Practice Self-Care? Wellness Tools To Help Pt 3/4 E113

Do you practice Self-Care? What does that look like? How Often Do You Practice? Does that include caring for your emotions?
Procrastination is more than not completing a task or moving forward with something that needs attention. It impacts our psychological health, emotional experiences, and even if we embrace self-care.

Learn how it plays out in your life and how to create action steps for change. Your whole body will thank you.

Transcript

Hi there!

I hope you were able to get a few things done last week as you allowed your intuition to guide you into writing a task list.

Maybe you also had a bit more reflection or contemplation around your self-worth as well as your personal value,

Taking note of those time wasters and distractors that you keep in your life.

Maybe some self-sabotaging thoughts or behaviors and the things that you deny yourself or opportunities maybe that you've missed out on due to procrastination in your own life.

By starting to have the under one minute rule in your life as well as starting to get some things done last week,

You're already creating self-motivation.

In turn,

That helps to increase our self-esteem and confidence.

When we look around and see we're starting to get things done,

It kind of makes us feel like we're doing life correctly or something like that.

Self-care has a lot to do with procrastination,

How we're taking care of ourselves,

How we're being mindful,

Remember of that future self,

The impact it has on us,

But also the impact it has in the now,

Our current life and experience.

To break this apart a little bit,

I'm going to talk to you about a couple different ways that procrastination has to do with self-care.

Being mindful of environmental impact on our whole self and what it has to do with self-care.

Our environment impacts us mentally,

Emotionally,

And physically.

If we're in a cluttered or disorganized space,

It will create the same in the mind.

We can feel really fuzzy,

Have difficulty in decision-making,

Or can't grasp the thought,

Like we can't put together words.

See what I'm doing right now as I'm talking about it.

We can have a hard time thinking straight,

Talking straight.

We waste time because we have to keep looking for stuff because it's messed up or not where it should be,

Or we can't find anything.

That creates another whole mental dialogue in the mind.

The environment creates fuzziness,

Disorganized thinking,

Scattered thinking,

But also judgment.

We'll judge ourselves as we're looking at the environment,

Or we'll judge ourselves because we're wasting time because we can't find such and such,

And I should have just did this,

That,

Or the other.

Then the shoulds come in,

Or I always do this,

I always waste time,

Or I always put it off.

The environment impacts us mentally,

Can make us have foggy,

Disorganized minds,

Or thinking that comes in with judgment,

Which also impacts us emotionally.

Our thoughts have a direct kind of highway,

Relationship,

Whatever words work for you.

It's all intertwined,

So how we think is going to impact us in terms of how we feel emotionally.

Remember,

The stories we tell ourselves in our mind,

Even though they are just illusion,

They do create emotion.

It could be something that never happened,

Or it could be just judgmental words,

This chitter-chatter,

But we will still in our heart feel,

We're still going to have an emotional feeling associated with it.

Environment,

Fuzzy mind,

Disorganized mind,

Or judgment mind,

All of those things will impact us emotionally.

The physical body is not just going to hang out on its own and be like,

Yeah,

You guys just do that.

No,

It's all in as well.

Now we have the mind,

We have the emotions,

But the physical body,

We're holding tension and stress.

Oftentimes in our shoulders,

Jaw clinchers,

So many of us are jaw clinchers,

And we don't realize.

We might have little headaches,

Or maybe big headaches,

Depending on how much we're holding all of this tension.

Sometimes people will hold the tension in their lower back,

So we can get lower back pain,

Even pain going down sometimes the back of our legs.

We're holding,

Holding,

Holding.

Well,

There's internal functions going on too.

The tension buildup is creating more inflammation in the body.

It's impacting our cortisol,

Our adrenals,

Our serotonin,

Our dopamine,

Our digestion,

Our blood flow,

The way we're breathing,

The way we're posturing and holding our body,

The way we're engaging in life.

All of that can be about our environment,

Not solely.

There's a lot of things that impact us,

But the more we can create change in the things we have awareness around,

Like,

Oh yeah,

This is impacting me,

Well,

The more then we are letting our shoulders drop,

Or letting our jaw release,

We're creating better digestion,

Sleep cycles,

Et cetera,

For our whole self.

And that has to do,

Again,

With self-care.

If we're procrastinating,

We're putting things off,

We're not taking care of our environment,

We're not taking care of ourself at the same time,

Because it does impact us.

If you have a cluttered space,

Think of how you,

When you walk into that,

Or when you wake up around that,

How do you feel versus if the space is clean and organized.

It doesn't have to be like nothing is touched or lived in,

Kind of organized,

But getting it in a place that you feel comfortable.

And remember,

Feeling comfortable is not about ignoring.

We could walk past the same space constantly that has clutter and disorganization and impacts us every day,

But we think,

Like,

We're just ignoring it.

Numbing out isn't solving a problem,

Or isn't bypassing the actual impact it has on us.

So environment,

Self-care.

As I'm mentioning emotions,

Emotion processing is another area that we procrastinate or we will completely deny,

And is very much related to our self-care.

All emotions are important.

I will never assist a client in getting rid of an emotion completely.

It's about regulation,

Compassion,

Understanding,

And tools.

Non-judgment and awareness.

But all emotions are important.

But we will deny ourselves the opportunity to process and feel emotion,

Or we procrastinate on it,

Saying things like,

I don't have time for that,

Or there's other things to do.

That's gonna just weigh me down.

It's in there.

I mean,

We can swallow it,

We can try to ignore it,

But it spills out,

Comes out in other ways.

Subconsciously,

It could be a driving force under the surface for us over time if we really continue to deny or ignore or procrastinate on processing.

It can lead us to jumping over to secondary emotions.

If we're feeling sad,

We might jump over to frustration.

Maybe someone has said something or done something that makes you sad.

You swallow,

Swallow,

Swallow that emotion.

You don't talk about it.

And then engagement or interaction with them,

Maybe you have lower frustration,

Tolerance,

Or you're pulling back,

Putting up walls around your heart.

So it doesn't really help to swallow,

It doesn't solve anything internally,

Externally,

In a connection with self or with someone else.

Anxiety is another good example of where we jump over,

We will deny ourselves the opportunity to process that emotion.

And so often a secondary emotion for anxiety is anger.

It's this sense of loss of control with the anxiety being the base.

But we don't let ourselves process that and we jump over it.

And now we're just kind of fueled up and a bit angry about a lot of things in life where the base is because we have this sense of a loss of control about something,

Which is anxiety or fear.

So the denial,

Self-care,

Procrastination.

So we have procrastination,

All the ways I've been talking about in week one and two.

And now this bigger procrastination too about self-care.

Self-care is part of our everyday life about balance,

About being whole and well.

And when we procrastinate on that,

It spills out into everything.

We get more anxious or we get more depressed or we feel more hopeless,

Helpless,

Overwhelmed.

So slowing it down and becoming aware of the areas related to this that it might be in your own life can be very,

Very helpful.

Giving yourself time and space and compassion to process emotion,

To feel it,

To communicate through it,

If that is helpful as well.

In terms of self-care as a whole,

Maybe we don't notice those two things.

The environment or maybe we think,

No,

I process my emotions.

Awesome,

Which is fantastic if you have those two things down.

The whole concept of self-care though is another area to be on the lookout for in terms of procrastination and denial.

We might have things we find really relaxing or we enjoy,

A passion or interest that we have,

And we procrastinate or deny ourselves the chance to do it,

The time to do it.

We might say things like we're unworthy or there's not enough time for that.

We have more important things to do.

We're too busy.

We might slide right into the people-pleasing behavior.

Interpersonal effectiveness is one of the umbrella categories,

If you would,

Of dialectical behavior therapy.

And that is the people-pleasing dynamics.

It's when we can put ourselves on the back burner and forget about our own needs.

We can give,

Give,

Give,

Give,

Give.

Giving is wonderful,

But we can lose sight of balance with that.

And in that process,

Sometimes we forget who we even are.

Sometimes I'll ask people,

What do you like to do?

No idea.

We forget what we even like,

What feels good to us.

We forget how we relax our passions,

Our interests,

Because we've been doing and doing and doing and maybe such in an automatic cycle of procrastination and denial of self-care that we even forget what it is.

It happens more than sometimes we realize.

So be aware and on the lookout of if you're even denying self-care,

Or maybe even do you forget what you like?

I'm going to offer some tools today to help you get a little bit more in alignment with that.

But I'm also going to talk first a little bit about list writing.

Just as a refresher before I get into it and reminder,

You want to keep all the tools you're learning.

You want to try to keep them going.

So the under one minute and then using your intuition to help you in future list writing is a great technique as well.

And all the opportunities ahead for change.

As we become aware,

That's where we have the opportunity to move into something different with list writing.

First off,

Something that can be highly effective is list writing.

Not everyone is into it and that's okay.

But list writing can be effective if we have a tendency to forget we need to do things or it could just help us to organize our day ahead,

Keep us focused and on task.

But it can also slide us way out of control.

Sometimes we'll have like 10 lists.

We need a list for the lists.

We have lists in every room or we have multiple lists with sometimes the same things on several lists.

We can get overwhelmed by the actual list that we write to try to help us.

So there are some effective tools and techniques in list writing that I'd like to share with you.

When you are doing a list writing,

If again,

This is not for everyone,

But if it's something that you find effective or maybe you haven't tried other than if you did last week's technique,

Maybe you can continue along here and go with this process and see how it works out.

What you would want to do is you might want to have a list each day.

A lot of people will do this in the morning if they're having like morning coffee or tea or something like that just to kind of get their day started and focused.

And if you're doing your daily list,

You want to start by just writing five things on the list.

It's kind of how we did last week.

And then once you have the five things on there,

You're going to number them of priority one to five.

You can even use that technique that we did last week with letting your intuition guide you on prioritizing that list for yourself.

So keep it a five and then prioritize the list for the day,

Crossing things off as you get them done.

So satisfying,

Right?

Cross stuff off your list and then not adding any more for that day.

So if you get all five things done,

Try not to like add three more on there.

Just use that extra time for some self-care.

But five things,

Prioritizing the five things.

Step two in the effectiveness of list writing.

Lots of research behind that,

By the way.

I'm not going to go into all the research on this in this teaching here,

But there's a lot of research that has looked into list writing,

Overwhelm of list writing,

And effective list writing techniques.

And that has been found to be a highly effective way of list writing.

Five things,

Prioritizing the five things,

Not going beyond that.

And then keeping in mind too,

This is not a pass or fail.

So if you get to the end of your day and you did not get all five things done,

That is okay.

You can transfer to the next day.

You don't want to get into judgment mind,

Beating yourself up.

If you're aware that you spilled a lot of your time into an empty vessel that day,

Well,

You can be aware of that for tomorrow.

You don't have to like beat yourself up for,

You know,

The next 10 hours about what you didn't do right.

Awareness,

And then use it for change.

But beating yourself up does not have to be part of the change element.

The other thing that can go with this is called a mind dump.

What you can do with the mind dump is this is a running list that you have.

And then you can pull from that running list to create your five things a day.

I know that our minds are very busy.

And I know that many of us have more than five things that we have to get done in a day.

So there's all this extra stuff.

I almost cursed there.

There's all this extra stuff going on there.

And the mind dump lets us know that our mind doesn't have to keep racing and thinking about it.

Like,

Oh,

I got to remember,

I got to remember,

I got to remember.

It's written down.

It's a great thing to have next to your bed.

If you're one who your mind is really jumpy at night when you're trying to fall asleep,

You can have this next to your bed.

And then you jot down whatever your mind is trying to remember.

And it gives your mind ease to fall asleep because then you know,

I don't have to keep thinking about this.

Like I can think about it tomorrow morning.

I have a reminder there on the mind dump list.

Effective list writing,

You can use that intuitive guidance like we did last week.

A good strategy is to get in a bit of a habit.

So maybe each morning as you're getting ready,

Or when you start your day,

Whatever it is for you,

You know,

Whatever time it is for you.

Sometimes people do do this before they go to bed.

You know,

Sometimes that can be more effective,

Sometimes not because it gets the mind thinking a little bit too much.

So just see what what works best for you.

A lot of times,

People report a lot more effectiveness as a start to their day.

And then again,

You can have the mind dump where you can pull from three or five things to do.

And then you cross them off.

I always tell people,

I wouldn't cross off the mind dump list necessarily,

Until it's crossed off the list you put it on.

And that way you don't lose sight of something and think you got it done if you didn't.

If that's,

You know,

Something that you're concerned about there of having the mind dump list and crossing things over,

You can wait till it's actually done to cross it off both.

So that's some stuff with list writing.

I want to put one or two other things out here for you.

The one is about self-care.

I put out the challenge for 30 minutes of self-care.

I would challenge you to continue that process.

I know there are a few of you who are like,

30 minutes?

I don't have to have 30 minutes of self-care.

I don't even have time to go to the bathroom.

I hear you.

Until we adjust.

If you need to start with 15,

Okay.

I highly recommend you work your way up to 30.

30 minutes a day.

You're worth that.

Personal worth and value.

How you're cashing in on your day.

Taking care of yourself is a huge part of being human.

It's going to make you be able to function in life a little more smoothly.

So 30 minutes a day of self-care.

Think of things that help you to unwind,

To help you relax,

To feel good.

Maybe not the pouring into an empty vessel stuff,

Like social media and things where it's more of the things that make us numb out,

Just like the mindless distractors.

That might not be something in the self-care category.

Think about things that help you feel good.

Maybe it's reading a book or taking a bath or taking a walk or doing some exercise,

Practicing yoga,

Doing a meditation,

Creating some art,

Making some music,

Dancing around,

Cooking some great food,

Doing a craft.

I could go on and on,

But you get the drift.

Try to find something that is self-care for you.

You can also use the five things on a list in relation to self-care.

Sometimes emotions can be heavy for many of us in different times in life.

And in those times,

It can even be challenging to figure out how to take care of ourselves in a loving,

Kind way.

So you can have a list of five of your top self-care things and just keep it tucked away.

Most of us have our phones on us in some capacity,

So a lot of people will just have it on like a color note or note tab phone on their phone.

And then if you're having a down day or you're really feeling foggy and you're not really sure what to do to kind of practice that love and self-care,

Then you can pull up your list and just see what feels right for me today in this moment.

So that's another way you can use the five things on a list and just have this other list that you're not really ever crossing things off on this list.

It's just a list,

A reflection list,

If you would.

Like I can't find the answer.

It's there.

I know I have self-care,

But I can't think of what I want to do.

And you can pull the list out and just again see what pops out that day for you as what feels right.

One last thing,

And that is about capturing the time.

We will think we don't have time for stuff.

We think we don't have time for self-care.

We think we don't have time to process our emotions.

We think we don't have time to get things done.

Even the word time is hard to use in some ways because even time is a little bit of an illusionary concept,

But that's a whole other topic.

In this kind of realm of things,

We will have that as an excuse almost or a way to throw out there why we don't do things for ourselves.

A task that you can do for yourself to really see what that's about is track a day.

In the tracking of a day from when you wake up in the morning or whenever you wake up,

You know,

Maybe you wake up some other time.

Whenever you wake up,

From when you wake up until when you go to bed again,

You track your day.

You could do it in like half-hour increments is the ideal,

But if you're like really jumpy all over the place kind of thing,

Then maybe you do 15-minute increments.

It might seem like,

Oh my gosh,

That's a huge task.

Let me track my whole day.

Just do it for like a day.

I'm not saying you have to do it for the whole week,

Although you can if you want,

But just pick a typical day and track it and see,

Do you have the time or are you pouring into an empty vessel?

Those are some ways to kind of guide you to help you get a little bit more squared away of where you want to be in your day,

In your procrastination or letting go of procrastination,

And definitely to really turn up the volume of awareness in terms of how are you in your self-care?

How are you in giving yourself love?

Let's make that a priority this week.

After spending a few days with the information you just learned,

Take a few moments and answer the following questions.

You can write them in your journal or on the online course platform on my website.

Question one,

What are ways your environment impacts you?

Question two,

Are there certain emotions you avoid and what fears do you notice around them?

Question three,

What does daily self-care look like for you?

Question four,

What passion or hobby will you choose to add back into your life?

Thanks so much everyone.

I look forward to continuing this process with you and I will see you again soon.

Reviews

Nicole: A lot of that resonated with me. Thanks for the actionable specifics. That helps. Neil 😃☯️