesn't feel right, then you're going to have negativity attached to it, whatever it is that you're doing, no matter how well meaning you may be.

Always believe the same life. Karma is going to come and get me if I say no to do something, even if I don't want to do it. But, if we realize that if the intention behind what we're doing is a negative intention, then there is no good karma in that anyway, right? So this kind of defeats the point.

Think about when you do something with a purely good intention. How good do you feel about yourself afterwards? There is no resentment or negativity attached. Just pure joy, and this is what you should be aiming for. Healthy boundaries are key, and being clear about them is so important. You can go back and listen to my episode on boundaries if you need more help with this one and a book recommendation.

Number two, never speak badly about yourself. Now this is a difficult one for most of us because most people do speak negatively about themselves on some level. I heard this the other day from Lauren Godlett. When she sat down with Oprah recently and she said that the next time you find yourself talking bad about yourself, you need to ask yourself three questions.

Are you ready? Do you have a pen and paper? Okay, here we go. Number one, is it kind? Number two, is it true? And number three, is it useful? Lauren is a psychotherapist and a bestselling author to a book called Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. It's so hard juggling the day to day of not only being a woman, but a wife and a mother.

Between school runs, working, cleaning the house, and the daily mental load that we carry, we really don't need to carry these negative thoughts as well. So the next time you catch yourself saying something negative about yourself, you now know what to do. We'll take some practice and some getting used to, but Just start and eventually it will just catch on and become natural for you.

Number three, don't be afraid to say yes. I struggle with this one a lot too. My partner loves to stay home and do a Netflix and chill every night. Now, this is okay for him because that is what he enjoys and is comfortable doing. I, however, want to do things in the evening for myself, to be honest. I spend the whole day, every day doing stuff for everybody else.

When I want to do something else in the evening, He is mostly supportive, but I know that he would prefer it if I spent the evening with him on the couch. This then puts me in a headspace of feeling selfish if I go and do something without him. So most often than not, I will end up just staying in.

Now, about two weeks ago, I took a good friend out for dinner, and we were talking about this because she has the same situation happening for her. But she told me that from her perspective, if that is what her partner wants to do, then that is his choice. But for her, she likes going out for dinners and she will not stop doing that because of what he has chosen for himself.

This gave me such validation that it is not selfish to do something for yourself and to say yes to something that is for yourself and that brings you joy. And it's okay. It's okay to go and do these things. Because your needs are just as important as your partner, who prefers to stay in, or your daughter wanting to go and do gymnastics, or your son wanting to do football.

Why are we so quick to make that happen for them, but not for ourselves? This is your permission slip to say yes to that salsa class or weekly dinner with friends. Whatever it is that brings you joy, you need to indulge in that more. Okay, number four. Oh, this one's a good one. Trust your intuition. Now, as a woman, we have a beautiful gift that is our intuition, but a lot of us either don't, a lot of us are either not in touch with it, or we do not trust it.

Now, that's my problem is that I'm not in touch with my intuition, and this is a work in progress for me at the moment. Here's my little story about why trusting your intuition is so important. Now, a few weeks ago, I had a Friday, where I didn't have to do two drop offs for the kids. They were both going to one child care provider and that means I was going to get home and have about 45 minutes before I had to log into work.

This was just amazing for me, right? To have that 45 minutes to myself to sit and have a cup of tea and just maybe get in a quick little meditation. So I get home from dropping the kids off and then my mate is doing construction next door, so the construction People had popped in my parking space, so I had to park around the corner park the car, get out of the car, walking towards the front door, start checking my pockets for the key to the house, nothing.

Check my handbag, nothing. At this point, I was about halfway to the door, couldn't really see the door at this point, and just stopped dead in my tracks and realized I don't have the key. Okay, panic sets in. My ego stops shouting at me. My intuition says, go to the door, the key is in the door. My ego, which is overbearing and quite strong, says, there's no way the key is in the door.

You need to go and get the spare. Guess who has the spare? My partner, who's at work. So I completely ignore the intuition. I get in the car. I call my partner and I say, I'm on my way to you to get the key. I battle the traffic all the way to his work. Get the key, that'll put traffic all the way back.

And I get get back home, park in the parking space. I've got three minutes before I have to log in to work. And I walk to the front door, and lo and behold, what is sitting in the keyhole but my set of keys. And that just shows you that in life, you're always going to come back to the same point, right?

You're always going to come back to the front door with a set of keys. But are you going to listen to your ego, that is going to take you on a round trip, which is stressful and time consuming and time wasting, or are you going to listen to your intuition that is just going to, if you go with the flow and let things just happen, sometimes you can't explain the answers or explain why.

I still don't know how come the key was in the door, because I don't remember putting it in, leaving, putting it in the door and leaving it there. Okay. Bye. Bye. I don't remember going back into the house because that's what would have had to have happened. But, if you follow intuition, it's going to be a calmer, go with the flow, energy, and the result is going to be the same.

You're still going to get to the same destination, but you will have enjoyed the ride. Okay, so we're going to work on trusting our intuition. This is a big one for me and I'm, it's a work in progress. Number five, take care of your Now this is a hard one, but so he's been sick. So you're going to have to choose your horizon this one.

Think about a day when you've eaten healthy and exercised. How proud do you feel of yourself? How good does it feel to know that you've taken care of yourself and prioritized yourself? That is self care. Try to get the whole family to eat healthy. And I'm not talking about dieting. That is restrictive, and it just makes you feel like you're punishing yourself.

I am talking about just eating health, just eating healthy, eating better. When you've prepared your own food using fresh ingredients, you've limited your processed foods and you've drank enough water. It doesn't have to be more than that. If you can't get away to the gym or do a workout because you don't have help with the kids, put on some music and dance around the living room with your kids.

My kids absolutely love it when I do this with them. It also boosts my mood and raises the positive vibes. If you don't like dancing, try playing tag with your kids in the garden or something similar. The point is, just get your body moving in one way or another. Number six. Meditation. This is a must for me.

When I was struggling with my post mental depression a couple of years ago, I really struggled with meditating because of the level of my anxiety. But over the years I've practiced and now I can't live without it. It's so refreshing to be able to take my mind away to a place where there are no endless to do lists.

My brain definitely appreciates it. Especially having two boys who are extremely loud. I find it sometimes overstimulating and overwhelming. Overwhelming. And I just need to have 15 minutes away to reset myself. Now sometimes I don't get to do that during the day when the boys are around, but I'll do it as soon as they've gone to bed in the evening and I'll do a quick 15 minute meditation.

I do, I go to YouTube and I have a couple of them that I quite like that I have ready, and I just go to those. Go and find one that you really don't give up on the first one. Meditation is so important and I find it is so relaxing, it's more relaxing than anything else I can do for myself.

Number seven. Disconnect from the world. Whether it's an hour, a couple of hours, a day, whatever works for you, whatever you can do, then you need to do it. Just try. Give this one a try. A few weeks ago, I decided to implement something in our house called Secrets Update. Basically, we don't do anything outside the home on a Sunday.

We disconnect from social media and the TV and we just spend the day enjoying our time together, playing with the kids, eating a lovely lunch and having some quiet time on the baby naps. This has been so lovely. Our week is so hectic, so this is just a nice way for us to reconnect as a family and just enjoy each other's company.

We don't accept any invitations to anywhere and we don't invite anyone over. This day is purely just for us to laze around in our PJs if we want to. and enjoy a slow paced day. I really look forward to Sundays now because I do feel ready for the week by the end of the day. Okay, so those are a couple of examples of what I do.

So have a think about what you need to, what you need to do to feel rejuvenated. Try a few things out, see what works, what doesn't. Go slow. These will be routines that you're adding and initially your brain may reject them, believing that it is protecting you. But keep consistent and adding one thing at a time.

This is something that you're going to build up over time, so it's not a race. Give yourself permission to go slow and explore what works and what doesn't. Okay, so that is all I have for you on self care for today. Moving on, we are going to be talking about the book of the month for November. So I've decided, seeing as we were talking about self care, and it being such an important topic, that we will be doing a book called Real Self Care by Dr.

Kujan Lakshmi. I saw her on an ad for one of Mel Robbins podcasts and I was really intrigued. I'll do a review of the book at the end of November and if you'd like to join me on my Facebook group called The Phoenix Diaries, I will be discussing this book throughout the month in this free group. The link will be in the show notes, as well as a link to a free trial to Audible, because I know that for me, a lot of times I don't get a chance to actually sit and read a book, so I find that Audible is quite convenient in that I can listen to you.

Listen to the book while I do housework, if I'm doing a gym session, anything that I'm doing on the go, that I can just pop my earphones in, and then it's basically killing two birds with one stone, and which woman doesn't know that? It's not like we have a lot of time in the day. Okay, that's all for today's episode. I really hope that you've enjoyed the content and it has resonated in some way or another. Please go back and look at what you can do for yourself for self care. If you can also please remember to follow the podcast so that you can get notified every time a new episode lands and I'd be so grateful if you could rate the podcast so that other people like you can find me and hopefully this can help them too.

It will also help me build the podcast so that I can bring you more content in the future. If you really enjoy the content and know anyone else that will enjoy it, please do share the episode. If you're still listening, thank you so much for your continued support. Please join me next week where I'll be talking about the benefits of Reiki.

I'm so excited about this one and yeah, I'm really excited about this one. This is something I did a couple of weeks ago and This is something I did a couple of weeks ago. Sorry, I'm a little distracted. Can you tell? This is something I did a couple of weeks ago, and I'm really excited to talk about, talk to you about this and the ways that it can help us to not only heal, but also to raise our vibrations on a daily basis.

Okay, I think that's me for today. I'm gonna leave you now so that I can go and tend to my children. Have a great week. Here's to healing the trauma that we didn't deserve. Bye for now.