10 Simple Ways to Practice Self-Care – Episode

Empowering you Organically – Season 3 – Episode 17

Title: 10 Simple Ways to Practice Self-Care

Hosts: Jonathan Hunsaker & TeriAnn Trevenen

Guest: N/A

Description: We’re continuing our L.O.V.E. theme! Listen as we deep dive into self-care. Once you understand why it matters you will view self-care in a new light.

What is self-care exactly? It’s not just a trip to the spa! Learn how to slow down and really connect with yourself is a healthy way and tap into your inner healing. We share a list of 10 Ways To Implement Self-Care Daily on this episode.

We also discuss the myths we all tell ourselves to avoid self-care. Drop the guilt and learn what other myths keep you from providing yourself the self-care you need.

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What is Self-Care?

self-care/selfˈker/
noun: self-care; noun: selfcare
1. the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one’s own health
2. the practice of taking an active role in protecting one’s own well-being and happiness, in particular during periods of stress

• Self-care is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health.
• Although it’s a simple concept in theory, it’s something we very often overlook.
• Good self-care is key to improved mood and reduced anxiety.
• It’s also key to a good relationship with oneself and others.

What Self-Care Is Not

• Knowing what self-care is not might be even more important. It is not something that we force ourselves to do, or something we don’t enjoy doing.
• Self-care is “something that refuels us, rather than takes from us.”

Why Self-Care Matters

• Stress is a toxin to your body. Science has now proven “chronic stress may also cause disease, either because of changes in your body or the overeating, smoking and other bad habits people use to cope with stress. Job strain — high demands coupled with low decision-making latitude — is associated with increased risk of coronary disease, for example”.
• Chronic stress adds to the Cortisol overload in your body as well. If your Cortisol levels are off the charts it’s difficult release excess weight. Plus, elevated Cortisol levels have negative effects on your other hormones swimming around inside making it hard to get proper rest or even relax.
• Remember that self-care is not optional, it’s essential.

Bust Your Myths Around Self-Care

• You feel guilty taking time for you. – This one is huge for people, especially women. You cannot serve from an empty well. If you don’t fill the well there is nothing to give, which of course leads to more stress and guilt.
• You don’t have time. – This is an overused line, isn’t it? I tell people ‘there’s no such thing as Time, it is a figment of your imagination.’ While not necessarily true in the literal sense, it does hold truth. We are the Master of our time not the other way around.
• You don’t know how. – Ok, now this one should be a huge red flag if you tell yourself this. Why? Because it is a strong indicator that you aren’t in touch with You. You’ve lost sight of your deepest wants, needs and desires. It’s time to get reacquainted with You. Start digging deep to uncover You again.
• Fear of doing something you truly love. Allowing other people’s thoughts and feelings and criticisms to affect us, and to affect the decisions that we make in life.

10 Ways To Implement Self-Care Daily

1. Create a “no” list, with things you know you don’t like, or you no longer want to do. Examples might include: Not checking emails at night, not attending gatherings you don’t like, not answering your phone during lunch/dinner.
2. Promote a nutritious, healthy diet.
3. Get enough sleep. Adults usually need 7-8 hours of sleep each night.
4. In contrast to what many people think, exercise is as good for our emotional health as it is for our physical health. It increases serotonin levels, leading to improved mood and energy. In line with the self-care conditions, what’s important is that you choose a form of exercise that you like
5. Follow-up with medical care. It is not unusual to put off checkups or visits to the doctor.
6. Use relaxation exercises and/or practice meditation. You can do these exercises at any time of the day.
7. Spend enough time with your loved ones.
8. Do at least one relaxing activity every day, whether it’s taking a walk or spending 30 minutes unwinding.
9. Do at least one pleasurable activity every day; from going to the cinema, to cooking or meeting with friends.
10. Look for opportunities to laugh!

Other Ideas to Spark Inspiration….

• Take time to identify the activities and actions that make you feel good.
• Find somewhere quiet and meditate as needed.
• Reread one of your favorite books.
• Avoid triggers.
• Watch shows that are funny or comforting.
• Take time to yourself, away from others.
• Get a full night’s sleep regularly.
• Check in with yourself.
• Put on fresh, comfortable clothing.
• Light a candle and fill your home with your favorite scent.
• Take a hot bath.
• Visit your favorite spot in the city you live in.
• Don’t feel guilty turning down invitations or canceling plans.
• Take a day off of work if you need to.
• Write down a list of things you are thankful for.
• Remind yourself that this too shall pass.
• Read inspiring quotes.
• Spend time outside.
• Listen to your favorite band or song on repeat.
• Ask for help if you need it.
• Do not force yourself to do anything you don’t want to do.
• Eat a balanced diet, but treat yourself to your favorite guilty pleasure.
• Write down what you’re thinking and feeling.
• Breathe in and out.
• Unplug from social media.
• Listen to a calming playlist.
• Pet an animal.
• Do yoga.
• Turn off your phone for a day.
• Splurge a little.
• Schedule an appointment with a therapist.
• Watch your favorite movie or TV show from childhood.
• Take a nap.
• Do something that inspires and motivates you.
• Make future plans for a trip or event you’re excited about.
• Spend time with a close friend or family member.

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Episode 17 – 10 Simple Ways to Practice Self-Care

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Episode 17 – 10 Simple Ways to Practice Self-Care

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Jonathan: Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Empowering You Organically. I’m joined by my co-host, TeriAnn Trevenen.

TeriAnn: Hey, everyone.

Jonathan: This is a second part to our podcast that we did last week, which was the power of self-love. And today, we’re talking about the power of self-care. And do you want to give us some definitions of what is self-care?

TeriAnn: Yeah, I want to touch on one thing really quickly before we go into it. The reason why we decided to cover this is we’re in February and it’s the month of love. And when we were thinking about this, we were talking about how the most important relationship we have is the relationship with ourselves.

I think some people think that’s selfish, but it’s not. We talked about that in the self-love podcast, about being selfish, and the healthy sense of being selfish and putting ourselves first so that we can love ourselves best and love others better because we do that. One of the important aspects of loving ourselves is self-care.

And we were talking about the difference between self-love and self-care just a few minutes ago. And self-love, we really identify that as the way we love ourselves from an emotional, internal perspective. The way we talk to ourselves, the way we see ourselves, the way we trust ourselves, honor ourselves, all of those things internally, in ways that most people can’t even see, but it’s a conscious effort to love ourselves the way we are so that we can love ourselves better and love ourselves into being a better version of ourselves.

Self-care, we really wanted to make the definition of self-care very clear in the fact that this is putting yourself first, putting your physical self first, your needs as far as your health and happiness, and what fulfills you in the physical sense and taking time to do that in your life.

Jonathan: Really, like what are some specific actions that you can take to take care of yourself?

TeriAnn: Yeah, exactly.

Jonathan: So, the self-love is more emotional, more internal, and this is things you can actually do to increase that, your self-care.

TeriAnn: Yeah, and I think you have to be careful because I think there’s things you can do when it comes to self-love.

Jonathan: Agreed.

TeriAnn: We talked about gratitude, writing things we’re grateful for, but this is like getting out and putting yourself first, or staying in and putting yourself first. And we’ll talk about what that means in a minute.

But some of the definitions of self-care that we found is “the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one’s own health,” the physical side of it, “the practice of taking an active role in one’s own wellbeing and happiness,” and particularly, during periods of stress, which is typically a response in our body to our surroundings and what’s going on.

Some of the things that we came up with, is “Self-care is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health.” We touched on the emotional last time with talking about self-love and mental, I think.

I think we’re going to focus more this time around on physical, and the physical aspect, taking care of ourselves. And that’s where we’re making that clear line in the difference between self-love and self-care and what we’re talking about today. So, for you, let’s just ask this question. What is self-care for you?

Jonathan: What is self-care for me? It’s, again, it’s making that conscious choice to take care of myself in some way. Self-care for me, one of the things that I do is running in the morning. That is—that can make or break my day at times, in terms of just how I really feel about myself. Other self-care and I wish I did it more, is getting massages. I carry a lot of stress in my neck and in my upper back. And when I take the time to get a massage and just loosen all that up, it’s better.

So, those are a couple things in there. I would say some other self-care actions, just off the top of my head, is checking out of work, not working all day, every day, like setting boundaries. I know we’ll get into a lot of this. But setting boundaries on when my workday starts, boundaries on when my workday ends, when I’m not working, really, having that time with my daughters, different things. Just honoring the things that matter to me, right?

And I love business, and I love how it provides for us, and all of that. And I love my daughters more. And I am working on loving me more than the business, where I am taking more time to do the massages, to really care for myself. But yeah, it’s all part of that journey. How about you?

TeriAnn: Yeah, so this is an interesting thing for me. I think as I’ve been thinking about this podcast, and thinking about self-care for myself, I fall into the trap of like I’m always on. My mind is always going, it’s always thinking of the next idea, the next problem to solve, the next thing I can accomplish. Like I’m on all the time. My brain is one of the busiest places you’ll ever find, and it’s going down 50,000 different rabbit holes, and all these just sensors, and all these things going on.

And on one side of it, I feel like that’s such a tremendous gift, that I want to be active and going and thinking and doing things to improve myself all the time. On the other side of it, it can be a bit of a curse, because it’s like “When do you ever stop thinking?” And sometimes, I find myself wanting to be better at not thinking so much.

Self-care for myself, when you have a busy brain like that, and you have a lot of energy like I do, you’re always going, always going, going, going, going. And you get to a point where it’s like you have a moment in your day, and you’re like, all of a sudden, you can feel the stress, you can feel the tense, you feel like “I haven’t stopped all day.” And I get to this point where I’m like, “Take a deep breath, get centered again,” because you can start to feel it physically.

So, self-care for me, and something I’ve identified for myself in the last few months specifically is stopping and not doing anything, because I’m always doing something. Like just laying down and closing my eyes on my bed. How often do we stop and just lay and turn off and not think? And it’s not bad to do that. Some people call it meditation. I’m not great at meditation. I wish I was. And I probably could get better at it. But I like to just lay there and not do anything. And some people call that meditation.

I don’t know that I’m actually in a form of meditation, but self-care for me is actually stopping and not doing anything because I’m always going. And the other form of self-care for myself in the last few years, that I’ve really identified, is my health.

And we talk about the difference between self-love and self-care and really putting our physical health and our physical needs first. 100 percent and I said this repeatedly, I think the number one thing we can do for ourselves is get our health in check. Because when I’m feeling on top of my game, as far as my health goes, I have energy, I’ve slept well, I’m working out, I’m eating well.

When your body feels good, it’s easier for everything else to feel good. You are more clear-headed, you make better decisions. A balanced body means better emotions, all of those things. So, for me, self-care is stopping more and checking out of everything, which is super hard to do, but I love those moments that it happens.

And then also, my body. I love to stop and sit down and eat a good meal and feel better after. I love to get out and be outside and not be stuck inside all day. I love working out. I love getting up and feeling great because the day before, I did all the things to feel great when I wake up the next day instead of feeling like crap because I ate that piece of cake and I didn’t work out and I didn’t stop to let the stress out and just really relax in the day. And so, health, 100 percent, is a big self-care thing for me.

Jonathan: Yeah, and one of the things that you mentioned that I think is going to constantly come up in today’s conversation is stress. And we are all over-stressed, there’s no doubt about it.

TeriAnn: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan: I can relate a lot to the mind not turning off and all of that. I’ve never had a 9-5 job, Monday through Friday. I’ve never been able to check out Friday afternoon and then check back in Monday morning. Always owned companies, or I’ve been a commission-only sales rep. So, I’m always working to be able to provide. So, I say all that to back up, because we really need to get clear on what self-care is, right, so that our listeners really understand what to do and what not to do. And I think one of the best ways of understanding what self-care is, is knowing what self-care is not. So, I have some notes here.

Knowing what self-care is not might be even more important. It’s not something that we force ourselves to do or something we don’t enjoy doing. Self-care is something that refuels us rather than takes from us.

And it’s very interesting. It’s actually—I’ve been changing how I’ve been running in the mornings. Before, it was how hard can I run a 5K? And that’s good, and I felt like I’m constantly competing with myself, but I don’t know that I’m always getting refueled the way that I need to. I find myself a little bit more drained, a little bit more exhausted.

And I started tweaking it to doing some heart rate training and making sure that, okay, if I’m going to do a hard day, the next day, we’re still going to run, and probably run longer, but not as hard, and do kind of an active recovery. And what I found is following that regimen makes running more self-care for me, because it does refuel me rather than take away.

Now I’m not saying that doesn’t mean that there’s no place for hard physical exercise, just for me in those morning runs, it’s just interesting, the little tweaks that we can make to the exact same activity can change whether something becomes self-care and refuels us versus depletes us.

TeriAnn: Yeah, that’s super interesting. You know? When you were talking about that, I was thinking about business. I love business. And business fuels me, for sure.

Jonathan: We need to do a business podcast, by the way.

TeriAnn: Yeah, we do.

Jonathan: I know we’ve talked about it, and we ought to just start doing it.

TeriAnn: So many life lessons about business.

Jonathan: Agreed.

TeriAnn: But business fuels me in a way that a lot of things don’t. I actually love waking up and having a problem to solve. And what I mean by that is not like “Oh, something’s on fire! Hurry and put it out!” It’s like “This is struggling in the business,” not in an emergency state of mind, but it could be so much better, and “How am I going to make it better?”

And I love to put all those pieces of the puzzle together and have fun with it. And it fills me in a way, like just solving problems in a business sense, and watching numbers turn around, and watching things increase. And there’s this aspect of business, people have this negative perspective around money. I think that making money helps you to do good. And I know that’s something that you—a theory that you believe as well.

And so, I love this drive and this need to build something into something great, because it’s changing the world and it’s helping people and it can change more people’s lives. What I don’t love is something you touched on, when it gets to a point where it’s all-consuming. And so, something I’m starting out with this year, I’ve been working with my schedule to set specific meeting times during the day, because I was getting to a point where I was like on meetings seven and eight hours a day.

And people don’t even realize, like when you’re on and you’re talking to people all day, and you’re making decisions, and you’re thinking, you’re looking at spreadsheets, and you’re reading documents, and you’re like all this stuff, just “Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam,” and you have to process at a certain level to be able to make good decisions, it’s draining.

And one of the aspects of the business I love is getting into a component of the business and dissecting it all out. And like “We’re doing this, and we’re doing this, and we’re doing this, and here’s where we can tighten up and we can make it better.” And when I’m on meetings eight hours a day, that is not self-care. Self-care for me is loving business and structuring my time in a way that it’s—it does fuel me, not drains me. So, setting my meetings from x time to x time, and then leaving other time to actually focus on parts of the business I love has been one way of implementing self-care this year.

Because then, I get to sit back and look at things that are exciting for me and fun for me. And what isn’t self-care for me is sitting on the phone eight hours a day, because I love business, but I don’t want to be on the phone eight hours a day. And so, when we talk about something refueling us rather than taking from us, every aspect of our lives, we could be doing things that are meaningful for us. But are they draining you or are they filling you? And how do you set your boundaries, from a self-care perspective, to make that happen?

You talked about it with running. And even when you were talking about running and what you’re doing with your heart rate, it kind of makes it fun, right? You’re tracking it, you’re looking at things. It’s like “I’ve got to be at this certain level.” And that’s the same thing with business for me. I love it, but I don’t want to hate it. And that’s part of my self-care, doing something I love and setting boundaries around it, so it doesn’t become something that drains me.

Jonathan: I think that that’s what’s key with most things is understanding that boundary. You’re still going to work “9-5.” I wish. But it’s how you’re working that makes a difference on how draining is it on your body. And what I would say is you’re managing the stress levels that you’re having.

TeriAnn: For sure.

Jonathan: It’s very stressful, eight hours of meetings a day. And I know 100 percent where you’re coming from. And it’s stress. And so, I think that even in a way, you could talk about self-care being how are you managing your stress? What are the things that you’re putting in place to keep your stress levels at a low healthy level? And not all stress is bad. Stress on the body is good. It teaches us how to cope. I mean that’s why working out works. We put our bodies under a certain amount of stress, and it allows us to get stronger and stronger. So, I’m not saying that stress is bad. It’s the chronic stress, it’s the constant fatigue.

TeriAnn: Too much of any one thing can be bad.

Jonathan: Exactly.

TeriAnn: Yeah.

Jonathan: And so, that’s what we’re talking about here. And it’s interesting because science has now proven that chronic stress may also cause disease, which we’ve been talking about for quite a while. Either because of the changes in your body, or the overeating, or the smoking, or other bad habits that people use to cope with stress. Some other notes here.

“Job strain, high demands coupled with low decision-making latitude is associated with increased risk of coronary disease, for example.”

So, all of that just kind of coming back into the stress, and how do we cope? And I smoked for 20 years. That was very much a way that I coped with the stress of owning my own businesses. And when you first get into owning a business, and then you have employees, and then you realize that it’s your job to ensure that they get a paycheck so that they can feed their kids, the stress level starts growing and the stress level starts growing and things like that.

And I found smoking was one thing. I also would consume alcohol in the evenings, sometimes on weekends, just to—that was my de-stressor. But then it would stress me out more because then I’d become unhealthier. And then—we talked about this during the self-love podcast, now I’m being unhealthier, and now the negative talk is coming in. So, these little things that I used to “cope” with the stress were just stressing me out more.

TeriAnn: Yeah.

Jonathan: And so, I say all that to say, I mean the stress, we’ve got to find ways to deal with the stress.

TeriAnn: Yeah.

Jonathan: It doesn’t matter if you’re a stay-at-home mom, it doesn’t matter if you go to work 10 hours a day, it doesn’t matter what your life looks like. I’d be willing to bet that the stress levels are higher than they need to be and higher than what’s healthy.

TeriAnn: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I think that another aspect of self-care, like let’s take a spin on the stress, sometimes we set aside time for self-care, and then we get stressed that we’ve taken time for ourselves, too. Like I went out the other night to a movie with a friend who’s been asking me for a long time to go out and do something with her. And like I was on my way to the movie, and I was like thinking about my kids, and stressed that I’d left them there, and stressed that “Are they going to get to bed on time? What’s going to happen?” and this and that.

And I was like “Wait a minute. Why am I even thinking about that? Like I left them with a good babysitter. I’m going to a movie.” And I was really excited to see this movie, and it was a fantastic movie, and I loved seeing it, and it made me laugh, and it got me outside of being in that mom zone all the time, and that stress around having kids.

And like after I left, I was like “I need to do this more.” I don’t do this nearly enough. I love going to the movies. But I like have that guilt factor for a minute and got stressed about self-care. It was like “Oh, my kids,” because I’m so tied to my kids. But I was just—we’ve got to be careful with that, too.

Not getting out of our stress zones and taking care of ourselves is so important, but then, when we get to those self-care zones where it’s like we’re taking care of ourselves, we have to let the stress go and detach from everything else. Otherwise, you’re really not refueling yourself, you’re just living in your stress while you’re doing something fun. Which is, I think we get stuck in sometimes, like we feel like we can’t take care of ourselves.

Jonathan: Absolutely. It’s interesting and going to kind of pull together something I talked about on the last podcast, was everybody in our company is working on a better work-life balance. And one of the things that we talked about, I don’t know, probably six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, was we all work virtually, we all work from home. When you wake up, first thing in the morning and our team was feeling overworked, they were feeling stress, they were feeling like that they just weren’t getting time off.

TeriAnn: We had a lot going on.

Jonathan: We had a lot going on. Well, one of the things that we really identified was, when you wake up first thing in the morning, and you pick up your phone and you check your email, or you check your work email, that’s like checking into work at 7:00 in the morning. Now you may put your phone down and go take a shower, brush your teeth, and get your kids ready for school and do all that, and then come back to work at 9:00.

But for those two hours, you’re still thinking about work, you’re thinking about the emails that were in there. And then you get done working, and we’ll call it 6:00, and you go, and you do some dinner with the kids, and then you check your phone at 6:30 for some work stuff. And then maybe you put them to bed, and you check back on your phone at 8:00, and you check it one more time before you go to bed at 10:00. Well, what’s happened is you’ve now been working from 7:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night. Now even though you had time “off,” you’re still thinking about work.

TeriAnn: Yeah.

Jonathan: And so, we put things in place, like you are not allowed to check your work email until 9:00 am in the morning. And at 6:00 when you check out, you’re not allowed to check email again, you’re not allowed to get on. Because otherwise—

TeriAnn: Walk away.

Jonathan: You don’t feel like you’re getting away from work. And that’s what you’re talking about here. And I think that that is—it’s a challenge. I can lay and get a massage, and I’m lucky if I get one a month, and it probably takes 45 minutes for me to not think about work.

TeriAnn: To unwind.

Jonathan: While I’m getting a massage.

TeriAnn: Yeah, I can relate to that.

Jonathan: And even still, I mean, so I think that we have to get really clear that it’s not just doing things to take care of yourself, but what are things that we can do to actually detach and break away from the stressful things, or the things that cause us stress so that we can have that time to refuel?

TeriAnn: Yeah. It makes me think of like when you go on vacation. If you truly walk away from work when you go for a week, it’s like you get this breath of fresh air, and you’re like “Oh yes, I’m relaxed, I’m out here.” We need to be taking mini-vacations every week for ourselves, totally detaching and getting to a place where we’re doing something where like all the stress leaves, we’re truly happy, we’re truly fulfilled, and it’s just like you let go of everything that you’re worried about.

And imagine what that would do for you in a week if you really took that time for yourself to rejuvenate yourself. Going to a movie, you love to go to the movies, getting a massage, going and getting a pedicure, going out and having a really good meal. And one thing that I’ve found, too, we live in an age of instant gratification, which we’ve talked about quite a bit, but that comes from our phones.

I’ve seen so many memes and images of technology, like attached at someone’s hand like their phone is their hand. And I think that’s so true. One of the things that I’ve been working on being better at is leaving my phone in the car, in the glovebox, when I go in places. Like especially eating dinner. We’ve lost a lot of human connection, which can be a huge self-care thing. Connecting with people and feeling loved, and talking, and sharing our feelings, that’s a form of self-care and rejuvenation that we don’t give enough credit to.

And it’s been—like my stress levels, going in somewhere without my phone, feeling you have to check social media and my email and this and this, and my texts, and my phone calls, and “Someone’s going to call me.” Like I feel a different sense of connection to the thing that I’m doing because the phone connects us to everything else. And I think part of self-care is detaching from everything, letting go.

Like you said, you get a massage, it takes you 45 minutes to wind down. Imagine if like you intentionally set time before you got your massage, 30 minutes before, like “I’m just going to lay here, close my eyes, put everything away.” And the by the time your massage starts, it’s like actually detached, actually having a massage and not thinking about work. And we have to get to that point where we detach from things to have meaningful self-care.

Jonathan: Well, and the phone is such a key example. I mean you talk about going and getting a pedicure. And if you’re holding your phone the whole time and checking Facebook and Instagram, and email, you’re still wired.

TeriAnn: Yeah.

Jonathan: You’re looking and seeing what Suzy’s doing on her timeline.

TeriAnn: Constantly on. Yeah.

Jonathan: And you’re Facebook spying on this person. Now you’ve gone down the path of like “Look, she’s lost 10 pounds and I didn’t lose any weight yet this year.”

TeriAnn: Yeah.

Jonathan: Now you get into the whole negative self-talk of stuff, and “I need to lose more weight,” and “I need to do this.” And meanwhile, your pedicure’s over, and it’s like you leave your pedicure more stressed because you followed Suzy’s Facebook timeline and saw her update. And now, it’s just like “What was the point?”

TeriAnn: Yep.

Jonathan: And so, I think electronic detox, and we’re going to do a podcast on this in the future, is something that’s vital for us to do. And we have to get away from the phones. It’s so much so, I had an Apple watch that I won’t wear anymore, because—

TeriAnn: Notifications.

Jonathan: Getting the notifications on.

TeriAnn: All the time.

Jonathan: And all of a sudden, like maybe I’m sitting down to watch TV for 30 minutes and decompress at the end of the day, and all of a sudden, it shows me that I got a text message, or I got a Voxxer message, or I got something like that. And now, I’m back into that work. It’s like “I can’t wear this. It doesn’t work for me.” And I know I can turn off the notifications and all of that. But for me, that doesn’t work.

TeriAnn: Yeah, and we could go on so many tangents. One thing I want to say on it is self-care, a lot of times is about doing things for ourselves that we love. But I think we’ve lost a certain art in relationships, which can also contribute to self-care. Like I find sometimes that I’m with my kids doing things, and when I don’t leave my phone in the car and constantly checking, and they start talking to me, and I’m like bugged that they’re talking to me while I’m checking an email.

And it’s like I think we’ve lost a certain sense of connection in our relationships, which is such a huge contributing factor in my life in self-care, is like stepping away from everything that’s stressful in life and just having time with people I love refuels me. And it’s like we’re just playing and we’re having fun, and we’re running around and we’re not talking about work and what happened at school, and what’s going on in cheer, and all these things that are going on in our lives, and what happened that was stressful in family life this week.

It’s like just totally unattached time with people you love who fuel you, who make you feel special, who are supportive of you, just having fun together. Like I don’t think people do that anymore. Is it just me, or like is that a dying art form to have connection with people, unconnected from phones and life and stress? I think people would be so much happier if they had a deeper level of connection, and it would be a different form of self-care in connecting with people you love and not having all that added stress, too. Sorry for the tangent, but it just popped into my head while you were talking about that.

Jonathan: No, it’s fine. I mean the pendulum is just swinging. So, we went from not having that kind of technology and all of that, and now, it’s swinging, everybody’s on their phones constantly. It’s going to swing back. And end up, hopefully, somewhere in the middle, or we’ll go far off to that other side again, and maybe get rid of some of the technology for a while. I mean I’m going down that path right now.

When I—yeah, when I first started Organixx, I was—I had just moved to Chile, but before that, I was living in Panama. And I had a little Nokia phone that didn’t even have the snake game on it. And it was like if I wasn’t at my computer where you could talk to me over Skype, then we didn’t talk. And I was able to run a company, no problem. Now, when I’ve moved back to the States and I’ve got an iPhone, and it’s like I’m constantly connected again.

And I just bought another phone, I’m trying to think of the name of it, but it is—it’s a Unihertz Atom. And it’s a smartphone, but it only has a two-inch display on it. And I did that because I don’t want to carry around a phone where I can check the internet. Yes, I like to have that little device for GPS, I want to be able to be connected to make phone calls, but I’m going to be working extremely hard to get away from a phone entirely in the context of needing to check in on things.

TeriAnn: Yeah.

Jonathan: I like having a phone to be able to make calls. The other thing I have to look at is what is it teaching our kids? When our kids constantly see us looking at our phone and buried in our phones, they all want—they all want phones, too, because that’s what Mom and Dad are doing. “That’s what all these grownups are doing, so I want one, too.”

And studies are coming out now that, I mean kids with phones at younger ages, and especially being on social media with these phones, it’s increasing depression levels, it’s increasing suicide levels, it’s doing all kinds of negative stuff. And the games that are created that are made to have you be addicted to it, even the creators of the games won’t give their kids phones.

TeriAnn: We can’t even like solve problems anymore, because there’s an app for everything. Like this will do this for you, and this will do that for you. And like it’s—I’m guilty of this, but like we have apps to deliver food to our house and groceries, and we don’t have to do anything anymore, it can all be done from the phone. And I think that’s one of the problems.

Like even just going back to self-care, part of self-care is feeling like you’re doing something you love. I think part of self-care is feeling like you accomplished things but in good boundaries. I feel like we’ve lost so much of that because our phones do everything for us, and they tell us everything, and they give us instant information and instant gratification. You can buy everything from a phone.

And so, anyway, we were going on a long tangent on that, but I do think one of the biggest things for me, in talking about self-care, is getting away from technology more. It’s a beautiful thing, and we can use it for beautiful things, to make things really grow in a business, or to really impact things positively, but it can also take away from how we take care of ourselves, which I think is super important in this conversation.

Jonathan: And it’s all boundaries. I mean I was talking to my friend, Manny, a few days ago. And he was telling me that he is now setting parameters around just his phone, period. So, the same way that we would set parameters with people in work to not check your email after 6:00, he puts his phone down at 6:00 pm and does not look at it again until 8:00 the next morning. And it’s like a little mini detox from the phone.

TeriAnn: People start twitching. “What do we do? What do we do?”

Jonathan: Exactly.

TeriAnn: But that’s how it used to be. Like if there was an emergency, you had to call someone on a landline, you couldn’t get them on their cellphone. And like we have to get back to that. It’s so crazy how much we’re on our phones.

Jonathan: I agree with that 100 percent. So, okay, let’s get back to self-care and our notes that we’re supposed to follow.

TeriAnn: Yeah, we went down a huge rabbit hole on that one. Let’s talk about busting our myths around self-care.

Jonathan: By the way, we do have a top 10 list.

TeriAnn: Yes, we do.

Jonathan: For implementing self-care daily, that we will get to.

TeriAnn: Yes.

Jonathan: We love our top 10 lists, apparently.

TeriAnn: We do, we do. Good ideas for implementing things in our lives, for sure. But let’s talk about busting our myths around self-care.

We touched on this a little bit when I was talking about going to the movies the other night with a friend. “You feel guilty taking time for you.” This is a huge one, especially for women. And you can’t serve from an empty well, but it’s like “But I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do that. I’ve got this to take care of, and this to take care of.”

And I think we’ve talked about this a lot in the business, I think we’ve made everything in life an emergency because everything comes to us so quickly. Like talk about technology. Everything comes so fast. Like it’s not that big of a deal. There are truly very few things in life that are an emergency, but I think that keeps us from taking care of ourselves. “What if this ball drops? Or this ball drops? Or this doesn’t get taken care of?”

Because of how fast-paced our society is now, we’ve lost the ability to just have a slow day. Like how many people just have a slow day now? And I think that adds to us feeling guilty about taking time for ourselves. We always have to be productive and doing things, and making money, and moving forward, and taking care of people. And what we don’t realize is that we actually do more for others when we do more for ourselves.

And I think that’s so, so, so important. Not feeling guilty that we did something for ourselves. Not feeling guilty that we went to the movie, or got a massage, or took that trip that we’ve been wanting to take forever. It’s like why do we live this life? Just to serve other people all the time? Or is part of that living a full life, doing things that really matter to us? 100 percent.

Jonathan: I mean I think guilt shows up too often in life anyway. And so, the more times that we can get rid of that guilt, the better. And so, feeling guilty for taking time, it’s tough. And I know you say that it’s especially for women. I think that it’s—I think it’s tough for a lot of people, men or women, to take time for themselves. And while you were talking, I was thinking about putting the phone down still. And feeling guilty for putting the phone down. “Well, what happens if somebody calls me and I don’t answer?”

Or like you, when you went to the movies and your kids stayed with a babysitter, and it’s like I bet you kept your phone with you the whole time you were in the movie in case something happened. There’s still that certain level of stress and that guilt of “What if I’m not there to answer?”

But think back to when you were a kid, and when did you go and play at somebody’s house and there was a true emergency? Where they had to call your parents and something crazy happened. Think about all of your friends and all of that. How often was there really a true emergency, like you said? And I say all that to say, we need to, one, not feel guilty for taking time for ourselves, but two, we need to not feel guilty when we do things that are against the norm, like putting our phone down and turning it off.

And then somebody calls you, “Well, I called you three times. Why didn’t you answer?” “Well, was there an emergency?” “Yeah, so-and-so did whatever,” and it’s not even a real emergency, they just wanted to call and talk to you and tell you something. Or you missed some text messages or something. It’s like guilt for me is—

Yeah, that’s why I want to do a whole podcast on, on eliminating guilt and getting rid of it. But I think that it’s vitally important, as we talk about self-care, to you’re going to feel guilt a lot of times by choosing you, because we have a society that has taught us that being selfish is bad. And selfishness is not bad. Selfishness is essential to you being happy and you being healthy, and it’s essential for you to have what you need to be able to give back to others.

TeriAnn: Yeah, putting yourself first. Another myth around self-care is that “You don’t have time.” I mean how often do we say “I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time for that.” I’m so guilty of saying that. “I don’t have time for myself.” How silly does that sound? And what we don’t realize is that we can do a better job of managing and structuring our time so that we do have time. And I think that it’s such an important critical aspect of self-care, is managing our time.

And I want to take it even one step further. Let’s look at it in the grand scheme of things. I saw a very interesting video just a week ago at one of the awards shows, and I don’t watch all these movie awards shows, but Glenn Close won an award for a movie she had done, a really successful woman I think she played in the movie. And her speech talked about her mother. And she said, “My mother served my father her whole life, and at the end of her life, she said to me, “What have I done with my life?” And she said, “That made me so sad.”

And she wasn’t saying that it was bad for women to support their husbands and take care of their children and that they don’t work or do things like that. But I think when we talk about not having time, time is what life is all about. And when we get to the end of our life, part of self-care is not saying “I regret that I didn’t do this. I regret that I didn’t do that.” Or “What did I do with my life?”

And that speech, for me, was so powerful, because it’s not knocking how you choose to live your life. Maybe you’re a stay-at-home mom and that’s what you do with your life. Maybe you take care of your husband your whole life. Maye you’re a working mom. Maybe you don’t have children. It doesn’t matter what you do, what matters is that you stop and identify what fills you in your life and what makes you passionate about life, and you take the time to do it.

Because I think the worst thing that could happen to any of us is, we get to the end of our life and look back, and we say “I regret that I didn’t do more for myself. I regret that I didn’t fulfill my passions and find things that fuel me.” I think that would be a very sad way to live our lives. And I think a lot of us fall into that, doing things for other people and not enough things for ourselves.

Jonathan: And it’s not too late to start. It doesn’t matter what stage you are in your life, now’s the time. And to say you don’t have the time is BS. The reality is, you just haven’t made whatever it is a priority. That’s all there is to it. Look at everything that you do, every single day in your life, and you will find that all of the things that you do is what you’ve made a priority.

If you make it a priority to watch the news three hours a day, then that’s what you’ve made a priority. But don’t tell me that you don’t have time to go meditate for 20 minutes when you’re watching TV for three hours. It’s just more important to you to watch the news for three hours than it is to meditate. Don’t tell me you don’t have time to work out, you don’t have time to do this, you don’t have time to do that.

You have all the time in the world. You’re likely sleeping six to eight hours a day, which leaves 16-18 hours of time every day. And if you’re working a full-time job, and you’re doing, let’s even call it 10 hours a day, that still leaves 6-8 hours of every day, to do something that you make a priority.

TeriAnn: Yeah, we have to practice self-care just like we do everything else until we get it right, and it takes a long time to get it right. That goes into our next myth around self-care, “You don’t know how.” And I think this one is really, really important. I actually think people use the excuse of “I don’t have time,” because they don’t really know how. It says—this should be in our notes, this should be a really big red flag.

“It’s a strong indicator that you aren’t in touch with you, you’ve lost sight of your deepest wants, needs, and desires, it’s time to get reacquainted with you. Start digging deep to uncover you again, and then let this go.”

And I do think, in the example I gave earlier, getting to the end of your life. “What did I do?” That doesn’t have to be you, and it doesn’t have to be right now. I think that when we get into our flow of being busy and taking care of work and other people, and life, and always fulfilling others’ needs, we are like “What does fill me? What do I love? What do I want to do with my time? What is a passion for me?”

And I think it’s super important to sit down and take time and reflect on “What makes me me? What makes me creative in my life? What makes me feel happy?” And identify what you need for self-care. I think it’s super important. I think a lot of people don’t even know what self-care looks like for themselves because they’ve lost sight of what really fuels them and what they’re truly passionate about.

Jonathan: It’s interesting when you say that, because it’s easy to think “Okay, self-care is going and getting a pedicure, it’s going to get a massage, it’s going to get these little things that help me relax.” And yes, that is part of it. I think self-care is also putting yourself first in all aspects of life, or in all aspects that you can.

So, how much are you taking care of yourself working a job that you hate, working a job that sucks? And versus what if you went and got a different job? What if you were doing something else? That can be a form of self-care by finding a job that actually fuels you, finding something that gives you a reward in life.

It’s never too late to say, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Yeah, I mean it’s just very interesting that there’s just many different ways to look at self-care, and I think the big key takeaway here is putting you first in thinking about yourself. Because if you’re not happy, if you’re not living a low-stress life, you’re just not—you’re just not going to be able to give to all these other people the way that you really want to.

Like I really want to give and be an amazing father to my daughters. I really want to give to a lot of homeless people and create solutions around homelessness. Like that’s something that’s very important to me. If I’m stressed out all the time, and if I’m at the end of my wits all the time, and I’m just not doing anything for me, I’m not helping my daughters, I’m not helping other people, I’m not helping in any way, because I can’t, because I’m doing just enough to be able to survive myself, because I’m at such a level up here that I’m barely allowing myself to keep functioning with my regular day-to-day stuff.

Whereas if I stopped and I took more time for me, and I did the things that really help me decompress, disconnect, and just rejuvenate, now, I’ve got hours in the day to give to my daughters. I’ve got hours in the day to give to other people that are less fortunate. I’ve got all—so much more of me to give when I take care of me.

TeriAnn: Yeah. I want to add another one that we didn’t put in our notes, but I also think another myth around self-care is fear, that we’re afraid to do the things that we truly love. Maybe we do know what we love, or what we want to pursue, but we’re afraid to do it. We’re afraid of how people will perceive it. “Well, you’re supposed to be in this box, but you’re over here doing this?”

I think we fall into that trap a lot. Or we tell ourselves, like “I want to go do this, but I’ve never done it, and it means I’m putting myself first, and it’s going to be a huge challenge for me to take something new on like this.” But it’s like you said like it’s never too late to grow up and do the things that we want to do that we’ve never done before.

Like for me, one thing that comes back in my head repeatedly, and I’ve not acted on this, but I need to, is since I was a little girl like I’ve loved music. And music’s definitely a part of my life. But one thing that I’ve really loved is watching people dance, and how dance and motion connect to each other. And I keep telling myself, like “I’m going to hire a private tutor, or private instructor, to teach me how to dance.” And I’m not trying to be some professional famous dancer, but I would just love to go and dance to music. I love to sing to music, it’s a creative outlet for me, and like I repeatedly tell myself, like “I’m going to go and do it.”

And I think one of the reasons I stop myself from doing it is I’m afraid to be like a mom who runs businesses, and I feel like I’m already where I’m supposed to be in life, and then I’m going to go and like learn how to dance? Who does that?

But it’s like something I really need to do and something I need to take that thought and that idea and run with it because I know that music fuels me and I know that dancing would be another creative outlet for me. But I think I fear it a little bit. I fear like “What will people think of me, starting to dance at my age, and taking time away from my kids to learn how to dance, and then performing for people?” which I think would be amazing, it’d be taking that risk level up there, which I like to take risks.

But I think we fear self-care sometimes and doing things for ourselves, reinventing ourselves and doing things we’ve never done before. But I actually think that’s one of the biggest ways we could fuel ourselves is trying things we’ve never done before.

Jonathan: I agree with you, 100 percent. One, you should just join your daughter’s cheer class. That would be easier.

TeriAnn: No, I don’t want to cheer. No, I don’t want to cheer. Let’s be very clear. I want to dance, not cheer.

Jonathan: And that’s just the man in me. I didn’t know there was a difference.

TeriAnn: Very big difference.

Jonathan: So, the second thing that you said that was really interesting, and it is fear-driven, but you actually said, “What will people think?” or “What will they say?” And it goes back to even the self-love podcast that we did and allowing other people’s thoughts and feelings and criticisms to affect us, and to affect the decisions that we make in life.

I could imagine, if you were taking a dance class, how much more refueled you’d be in life, and how amazing that would be. I hear fear-driven stuff all the time. One of the big ones I hear a lot of times, I’m extremely passionate about entrepreneurship, I think almost everybody should own a business, and when I hear people talking about things that they’re passionate about, and I’m like “Well, why don’t you start that as a business?” “No, I can’t. I have kids,” or this, that, or the other. And it’s fear-driven.

And listen, I understand, it is a big risk. And at the same time, it’ll be alright. You’ll figure it out. If you go and take a dance class and somebody criticizes you about it, one, they’re probably criticizing because they are jealous that they’re not doing it, but two, you’ll figure out a way to respond to them. If you decide to go start a business, and you may have kids, and you may even fail at it, and it may put you in some financial hardship, that’s alright. Your kids just watched their mom or dad lay it all on the line. I’ll bet you there’s not a better lesson you could teach your kid than putting it all on the line and failing, then getting right back up and going for it again.

TeriAnn: But I think you touch on a really good point. I think people are afraid to fail and what that looks like. But I think people, we’ve got—

Jonathan: They’re just as afraid to succeed, too.

TeriAnn: We have to change the narrative on failure. Failure is one of the most beautiful aspects of life. Failing propels us into greatness and being better, and choosing better, and doing better the next time. It helps us become resilient, it helps us to have more courage, it helps us to realize that we’re all human. I mean we’re afraid to fail. We’re afraid to do self-care.

And I think a lot of that has to do with being afraid to fail. Like “I’m either dropping the ball,” or “I’m afraid to take this thing on,” or “I’m afraid to put myself first. What if something fails?” So, what? We talk—people are “They failed,” or “They made a mistake.” I’m so sick of people saying that. Like yeah, they did. They did. And at least they put themselves out there to do it. Or at least they went and said “Sorry” for the thing that they did. And they took it and they owned it.

I’m just so sick of that narrative of like “Oh, they failed,” or “Oh, they screwed up.” Yep, we all have. And I think part of self-care is letting go of that perception that we have of failure and making mistakes, and just taking what we’re passionate about and running with it.

Jonathan: I agree. And I’m going to take just a second to bash social media one more time. We don’t see failure on social media. We don’t, not very often. How often do you post on Facebook that “I thought I would do this, and I failed at it?” How often do people show the time that they took the risk or the time that they failed? Because we have such a negative perception of failure, right?

TeriAnn: And to take it one step further, it’s not just that. People personally don’t want to post their failures or their picture that’s not perfectly edited. People have an easy time hiding behind their screen and criticizing other people and pointing out their flaws.

Jonathan: Of course.

TeriAnn: So, it makes people afraid to do anything. It’s like “What are they going to do with me if I fail?” Because we don’t celebrate failure. We look at it as a negative, horrible thing. But failure, again, is one of the most beautiful aspects of life. And so, I don’t blame people. I’m encouraging people to take risks. But yes, they want everything—for us, we want everything to look beautiful, and everybody else has an easy time bashing everybody else because they did this, or they did that, or they didn’t do this perfectly. Like we all hide behind our computers now, and we don’t live real lives and show the true side of what life really looks like.

Jonathan: Well, and my point being is we don’t embrace failure. Ever since you’re a kid and you go to school and you fail a class, you’re looked at as a failure, and you did something wrong, and it’s bad, and it’s not good to fail.

TeriAnn: Everybody has to get first place.

Jonathan: Right.

TeriAnn: There can’t be any winners and losers, because it’s bad.

Jonathan: Yeah, you win because you participate. But you can’t—you can’t—you’re just taught that failure is a bad thing, whereas you’re 100 percent right, the only—one of the best ways to learn is by failing. I mean I fail constantly in business. Heck, we launched Cricket Super-Fuel that I’m looking at up there on the shelf. That was not a good product to launch. We were a bit early in the marketplace. It could be seen as a big failure, it cost money. But I learned a lesson on what goes there.

And the failure happens all the time. And my point around people hiding behind—when you were talking about people hiding behind the screens, is that as a society, yes, we hide behind screens, but two, if people saw that “Wow, when they actually share what they failed at, maybe I could learn from that person’s failure.”

And failing doesn’t look like a bad thing. It was very interesting, when I was 17, the first business I started was a landscaping business. Two of my older brothers also started landscaping businesses. And it was very interesting because I could learn from their failures. We would get together every week and we would meet about the stuff we leaned and didn’t learn. And I could learn from their failures, and their failures weren’t a bad thing. It taught me to get a lot further ahead in the business without having to make some of the same mistakes.

But again, we—everybody’s taught to hide their failure, they’re not taught to talk about their lesson learned and talk about all that. Whereas, if we embraced it a lot more, then a lot more people could learn from other people’s failures a lot easier, it would be embraced, you wouldn’t have to hide behind a screen and talk smack about it, because you’d be like “Oh, I just learned something from that person. That’s a good thing that they shared that failure,” not looked at as a bad thing.

TeriAnn: Yeah. Failure is definitely the components and pieces of our life that make up our character and the true test of who we are. And build character. So, anyway, we’re moving on from myths. We’re going to talk about 10 ways to implement self-care daily. And we’re going to go through these pretty quickly.

So, number one, “Create a no list with things you know you don’t like, or you no longer want to do.” We talked a little bit about this, like with work. I sat meeting time because I don’t want to meet for eight hours a day anymore. I know it’s necessary to have meetings, so I need to do it to be able to feel the passion of other things I want to do in the business. But I’m saying no to eight-hour meeting days. It doesn’t work for me, and I’m not the best leader I can be in business when I’m on the phone for eight hours. I’m the best leader I can be when I can actually get in and get work done.

And so, saying no to things that fuel us, in the context of setting boundaries. Because like we said, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.

And so, I think it’s really important to have non-negotiables on your list, and what you will and won’t do.

Jonathan: I love the no list. I want to create one right now.

TeriAnn: Write a no list down?

Jonathan: Yeah, I mean listen, why not create those boundaries and get really clear? Like “No, I don’t do this. No, I don’t do that. No, I don’t eat this. No, I don’t go do that.” It makes it a lot easier, and we talked about on the last podcast about how no doesn’t require an explanation, this makes it a lot easier to write no when you have a no list.

TeriAnn: Yeah, yeah.

Jonathan: I love that.

TeriAnn: Number two, “Promote a nutritious, healthy diet.” Yeah, this is huge. Self-care does not happen without good health. You cannot take care of yourself, you cannot take care of everything else in your life when you’re not taking care of your health. And I want to add in, too, number three on the list is sleep, and number four is exercise.

So, I want to just touch on all of those, all in one felled swoop. Because how we eat, how we take care of our bodies, getting enough sleep, I mean those things are so critical to functioning at our highest level. What we put into our body, how we’re moving our body, and getting enough sleep helps us to regulate everything else in our life. We cannot take care of ourselves if we don’t have our health in check. We’re not taking care of ourselves if we don’t have our health in check.

Jonathan: Absolutely. I mean let’s talk about the diet. Again, I’m not here promoting any one diet. I truly feel like different diets, different ways of eating, I don’t even like calling them diets, different ways of eating work for different people. There’s probably one thing we can all agree on, is eating a lot of veggies, having stuff like that. Whether or not you go all the way to where that’s all that you eat, or you go keto and you add a little bit more fat into it, or Paleo, whatever. But being healthy, eating a lot of vegetables, drinking a lot of water, getting the nutrients that your body needs, however you use to get that, I think supplementation, obviously, is a big help with that.

I think the other thing to keep in mind is getting healthy is, it’s a never-ending pursuit. I mean for me, I’m on a journey to get healthy. I’m not as thin as I will eventually be, but it makes a big difference when I choose to eat healthy versus choosing to eat junk. And yes, that junk might feel good temporarily, because of the sugar high or whatever you get, or your other unhealthy association that you have with food, but 9 times out of 10, it’s just not healthy for you. Sugar’s not the solution.

So, making those conscious choices. The other thing that it does, when you choose to pick up that healthy option versus that sugary option is it reinforces your willpower, it reinforces your identity, it reinforces your narration of yourself that you are a healthy person, that you make healthy choices, that you do healthy things for yourself. And the more that you can do that, the more that you’re going to keep doing it.

One of the best things that I like about running in the morning is that self-reflection of running in the morning. And going and doing it, even though it was raining, or it was cold, or it was whatever. Each time I do that builds up even more strength for me to keep doing it the next time.

TeriAnn: And other things in your life, too, just from that mentality of getting up and doing it.

Jonathan: Exactly. Getting enough sleep, and I’m just going to touch on it for a few seconds. I mean the talk about sleep is so vitally important. I mean we’re talking it can be one of the most important things in the world. And I know there’s a lot of people out there, a lot of entrepreneurs, that pride themselves on four and five hours of sleep. It’s just simply unhealthy. Get the seven to eight hours of sleep that you need.

TeriAnn: Yeah, so much research to that, getting enough sleep, so much.

Jonathan: Agreed.

TeriAnn: I was reading an article just the other day that you can work out all you want, but if you’re not getting enough sleep, it’s counterproductive to what you’re doing because your body needs that sleep to refuel. And so, sleep is so, so important.

I want to say one other thing, too. Number five says “Follow up with medical care.” So, when you have health issues and you’re not following up with them, your body’s just going to deteriorate more. I want to talk on one thing specifically. When we talk about getting enough sleep, eating healthy, exercise, following up with your medical care, one of the best things I think people can do from a self-care perspective is understand their body better.

There are so many tests out there to figure out how you’re made up in your own body. Everyone is unique when it comes to their health and how food impacts them, how exercise impacts them, and there’s so many things available out there, resources, to know what kind of exercise is best for your body, what—how long you need to have that cardio exercise in your day. It’s different for different people.

Jonathan: What do you have allergies to?

TeriAnn: Yes, yes, yes. I spoke on a podcast a few weeks ago about how I went and got thermography done because I was having a lot of health issues, I could not get my health in check, I was not clear on what I needed to do to get there. I got thermography done. It was so eye-opening. Things that came back in the results that I never would have thought of.

And one of the things that they could tell in my thermography was food allergies. They could see that from inflammation in my body and certain aspects of my body. The person who read my results and gave them back to me, the doctor who did, had been doing it so long, she’s like “This over here means that your body is having an adverse reaction to some type of food.” And I started doing an elimination diet to figure out what food was impacting me and was able to narrow it down to a few types of nuts. And coconut, as crazy as that sounds, it got to that level.

And there was a lot of things because I eat a lot of natural healthy food. There’s coconut in everything. And I was eating coconut in all sorts of natural foods. And when I cut that out, I check everything for coconut now, my body has gotten back to a place where like the inflammation levels have gone down. It really impacted me.

So, I just want to put that plug in self-care. There are so many ways now to have your body at optimal health, from an exercise, food, and sleep perspective, and ways that you can do that naturally, that if you’re not taking advantage of it, I mean it’s crazy, the resources that are out there. And it doesn’t always have to be expensive, either. So, when talking about self-care and doing what you can for yourself, health is so important, and there’s so many resources to make health a priority in your life.

Jonathan: Absolutely. And just to follow up on that, and I’m guilty of not going to the doctor or different things like that, but if you know, if you feel like there’s something wrong in your body, if you feel like there’s something going on, neglecting it is not necessarily the solution.

TeriAnn: No, it’s going to get worse.

Jonathan: I grew up thinking it’s like “Well, if I don’t go see a doctor to tell me I’m sick, then I won’t be sick.” And there’s probably a certain amount of that plays into it with the mind over matter aspect of it. And there’s—if you know that there’s something wrong, or you’re feeling that there’s something wrong, love yourself enough to go get checked. Now it doesn’t mean that you need to go always see a regular “doctor.” It might be to go see a naturopath. Instead of getting the mammogram done, you might get thermography done. There’s all kinds of options out there as well, where you can get checked up in ways that follow whatever your beliefs may be around it. We’re definitely not saying go get on a bunch of pharmaceutical pills or anything like that.

TeriAnn: No, we’re saying don’t do that.

Jonathan: We’re saying go get a checkup and see what—because maybe it’s something in your knee that keeps you from exercising, and if you just went to the doctor, and you may just realize that “If I did this, or if I did that, it would take away this pain in my knee, which would allow me to go walk in the mornings.” And walking in the mornings would give you a strong reflection of yourself. And maybe you’d choose better diets based off of that. Every morning.

TeriAnn: Multitask everything. I’ve said it time and time again. And let me tell you, you think you feel good. I challenge you to go and get tests done and figure out what’s best for your body. Doing that, for myself, I feel better in my 30s than I did when I was 15 years old. Like I hadn’t—looking back then, the way I was eating, the way I was taking care of myself, I had no idea what optimal health was. And everyone has the power and ability right now, in this day and age, to live at their optimal health. And what it could do for your life, there’s just no price you can put on that, absolutely no price.

Jonathan: Absolutely. Number six. “Use relaxation exercises and/or practice meditation. You can do these exercises at any time of the day.” It’s true, and I’m guilty of not doing this nearly enough. I like to stretch after I run, I like to stretch in the evening before bed. Boy, do I feel good when I stretch and just kind of relax and let the tension out of my body. A good upgrade is to do that more throughout the day.

Meditation, it’s interesting. When I lived in Panama, I became good friends with a Buddhist monk down there. And he would talk about how meditation is a practice, you practice meditation. So, you never—you’re never an expert at it, you’re constantly practicing meditation. I’ve practiced it a few times, I’m not good at it. I need more practice at meditation, to definitely slow my mind down.

But there’s things like this, whether you want to call it prayer, you want to call it meditation, you want to call it just sitting in silence and letting your mind just detox out all of those thoughts of all the craziness that’s going on, or any other relaxation. There’s all kinds of guided meditation now. I find that guided meditation works better for me than just trying to sit there in silence and—

TeriAnn: Speak about phones and apps. They have tons of apps for relaxation and meditation.

Jonathan: Right, if you’re going to use your phone, use it for something good.

TeriAnn: There you go, there you go. But yeah, I think it’s really important to just—I said earlier, I just like to lay down and close my eyes and unplug from everything and try not to think, which really works and helps me to unwind from the stress.

Number seven, “Spend enough time with your loved ones.” And this does not always mean blood relationships. I just wanted to say that. When I read it earlier, I was like “Loved ones are people who value and support you the very best.”

I read a book not that long ago about toxic relationships. And one of the things that it talks about there is a constant. And I love this concept. It talks about the constant. Think about a person in your life who is your champion. Everything you do, everything you participate in, they’re there cheering you on. When you make mistakes, they don’t pretend like you didn’t make it, but they also help you overcome it. Like that person, that constant, you always feel good around them, and you always look forward to seeing them, and you always look forward to having them in your life. Because they always make you feel like you’re the very best you can possibly be.

And again, that doesn’t mean they’re lying to you and telling you things that aren’t true, they just feel good to be around. And we talk about spending enough time with your loved ones, make sure your loved ones make you feel that way. That’s part of self-care. You should look forward to spending time with your loved ones. If you don’t there’s a problem, and you really need to get it in check.

And I think that you really need to value relationships. And part of self-care is having relationships where people support you, love you, they’re there for you, they help you through hard times, they help you to see yourself honestly, but in a kind way. And I think that’s a huge component of self-care, having relationships that make your life better.

Jonathan: Absolutely. Yeah, and you absolutely need to have those healthy relationships. I mean there might be some people in your life right now that need to be on your number one no list. It would be healthier for you if you listed them on your no—

TeriAnn: Put their name at the top.

Jonathan: Exactly. “No.” And sometimes, we just may not have enough of those relationships around. It’s challenging for me, I just moved back here to the States a couple years ago, I’m in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, I don’t know anybody here. I know you. I don’t know anybody here. And I work virtually, so I don’t go to a workplace where I’m making new friends there.

I do things with my daughters and for my daughters, but I’m not out and building a whole lot of those other relationships that would be healthy, too. And so, consider that there’s loved ones out there that you don’t even know yet, and maybe part of that mission of self-care is building those relationships.

TeriAnn: Getting out and meeting more people.

Jonathan: There’s a lot of Meetup groups, and something that I really want to do more of, and that’s go join some other Meetup groups, some other entrepreneur groups, some other places just to find more like-minded people that I—so I can have more of that positivity in my life. Not that I lack positivity in my life, but having that connection, having that bond, having more loved ones, I think would be invaluable to my self-care.

TeriAnn: Yeah, for sure. I love that. Number eight, “Do at least one relaxing activity every day.” And number nine is “Do at least one pleasurable activity every day.” Now I want to talk about this for a second because if you’re not practicing self-care in your life, going through every single day is going to be a challenge. And sometimes, it’s starting out with small and simple steps.

I know for myself, when I had to get in check with spending more time on myself, it was not easy to just, all of a sudden, every day. And even now, still, there are some days I just, I can’t get that time in, but I need to be better at it and not make excuses that I can’t. But I definitely have gotten better at like at least a few times a week, doing things for myself.

So, I would challenge people to get to the point where they’re doing something every day, where they’re at least relaxing or doing something that fills them. But if you’re not to that point yet, just start small and simple, like “On Saturday, I’m going to go do this.” Or even on a workday, during the week, “On Wednesday night, I’m going to go do this.” And just see how it feels, see how it changes you and rejuvenates you. I think there’s a lot of people who aren’t even taking just one day a week to go and take a few hours and do something that they really love, and I think it’s small and simple steps to getting there.

Jonathan: And I think that you’ve got to be mindful in what is your definition of relaxing? I’m not here to judge in any way. But talking about doing one relaxing activity every day. Well, it’s relaxing to watch TV. Maybe, maybe for 30 minutes. But if you watch TV for four hours. And it’s like “Well, it’s relaxing for me.” But then, it’s also detrimental in all the other areas. “Well, I don’t have time to work out.” “I don’t have time to do this.” Well, because you’re watching four hours of TV a day.

So, are there some pivots that you can make? And I use TV as an example because TV, I enjoy watching 30 minutes of TV at the end of the day. I enjoy watching Shark Tank or something like that. To me, it’s enjoyable. And, if I watch for an hour or more, now it starts becoming stressful, for me personally. Now it’s not relaxing, I’m doing too much of that, so to speak.

So, what is your relaxing activity? Maybe you can combine it with something else, like going for a walk for 30 minutes. Very relaxing, help you unwind. Something along those lines. Reading a book. Instead of turning on the TV, why don’t you read a book for 30 minutes? And that could be really relaxing.

And so, I think that there’s ways to really find it. And again, we talk about being able to do it. Well, all you have to do is make it a priority. If you make it a priority, it will happen. It may become more important to you than something else. Your shower may need to be 10 minutes shorter. Your breakfast may need to be 10 minutes shorter. Your—

TeriAnn: Get up a little bit earlier to do yoga.

Jonathan: Yeah, you might need to get up 10 minutes earlier. There’s little things that you can absolutely do if you make it a priority.

And number nine was “Do at least one pleasurable activity every day.” Some of the notes are like going to the movies, or cooking, meeting with friends. What’s pleasurable to you is pleasurable to you. For me, it is pleasurable to go for a run in the morning. And I get that positive reflection, and I get that kind of stuff.

It may be—that pleasurable thing might just be stretching. Depending on where your fitness level is, just getting up and stretching for 10 or 15 minutes could change your entire day. It’s pleasurable, it feels good, your body loosens up. I’ll bet you make different choices for the rest of the day.

TeriAnn: Yep, for sure.

Jonathan: I definitely like doing positive things early in the morning, as early as you can. We talked on the last podcast about writing down and feeling the three most grateful—the three things that you’re most grateful for that day first thing in the morning. Because I think if you start your day like that, one, you’re starting your day on your own terms, you’re not starting your day picking up the phone and reacting to things, you’re starting it—you’re not starting your day waking up and running out to take care of your kids in a reaction mode, you are starting on your own terms by writing those three things down.

But now, your entire day has shifted based off of that action that you took. What if you followed that up by going for a walk or something, an hour or two later, and you got that morning walk in? And maybe that’s with your kids, or your kids have left the house. Whatever. But you wake up and you do that gratitude, and then you go for a walk, or you do some stretching, now you’re starting to build on top of things. Now, I promise, you’re not going to pick up that pizza at lunchtime or eat that cake at the company—whoever’s birthday it is at the company. Or whatever’s going on there, it gives you all that fuel and all that strength to make the right choices.

TeriAnn: Yeah, yeah. I agree. Last one. Number 10, “Look for opportunities to laugh.” And I do love this one. I think we take life way too seriously, and we need to laugh more. One of my favorite things to do is laugh, but I find that I’m not doing it often enough. And I think that laughter, they say laughter is the best medicine, but it truly is. Laughing with your kids, laughing with your friends, laughing with a co-worker, laughing at a mistake.

Like we all take things way too seriously, and life has so many funny things. Like it’s funny because we take it so seriously. It’s fun to joke about the things that we take too seriously. And I think we need to be a little more lighthearted, and we just need to see the joy and the positivity in so many things, and a lot of times, that comes from laughing at ourselves and laughing at silly things in life that just aren’t as serious as we think they are, and as important as we think they are. And I think—I do think laughter is the best medicine.

Jonathan: I love it. I think number 10 is vitally important. And we have a whole list of other things on here that we’re not going to get into on here, but some of them, I’ll just quickly go on, “Light a candle and fill your home with your favorite scent.” I mean there’s little things that you can do to really take care of yourself. Take a hot bath, just a couple—skimming some other ones. Pet an animal. Take big, deep breaths. Listen to a calming playlist. Do yoga. Splurge a little. Take a nap. When’s the last time you took a nap?

TeriAnn: I love naps, yeah.

Jonathan: Different things like that. Spend time with close friends or family member. We’ll put this whole list up.

TeriAnn: On our notes. But I think the most important thing, to close this out today, when we talk about the myths and things you can do for yourself, the most important thing to recognize about self-care is it’s different for everyone. If you’re not doing it, you should be doing it. And if you start doing it, what does that look like? We’re all passionate about different things, we all have different things that fill us.

And so, I would encourage everyone to take time and sit down and write out “What are things that I haven’t been doing that I want to do? And what are things that are going to fill me?” And I love the no list. When you’re writing your no list, sit down and say, “These are things I don’t like to do.”

Jonathan: Make your yes list.

TeriAnn: Make your yes list, like “I want to take a dance class,” or “I want to go to the movies more often,” or “I want to take that vacation I’ve been talking about for five months, but I’ve never taken it. Like, let’s take it.” Or maybe you’ve been talking about it for three years. Like now is the time to live life. And yes, we should work hard. Yes, we should contribute to our families and relationships and society.

But I can promise you, and this is something I’ve really worked on in my life the last year, self-care, our health, self-love, which we talked about in the last podcast, when we put ourselves first and define ourselves and who we are, an what makes us who we are, everything else in life is so much better. The people we’re around, the things we contribute to. So, make your no and yes list. “No, I don’t want to do this stuff in life anymore.” “Yes, I want to do this stuff.” So that you can serve from—other people from a full well, because you fulfilled yourself first, which I think is so critical.

Jonathan: I think that’s a wonderful way to end today’s podcast. So, thank you so much for joining us, TeriAnn. And if you’re listening at home, you can get this entire list on our website, EmpoweringYouOrganically.com. We’ll also have the other notes that were on here that we didn’t get to, just other ideas for you to really practice more self-care in your life.

If you’re not already, please subscribe to our iTunes. That way, you get notified every time we load a new podcast. And share this with your friends and family. If you like this podcast, if you’re getting value from it, help us reach more people. Share it on your Facebook, on your Instagram, send them an email, tell them about it, shoot them a text message, use that phone for something that helps us. So, thank you so much for joining us today, and we will see you next week.

TeriAnn: Thanks, everyone.

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Episode 17 – 10 Simple Ways to Practice Self-Care

American Psychological Association study abstract: Self-compassion, affect, and health promoting behaviors

Krantz, D.S. & McCeney, M.K. (2002). “Effects of psychological and social factors on organic disease: A critical assessment of research on coronary heart disease.” Annual Review of Psychology, 53 , 341-369

Central effects of stress hormones in health and disease: understanding the protective and damaging effects of stress and stress mediators

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