89: QUICKIE! It's SELFISH to NOT CARE for YOURSELF

Foreign. Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of The Bliss Project, 3 Time Fitness World champion, fitness expert and cover model, turned self love junkie, lifestyle entrepreneur and author.

Each week I'll bring you a guest.

Or a thought that will help you bust through your fears, connect to your soul and get focused and clear so you can elevate your life, business and relationships. We don't wait until we're ready for someone to tell us we're good enough. We take what we want and we anoint ourselves. Get ready to earn, own and unapologetically rock your happiness every single day. Are you with me? Here we go. Welcome back to the earn your happy podcast and it is time for another quickie because there is always time to fit in inspiration. So thank you guys so much for joining me every week. I absolutely love that I get to chat with you about everything, anything, whatever is coming up. And I think around this time of year we tend to forget about ourselves because we're running around like crazy trying to fit everything in. And then January 1st comes and we're supposed to have all of these incredible hardcore habits of taking care of our health and our mind. And we haven't really learned how to do that right. We go from going 100 miles per hour in the opposite direction to attempting to drop everything and figure out how to fit in all of these new habits. So I really just want to remind you right now of how important it is to remember what it takes for you to feel good, healthy, vibrant, vital and energetic. So Eleanor Roosevelt says, do what you feel in your heart to be right for you'll be criticized anyway. And I love this quote because I think that right now I'm going to relate it for you guys to self care. And the title of this is it's selfish to not care for yourself. So what does that mean? So many people, self care, self love, being selfish, all of these words, you know, can get a bad rap to really take that time for you, especially if you are a busy mom or a career person or a businesswoman who runs, who has a lot of employees underneath her or whatever it is, whatever you come from, maybe it is that belief in your mind of what you saw your mother doing, doing it all, not taking any time for herself, right? But I really want to dive into this. So why has self care, self love, selfish, all of these things, why does that have such a bad rap? So here's what I did. I googled synonyms for self love. I really wanted to figure out some other Words around. What are we associating with self love and self care. And here's what came up when I literally put in synonyms for self love, egotism, selfishness, narcissism, vanity, conceit, self centered, self interest. Oh my gosh, I couldn't even handle it. So self love. Gee, I cannot figure out why we tend to avoid this. And we think that in order to feel good about ourselves and for other people to respect us, that we need to do it all and avoid taking care of ourselves. So what happens though when we show up that way? So no wonder we associate something negative with it. It's something that's been around us our entire lives. And if we haven't seen it, if our friends don't do it, if our mothers don't do it, then we're not going to have had a great role model for that. We're not even gonna know what that looks like to take care of ourselves. So let's really start to break that down. So what I want you guys to do is, is really think about how you show up when you don't make time for you. So if you're not driving right now and you have a little bit of time or you have some time later today, I want you to answer these questions. Just ask yourself the question or ask it right now in your mind. How do I show up when I don't make time for myself? How do I show up when I don't take care of my physical body and my health? How do I show up when I don't sleep? How do I show up when I don't eat foods that make me feel healthy? How do I show up when I keep putting off that thing that I know would make me feel good, recharged, relaxed? How do I show up when I don't make time to listen to that music that I love, to go and do that thing I'd love to do, to allow myself to express creativity and make time for it. These are all things that suppress your soul and rob you of energy. So what's actually happening is the extreme opposite of why we think we're avoiding self care. We think people, people are going to think I'm selfish. It takes too much time. But in the long term, what actually happens is you rob yourself of energy from doing more, from doing the things that you actually love and giving yourself quality time and setting the example. So here's where I'm going to get really real. If you want your children to be happy and the people around you, you will get selfish. You will be a little bit selfish. It doesn't mean in your life you are a selfish person. It means that you must put self first. So when you are making your daily schedule, you say, what is it going to take for me today to show up as my best? For everyone else, I will tell you that I wish I would have seen this. I wish more than anything that for every woman in my life, for my mother, for my aunts, for my sister, for my grandmother, for my friends, I pray that they take this time for themselves so that they can be the happiest version of them. All we really want is a happy mother. All we really want is a happy friend. So if that means taking 30 or 60 minutes to exercise or plan or to give yourself the gift of a massage every other week or whatever that looks like for you to take that time to be happy and show up for those people, when you're exhausted and you're tired, you are completely disconnected from your soul. You're completely disconnected from your ideas, your creativity. That, that extra, that extra vital bounce in your step, that, that extra piece of the puzzle that just takes your life up a notch. All of these to really elevate your life and give you more time. So I want you to make that list. How are you showing up when you are not taking care of yourself? And then I want you to think back or if you've never done it, I want you to think about what would you feel like if you implemented 30 minutes of self care a day? Or maybe that sounds crazy to you, maybe 10 minutes of self care, we start there. But basically I want you to try to get to an hour of putting yourself first. What does that look like? Is that a power hour of exercise combined with meditation, combined with journaling. And don't get too crazy if this is new to you. I want you to start small because true habits start smaller and we layer them, right? It's like a layer cake. You can't really start building on top of a layer that is not completely solid. So make sure that you just layer those habits and start small. So what does a self care routine look like? And I think a lot of people get overwhelmed at this. But for me, when I really started paying attention to self care, for me it started with sleep. And if you guys have not listened to the podcast with Shawn Stevenson on sleep, I mean if the title did not catch you, I am telling you it was one of my favorite podcasts, please go listen to it because it tells you why sleep is gonna be the foundation for every decision, every good decision that you make in your life and you actually become a different person. When you get adequate sleep and your body, it takes away majority of the work that you think that you have to do when you sleep. We create natural appetite suppressants, our body repairs, we build up immune system. I mean it goes on and on and on. To mention helping with mood, helping with anxiety, helping with depression. So many different things. So you guys go listen to that episode. So for me a self care routine is making sure I am on top of figuring out how to get the best sleep I can. And this has taken me years. So go listen to that because there's a lot of tips in there. So it starts for me with sleep. Next it's moving my body. So in the morning I try to make sure that I move my body in a way that I love. Some days I, I don't feel like an intense workout so I'm like, all right, I don't actually feel like moving at all. So how about I just go take myself on a nice walk and maybe I listen to an awesome podcast or you know, maybe if I just don't even feel like learning. If I'm like I'm over, it's not, you know, I don't, I'm not having an awesome day. I don't even feel like moving. I feel like eating a chocolate cake for breakfast. Like get your butt outside the door, go outside in nature and just think about all of the things that you're grateful for so your self careless can look so different. And maybe if you guys got these down like rock solid, maybe your self care has really ramped up. I mean for me it's really starting to ramp up and I'm so proud of myself because I will be totally honest. I love getting pedicures, I love getting my nails done, I love making sure my hair is done or my roots. Basically I don't really do my hair but that should be on my self care list because I think that I might enjoy if I put it, put you know, makeup on more than once a week and did my hair. But we'll see, we'll see where we'll go with that. But I'm going to attempt in the new year. Okay. Going to attempt to get massages more often than like twice a year. I'm going to, I would really love to get them let's say once every two weeks. Especially if you're a physical person. That is going to be something that I add to my self care routine and also taking care of my skin. More like I really really really want to take care of my skin. I don't do that right now. So that's going to go on my self care list as well because that would make me feel awesome.

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Far you want to take it, what is something that you could do that would make you a little bit happier? For my friend Ruby, it is putting flowers on her desk every week week. So that is her new thing. So it could be something small, it could be anything. It could be listening to your favorite song every single morning. So you guys start small, start thinking about what that looks like and I want you to remember what an example you are. And if it doesn't change with you, it's never going to change. And I'll tell you what, I don't want my mom, I don't want my sister. I don't want my friends to think that they have to run themselves raggedy in order to be loved, in order to feel like they're worthy, in order to feel like they deserve love. So self care is so dependent upon our internal beliefs about our worthiness. So if you start acting like you love yourself and doing these acts of service for yourself, the odds are because you're acting as if you're going to start falling in love with you and you're going to feel more recharged. It's the same reason why a mother's automatically typically feels really connected to her baby right when it's born because she's already been doing such selfless acts of love, right? Carrying the baby, being exhausted for the baby, creating this child. So. And there isn't even that connection there yet, right? So or as far as a physical connection, you haven't even seen it. But you know what is all going on for that child. So just remember that. What is it that you could do? What are the acts of service? Because even in my marriage when you do acts of service for someone and when you're constantly acting as if you are in love. Love becomes even stronger. So when those things stop, you can kind of start to feel yourself pull away. So when we're acting as if we love ourselves, it's easier to fall in love with ourselves. We can start to feel more worthy of these things. So you guys, I hope that you loved this episode and that you share this podcast and also I would love it would mean the world to me because how I get awesome guests on here, if you guys are new to the podcast world is by your ratings and reviews. So I have to be honest, it is totally up to you. I have zero say in if this podcast is successful or not. So it is all your ratings and reviews. And that is how I get awesome guests on is being able to show them what I am able to who, who I'm able to help them serve. And I really, really love to bring you guys some of the top experts and top minds out there. So if you guys could leave me a a five star rating and a review and share with your friends. I know, I know. It just takes a minute.

Seriously.

Okay. That would mean the world to me and thank you again. And until next time, earn your happy. Bye everyone. Thank you guys so much for spending this time with me on the earn your happy podcast. I am so glad that you stopped by. If you could take one second to share this episode with someone you think would love it, that would be absolutely amazing and we would be forever grateful. Also, please leave us a review if you feel so moved by going to itunes and leaving us an honest thought and honest comment. Tell us what you think, tell us what you want to hear more of. It would really help us out on our journey to helping thousands and thousands of people. People. Until then, don't forget to earn your happy. Thanks again guys. Bye Bye.