Personal Value ~ Serenity Wellness Podcast E59

Our commitment to our personal value is an important aspect of our wellness toolbox. Our personal value includes how we value our time, dedication to self-care, emotions, circumstances, and relationships. Let’s explore this a bit further and identify your personal value and how to embrace opportunities to engage. As you embark on your self-exploration, lead with curiosity and compassion while you dive deeper into your connection with you. 

Transcript

Hello,

Welcome to Serenity Wellness Podcast.

My name is Nicole White and I'm here to help you build your wellness toolbox for mental,

Emotional,

Physical,

And spiritual health.

Welcome to episode 59,

Personal Value.

Thank you for your continued patience,

Ongoing support,

And kind feedback.

I greatly appreciate all of you.

I know it's been an extended time since my last episode.

I've been continuing to work on the balance of my life as a therapist,

While also making sure to maintain my dedication to my personal value.

Our commitment to our personal value is an important aspect of our wellness toolbox.

Our personal value includes how we value our time,

Our dedication to self-care and our emotions,

Circumstances,

And relationships.

Let's explore this a bit further and identify your personal value and how to embrace opportunities to engage.

As you embark on this self-exploration,

Be sure to lead with curiosity and compassion while you dive deeper into your connection with you.

To start,

This is going to require a bit of reflection on what your values are.

Take note of how and when you developed your core values and if they're actually yours.

This means slowing down enough to observe and understand how you're spending your day and if it aligns with your value of self,

Bringing awareness to your value of self-care,

Relaxation,

And engaging in your passions.

Make notice where you're placing your energy and focus.

If you think of energy and focus as currency,

We can find a desire to advocate for ourselves to earn more money at our jobs if we feel we're getting underpaid for our value to the company.

When we apply this to the way we're living our lives outside of that,

We can undervalue ourselves.

We underpay our energy or throw away minutes,

Denying ourselves the currency of relaxation,

Self-care,

And genuine connections.

At times,

We might even put our needs on the back burner and get into people-pleasing cycles.

Be on the lookout for your once I'm dones.

That can be a form of self-punishment.

Once I'm done,

I can relax.

Once I finish that,

I can relax.

Some other common things that surface for people are the shoulds.

I should be doing this or that.

The concept that downtime somehow means laziness.

Or the overall discomfort and fear of stillness.

Awareness allows a window of opportunity for change.

Happiness opens the window.

Where are you placing your energy and focus?

Are you wasting time on distractions or things to help you procrastinate and avoid?

Take notice of opportunity and where you might be throwing away minutes.

Find a moment to pause and reflect on these areas and notice where you can collect some of those minutes.

Minutes where maybe you're on social media hitting refresh over and over or YouTube watching endless videos or mindless TV where that time might serve you a bit better in another area that you value.

Minutes wasted talking to yourself in your mind,

Reading those stories of illusionary scenarios.

Hidden minutes in illusion that still have an emotional and physiological impact where that time can be spent in your present moment engaging in experiences and interconnection.

That felt sense that vibrates through us and makes our heart glow.

When we're trapped in our mind versus our now,

It impacts how we show up.

How we show up with ourselves,

How we show up for others.

We'll explore that in the next episode as I think it deserves a little bit of more deeper diving than just the surface stuff there.

But as you become more aware of where you're placing your energy and focus,

You might find that you have more opportunities than you imagine to incorporate self-care,

Relaxation,

And your passion.

Yeah,

All three.

Notice what creates an avoidance of self.

When we're not valuing ourselves,

We're also avoiding ourselves.

We might be holding on to sabotaging language,

Telling ourselves we're undeserving,

Or have a different rule book on life for ourselves than we have for those we love.

What's the purpose of doing that?

Recognize that's indicating a crack in self-love.

You can mend that crack.

Remember and envision what the feelings will be like when you're engaging in self-care or when you're done.

Are you avoiding spending time with yourself because you don't think you're like yourself?

Remember that becoming our own bully.

Maybe you're even feeling confused about what your passions are anymore because you've been so busy putting yourself on the back burner or tucked away in a container somewhere that you have to reintroduce yourself to you.

Think back to moments when you lost track of time because you were fully in your experience.

You'll find your passions there.

Start with creating a daily schedule of areas that are fundamentally of value to you.

Start at the most basic level,

If that's where you're at,

And make a daily commitment.

Your list might include simple things like brushing your teeth,

Eating,

And sleeping.

And yeah,

As they say that,

You might think,

Oh,

Okay,

I've got those things,

But what do they really look like in terms of how you're doing them in your daily life?

Are you skimping on sleep,

Rushing through meals?

At times,

Clients will express that sleep and healthy eating take too much time.

They're just too much work.

And so we reorganize some things together,

And they get a taste of what life is like when value is placed there.

It allows the connection to surface that this is actually a value placement on self.

What message do you tell yourself on how you value your humanness?

You might also find you're drifting away through your day,

Wondering at the end what happened to the day.

If that resonates with you,

Then that practice of daily mindful living can really be a great assistant there.

Retraining yourself to stay connected in the now will allow you to collect your day.

It is a retraining.

When you were born,

You knew how to do this,

To stay present and in the now.

Somewhere along the way,

You trained yourself to bounce away from the now,

Just like with that diaphragmatic breathing and how we're born breathing that way.

And somewhere along the way,

Many of us move up to that chest breathing.

Both are retraining.

Remind yourself you already know how to do these things.

You're skilled with them.

You just need to reconnect.

Another area of avoiding the now and personal value can be tied to overwhelm.

Perhaps you have a pile of loose ends that need to be tied up for completion.

Maybe you've started several different projects or tasks,

Denying yourself the opportunity to complete any because you're bouncing all around.

Be aware that this can eventually lead to burnout and avoidance of completing any of them.

Try to stay connected to one mindful focus and that awareness that multitasking creates more disorientation and a lack of task completion.

Sometimes respecting our value means completing tasks we might not desire initially.

A common example is the bedroom being a clutter disaster or dishes piling up in the sink.

Maybe the process of cleaning doesn't feel pleasant,

But the outcome does.

Imagine what it feels like,

That felt sense,

When you go to bed in a clean space and wake up to a view and feeling of freshness in your area.

How does it feel when you walk into a clean kitchen at the start of your day versus a messy one?

When you're taking a shower or getting ready in a clean bathroom versus a dirty one?

These are part of your value,

Your worth.

When you notice the outcome brings positive results,

What would cause us to deny ourselves such things?

It's so common,

But what would make us do that?

It's one of the many ways that we underhandedly sabotage ourselves.

At times this decision making and action might mean connecting to a longer term outcome.

For example,

It was an unusual 60 degrees here two days ago.

Today's December 1st,

So typically it's a bit colder in Pennsylvania this time of year.

Like today,

I think the high is going to be in the 30s and as I look out my window,

It's flurrying.

But two days ago during this beautiful day,

I was pulled two different directions.

One was to go on a long hike,

Which I absolutely love doing.

And the other was to clean the outside of the windows on the house.

The cleaning of the windows is something I have been putting off due to all the work involved with moving around this ginormous ladder and climbing up and down it and all that great stuff.

But there is another opportunity in front of me with this beautiful day to get it done before winter.

So I sat in some decision making for about 10 minutes,

Did some of the reflection areas that I'm talking about in this episode,

And then tuned in to that felt sense and the after.

I ended up choosing the windows.

Although I know I would have loved the hike,

The longer term enjoyment was with the windows.

The satisfaction of having that checked off my list allowed for a different type of inner joy.

If you're fighting avoidance related to overwhelm,

Break it down small.

Remember that tool of anything that takes under a minute.

Do it at that moment.

Wash the coffee mug,

Put the dirty clothes in the hamper,

Put away your shoes or hang your jacket.

For the larger things,

Start small.

If you see a pile,

Start there.

Set a timer for five minutes,

And then maybe slowly over the week work yourself up to 30 minutes.

You'll be surprised at how quickly your internal motivation will increase,

Where you'll want to go beyond when the timer goes off after a few days of trying this.

Remember you don't have to have motivation to take action.

Let the action spark motivation over time.

If you find yourself continually avoiding a repeated task,

Make sure you're not overestimating the time commitment of completion.

This over-exaggeration of time can be due to emotional interference.

Something that can take 15 minutes to complete,

We avoid because in our mind we project it'll take way longer.

If this is related to a semi-repetitive task,

Such as cleaning the bathroom,

Set a timer and actually time yourself on how long it takes.

Set a gauge for future reference instead of that hip-hopping around of the mind's analysis.

Analysis paralysis isn't pleasant,

And it's often misguided perception based off illusionary thoughts and emotional elevators.

Respect for all your emotions is also an area of personal value.

Emotions are part of our humanness.

Honoring,

Validating and respecting our emotions is a form of self-care.

Holding on to resentments and blocking forgiveness is an area of undervalue and potential drainage of self-care.

Can you notice the difference there?

Personal value includes the connections and relationships we keep in our life.

Bring awareness on how your relationships align with your personal values.

You are worthy of loving and kind relationships in your life.

Creating boundaries to not permit treatment that is unacceptable and not in alignment with your values is self-care and not selfish.

Do the relationships you have in your life align with your values?

A bit of slowdown and hibernation time can provide space to reset and reorganize,

To pause and reflect,

And to collect minutes for personal care and passion.

Remember to notice your inner language and if those words are someone else's that you're designing your life around.

Give yourself the awareness and desire to design your life plan based off of your personal beliefs and values,

Not something that might not even make sense to you if you pause and listen.

These areas can be related to tasks we complete,

Judgments and criticisms we hold,

And our ways of being that aren't even in alignment with who we are.

But if we continue to just keep busy,

We never slow down enough to see and hear who we are underneath the noise.

I understand and respect that these tools I share with you through episodes,

In their simplicity,

Are still not easy.

I also recognize you're not getting the deeper engagement my clients receive on personal reflection and integration.

But despite these shortcomings,

I hope you continue to find values in the tools and I know that you will still connect and collect many benefits through implementing and practicing the wellness tools that resonate with you.

As part of my recent time out from recording the past two months,

It involves some reorganization of my daily life plan.

And a piece of that is about getting back on track with a schedule related to these podcasts.

Creating these is something I personally value.

I also aligned a dedication to set aside more time to create the other tools and resources that I've been wanting to get out to you for many,

Many months,

As I probably mentioned several times in different episodes.

And you can be sure to check out the website and our Facebook page to stay updated on the release of some of those little tidbits.

And also you can sign up for our newsletter there,

Serenity Wellness Center,

C-E-N-T-R-E.

Com,

Or SerenityWellnessTools.

Com.

The more I share these wellness tools with you,

The more the collective continues to create their wellness toolbox.

We're all one.

As we move,

Shift,

And change,

All those around us move,

Shift,

And change.

Wellness is contagious.

If this is your first time listening,

The easiest way to figure out the tools best for you is by checking out the titles and short descriptions.

They'll give you a guide as to what the episode covers and how it may or may not align with what you're seeking.

You might also consider just starting at the beginning and gathering all of the tools,

As many people do.

Thank you again,

Everyone,

For spending some time and space with me.

Stay tuned,

Stay well,

And thank you,

My friends.

Talk to you soon.

Reviews

First timer. Brilliant. Now to go back to the beginning.

Another great one, Nicole! Glad you're back! I've missed your podcasts! Thank you!

My dear one this was just the inspiration I needed to get back on track after the last 5 months and my daddy passing on September 18 and 9 days later my mama falls and breaks her hip and will be going from rehab to assisted living on December 9 at age 92. I’ve taken care of them for so many years now that I’ve forgotten how to live a life for myself. Thank you Nicole for this beautiful reminder of how important it is to never lose sight of our personal value! Many thanks. Beverly ☮️💟