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Self-care can often feel like a little break from the daily grind. But effective self-care that has you feeling rested and filled up for long periods of time is not found in getting your nails done or finding regular “me-time”. Instead, effective self-care is about caring for your emotional and mental health. In today’s episode, I will share 7 ways to practice effective self-care, that will create sustainable calm, joy and rest so you stop needing to take a “break” from life.
Topics in this episode:
Why you don’t think about needing self-care while on vacation
At the heart of self-care is your mental and emotional health
7 effective self-care practices and why they’re important
Protecting your belief in self, no matter your success or failure
Ramping up your belief in your dreams
Feelings are meant to be felt not stuffed
The most important investment of time and money
Show Notes & References:
Create a life you don’t need a “break” from by scheduling a breakthrough call and learning more about coaching: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
Interested in having me lead a training or workshop at your company or group? Click here to learn more about hiring me as a speaker: https://www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/speaker
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Transcript
Intro
Self-care is not what you think it is. It has nothing to do with finding time for yourself, resting or relaxing, or getting your nails done, or taking a bath or having time with your friends. These types of activities, although perhaps restful and fun, don't actually create sustainable care for yourself.
On today's podcast, I wanna share with you the truth of what self-care actually is. You've probably never heard someone talk about self-care in this way, so I'm really excited to share it with you, and I'm going to get really practical and give you seven ways to practice self-care that will create sustainable, calm, joy, and rest, which is really what we want. You ready working moms? Let's get to it.
Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.
Hello, hello, working moms. So I'm giving a keynote presentation in a couple of weeks and I have been preparing what I'm gonna talk about. The focus is going to be on self care. And I'm giving this talk to a group of HR professionals, and as I've been doing some research on the subject of burnout in the HR industry, I have just been floored by how HR professionals are doing right now and how basically in utter burnout so many of them are, particularly since Covid.
And so I've been thinking a lot about self-care and the angle that I wanna take on this as I speak to them, wanting to make sure that what I talk about, and how I talk about it is the most useful and tangible. I want them to walk away really having a deeper level of understanding about self-care. There's just been so many wonderful things that have come out of this presentation. I just really wanted to share so many of the good things that I have been focusing on with you on this podcast.
So one of the things that I have been thinking a lot about when it comes to self-care, I've been thinking about how nobody feels the need for self-care when they're on vacation. I want you to think about that. Generally speaking, when you're taking a vacation, you're getting out of the normal rhythms of life. You're doing things that you wanna do. You're spending time with people that you love and that love you. Your brain does not tell you in that time that you really need self-care.
What self-care means to us.
It's fascinating, right? Now when we tend to think about needing self-care time, for most of us, what that tends to be is needing time for yourself, time to rest, time to get your nails done, or get a massage or take a bath. When we think about self-care, we're thinking about getting out of the normal rhythms of life and doing something that feels restful and rejuvenating. And when we're on vacation, we're not generally thinking about the need for those things, because in a lot of ways, the vacation itself is providing that.
We don't think about self-care when we feel rested and excited about life.
We don't think about the need for self-care when we feel rested and when we feel excited about life and motivated and energized, we don't think about self-care. When life is fun and we feel happy and filled with joy, it doesn't make sense that we would need a break from that kind of life, that we would need time away to rest from that kind of life or to break out of the normal rhythms of life because you are in fact living the life that you really wanna be living, and you're enjoying life and you have energy. It doesn't make sense that we would think about self-care in those moments of life, right?
Instead, we start thinking about the need for self care when we're feeling exhausted, when we're feeling overworked, when we're feeling undervalued, when we feel restricted in life, when we're not feeling awesome about ourselves, when we feel like we're not meeting our potential, when we're not operating at our best, when we are waking up constantly feeling irritated and like we don't wanna be doing what we're doing that day. When we feel like there isn't enough time or that we're constantly behind, these are the moments that our brain speaks up and says, "Hey, it might be time for a little self-care, a little shake up, a little time for rest, relaxation".
I find this to be a really fascinating insight into self-care because at the heart of this, what I'm saying is that you seek self-care when your emotional and your mental health does not feel like it's operating at its optimal. You do not seek self-care when your mental and emotional state is really healthy and good. So let me be clear - It doesn't matter what your circumstances are, all of these examples that I just gave you that I was just talking about, when you are in need of self-care, none of them have to do with your circumstances.
Your emotional state dictates your need for self-care.
It's not about how busy it is at work, how many projects or clients you have right now, or if your partner is helping out around the house, or if you are in a particularly difficult season with your kids. It's not really your circumstances that dictate when and if you need to be focusing on self-care. It's your emotional and mental state within your circumstances. Do you see the difference? This is a really important distinction.
Your brain and your body naturally gravitate toward needing self-care when your emotional and your mental state are off, not your circumstances, which means self-care is really about caring for your mental and emotional state, not the external parts of life.
Manicures, massages, working out, scheduling in those doctor's appointments that you've been pushing off, time for yourself, time with your girlfriends or friends, vacations. These are a lot of the go-tos when we finally get around to taking care of yourself or getting a little self-care time in, or a little me time. But these aren't really addressing what needs caring for, which is your emotional and mental state.
Now these things, generally speaking, do in fact feel good, maybe even bring a little rest and relaxation, and that's really good and important. You should have these activities that create easy relaxation and rest for sure, but the activity is not what brings a shift in your mental and emotional state. The activity is not what creates happiness or sustainable joy or that feeling of freedom and value. It's not the thing that shifts your mental and emotional state. And a lot of these activities, if they do bring about some sort of rest and relaxation or shift, it's very temporary.
Self-care is about caring for your emotional and mental state, and I want you to learn how to care for your mental emotional state in such a way that you're not dependent on massages and vacations, or even having ample time for yourself in order to have the kind of healthy internal life that you want.
Essentially, I want you to learn how to create that carefree, stress-free, joy-filled daily life. The same kind of life that you have when you're on a vacation or a holiday where you don't tend to think about that need for self-care because you are already feeling cared for in your emotional and mental state. Those already feel good and healthy.
Okay, so let's start talking about how you create this daily life where your emotional and mental state is well taken care of, no matter your circumstance, no matter how busy you are at work, no matter what stage of life you are in or what stage your kids are in, no matter if your partner helps out around the house or doesn't, no matter how much money you make or where you're at in your career.
Self-care is about caring and nurturing your thoughts and emotions.
Self-care is not about your workouts and your baths and your fancy nails, or your vacations or your nights out with friends. Self-care is about caring and nurturing your thoughts and emotions. So I have seven thoughts for you on how and what it looks like to care for your thoughts and your emotions. You ready? Seven, here we go.
Number one, caring and nurturing your thoughts and emotions. In other words, self-care is about protecting your belief in self, meaning, believing that you are amazing and awesome all of the time. Not letting your identity and your confidence hinge on whether you succeed or fail at work or as a mom or in your friendships.
Creating a deep down knowing of what makes you great and wonderful and protecting those thoughts and beliefs about yourself.
It's about knowing and having this deep down knowing of what makes you great and wonderful and protecting those thoughts and beliefs about yourself, always. Never allowing someone else's opinion to change the thoughts that you have about yourself, to never allow success or failure to determine what you believe about yourself.
This is not our natural state. It actually takes a lot of work to do this. Our brain likes to believe what other people have to say about us. Our brain likes to believe, because it's easier to believe when things don't turn out the way we have planned, it's easier to believe that we're failures and that we're inadequate or not good. Caring for yourself looks like not allowing your brain to go down that path of thought, and when it does, redirecting it back to how amazing you are.
True self-care is about believing your dreams are possible.
Number two, self-care, true self-care is about believing your dreams are possible. Naming what it is you really want in life, your goals, your big dreams, and believing that they're possible for you even when you don't know how they're gonna happen, even when you can't see a path forward. It's about letting yourself see your dreams take place in your mind, so your brain gets a clear picture of what it is you really want and starts watching out for the possibility of it happening.
It's about taking a cue from our kids who dream about becoming all sorts of things when they get older. I remember my daughter, who's eight now, she used to tell me when she was younger that she was gonna be a professional tree climber. Yeah, girl, you hold on to that dream. I'm not quite sure how you're gonna make money at it, but if you wanna figure out how to make money at it, I know you can. I believe that about her without a doubt.
And my son, he's all over the place from wanting to be a superhero when he gets older to wanting to be a train conductor. You know, I don't know what he wants to be. Whatever it is, I believe so strongly that it's possible for him.
Self-care is about giving yourself that same gift of belief, not allowing your brain to take the circumstances or the evidence of today's life and holding that against you as if your dreams can't happen because of it.
Self-care is about staying out of self-judgment.
Okay. Number three. This is such a good one. Self-care is about staying out of self-judgment when things don't go exactly as planned. I think self-judgment is at the root of at least 50% of exhaustion and overworking and feeling burnt out. In other words, it's about half the reason why you're constantly craving self-care.
Self-judgment happens when things don't go as planned and you beat yourself up for it. "Ugh, I should have known better. Why can't I figure this out? I should have done this. I should have done that. I should be further ahead. I'm so behind. I should be making more money. I should be further in my career."
A lot of self-judgment sounds like shoulding and self-care looks like eradicating the shoulds from your vocabulary and believing that no matter what happens, whether your efforts succeed or fail, you're still an amazing human being whose dreams are still possible and you're worthy of them.
True self-care is about protecting your mind from, "I can't".
Number four, true self-care is about protecting your mind from, "I can't", "There's not enough", "I don't know", sorts of mindsets and thoughts. These thoughts perpetuate confusion and stuckness. They close down options for problem solving anything, because if it's true that you can't figure something out, you're stuck. You're just gonna have to live with that for the rest of your life. If it's true that you really don't know how to hold your boundaries and leave work at exactly the time you want, and shut down your brain in the ways that you want. If you really don't know how to do that, because you're telling yourself that, you're probably not gonna figure it out.
Instead, you're going to indulge in confusion and exhaustion and stuckness and inadequacy and shoulding. We tell our kids this all of the time, right? My daughter will say something like, "Ugh, I can't figure this out," while she's working on math or reading, because she's in second grade and she's learning these things, right? What do I say to her? Don't say you can't, because if you say that, you'll never figure it out.
We tend to hear the all or nothing talk that comes out of our kids' mouths and try to correct that, but you have to correct that within yourself. You have to believe that you could figure anything out if you really want to, that you're totally equipped with the knowledge or the ability to get the knowledge to do whatever it is that you want.
My brain likes to use, "I don't know", all of the time…
I don't know how to get my kid to stop throwing a tantrum and stop saying mean words.
I don't know how to grow my business to the next level that I want to.
I don't know how we're going to make our finances work to buy a house in the next year, (which is our goal).
This is often my first thought that my brain likes to bring up when we face problems or when I face problems that I haven't really figured out yet, and I spin in confusion and then ultimately inaction. Because, it's not a problem that your brain wants to go to a place that you don't know where it says, I don't know. That's not a problem. You're just going to have to redirect it out of there.
Ask your brain ‘what are the options’?
This is one of my favorite exercises I love doing with my clients. I actually did this just last week with one of my clients when she was feeling stuck and feeling like she didn't know how to get a workout into her schedule. She was really struggling with this. I started asking her brain what her options were. And she started to tell me she had no options. And I said, maybe you don't like your options, but let's just talk about what the options are. And by the end of just a couple of minutes of mining her brain for possibilities, we came up with like, eight options and she literally went, "Whoa, I got a lot of options."
And then I started asking her, what of these options did she really want to do, or which of the ones where she was like, for sure I don't want to do that. And we started going down the path of problem solving, which of her options were best for her, and then what we had to do in order to make that particular option work for her.
But she had been spinning in this place of, I don't know, for weeks and weeks and weeks until we started talking about it and started getting her brain past the, "I don't know", and tapping into the more sophisticated part of her brain that does in fact, know what to do, or at least knows that there are options out there and then problem solving for how to figure it out. Self-care is redirecting your brain when it feels like it doesn't know, and it feels confused and stuck.
Self-care is nurturing and caring for your mental and your emotional state.
Okay. Number five, self-care is nurturing and caring for your mental and your emotional state, meaning your thoughts and your feelings. Which means self-care is allowing yourself to feel any emotion; frustration when you're faced with resisting kids that are resisting anything that you're telling them to do, inadequate when you feel behind at work, failure when you don't get the deal or you don't get the client or the project, whatever it may be, anger when you feel like you're doing everything for the family, joy when you're watching your kid ride a bike for the first time or take their first steps or graduate from their grade.
Emotions are not things to be avoided.
The most caring thing you can do for your emotions is allow yourself to feel them, to feel all of them, the whole range - because emotions are not things to be avoided. There are things to be felt. I want you to imagine how much energy you would save if you allowed yourself to feel feelings instead of holding them back or carry them around with you or resist them. If you just allowed yourself to feel whatever it was you just felt it in the moment.
How often do you come home from work with a whole host of lingering thoughts and emotions from your day? Hard conversations that you had with clients or coworkers that aren't happy with your decisions or confusion on how to handle particular situations or worry about a deadline. Right? These emotions stick with you when you come home and they suck your energy and they don't allow you to be caring and nurturing. Your emotional and mental state is giving yourself space to feel these emotions as they happen in the moment.
Which leads me to the next point I wanna make, that's number six. It's actively listening to your body when it says to stop and take a lunch, or close your eyes, or breathe deep or cry and then doing it no matter the consequence.
Caring for your emotional and mental state means listening to your body and its cues.
Your body is the most amazing creation and the feelings and cues that your body has is like communication signals to your brain.
Cue, hunger. Response, eat.
Cue, sadness. Response, cry.
Cue, tired. Response, nap.
Cue, overwhelm. Response, take a break.
When you start getting in tune with your body's cues, the emotions and the responses that your body has, and you start listening to them and talking to them, and then responding to them, that's the most loving and nurturing thing you could ever do.
Learning to talk to our body.
This is an exercise I love to do with my clients as I help them learn how to talk to their body. Oh, you're feeling exhausted right now. What does your body have to say about that? What do you think your body would tell you to do right now? It's the most amazing thing that happens when you actually start listening and responding to your body's cues. That is self-care. That's listening to your inner wisdom.
Self care is about caring for your internal self.
And the last one I have for you, number seven, self care is about caring for your internal self, knowing your external self, your body, your time, your energy, your relationships will all be positively affected when you do. This is so important to believe and trust because when your mental and emotional state is at it's best, everyone else in your life is gonna benefit from that because they are going to get the best version of you. They're going to experience the joy that's inside of you. It's contagious. They're going to experience the love that you have for them, the connection. They're going to feel your presence.
And not only that, trusting that when your emotional and mental state are healthy and taken care of, that a lot of other issues, like when to fit in your workouts, when to get a little bit more me time in, how to schedule those appointments that feel impossible to schedule, how to be present with your kids at the end of a long workday. All of these things are gonna feel so much easier for you to figure out how to do them when you are feeling good on the inside.
A person that is rested, make better decisions.
Because a well cared for person, a person that is centered and confident and isn't carrying around a whole lot of emotional baggage, a person that is rested, they make better decisions and faster decisions than a person that is feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and holding a bunch of tension and emotion that really just needs probably a 24 hour nap.
When you prioritize your internal self, your emotional and mental state, a lot of other things are gonna work themselves out in the end.
I've said this like a dozen times already on this podcast, but I'm gonna say it one more time. Self-care at its core is about nurturing and caring for your mental and emotional state. It's not so much about something you do. It's about a way of being. It's a way of thinking. It's a way of handling your emotions.
Conclusion
Working moms, if you are feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and you feel like you are on the edge of burnout, The most useful thing that you could do right now is schedule a free call to learn more about coaching and to get the process started. I promise, investing in coaching is going to be the most impactful investment of your time and money that you could ever make right now.
It's more useful than the time you might spend on a family vacation or the money you might spend on that vacation. It's more useful than the time and money you spend getting your nails done regularly, or your hair done, or getting a massage. In coaching, I'm going to help you create a daily life that you don't need a break from where you wake up with energy and excitement and enthusiasm every day.
That is what I want for you. That is what I am teaching you on this podcast, and that is what I'm helping all of my clients do in coaching. To schedule that free call, you can go to www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book. And as always, I will put a link for that in the show notes. Working Moms, take care of yourself this week, care for your emotional and mental state. Consider just one way that you could care for your internal self this week, and if you make that a habit, I promise. It'll change your life.
All right, working moms, let's get to it.
