Back to Basics

“Ok, so your first assignment is to floss your teeth.”

WHAT?!? I thought to myself. I want to work on eating healthier and control my emotional eating--I don’t want to floss my teeth?!?

I had just started working with a health coach, and this was her first assignment to me. She said that it starts with building a new relationship with your body, and one basic form of self-care that gets overlooked is flossing. I confess I didn’t start flossing and still have a hit-or-miss approach, but her lesson in it starts with the basics has been on my mind lately.

We are living in strange times (to say the least). Many of my clients report a level of exhaustion that borders on hopelessness, and I feel it too. If you are exhausted, overwhelmed, and tired of trying to figure it out today, I offer some quick suggestions. We are going back to basics.

I have suggested some of these to my clients and immediately met with I DON’T HAVE TIME. Oh, I feel you—that is always the response when we are in survival mode. When you are in go-go-go mode, the LAST thing you want to do is slow down. AND exhaustion and survival mode aren’t sustainable.

We have to go back to basics:

Being in the shower when you are in the shower. So often in the shower, we are already thinking about our day, problem-solving, running through the mental to-do list. Challenge yourself to hyper-focus on your senses while you wash your hair. Feel the water as it runs over your head, smell the shampoo, notice the feel of the shampoo in your hands and your scalp.

Do anything slower. Drive slower, eat slower, walk slower.

Take the time to listen to your favorite songs. Dance in the kitchen, sing along in the car, play a game with your kids. They pick a song, you pick a song, and share why you love it.

Stretch throughout the day. Every time you leave the bathroom, touch your toes.

Drink water, lots of it.

Prioritize sleep. Try to go to bed at the same time every night. Create a small ritual around sleep, turn the lights low, have a cup of tea, turn off your phone, and read or journal.

Floss :)

Set a few hours a week where you are not tied to any electronics. Give yourself time just to be.

Pick one of these ideas, just one, and add it to your daily routine. Prioritizing ourselves in small ways is the practice of self-loyalty. Be kind to yourself. You got this.

When Doing All-the-Things Is Just Too Much

I learned at an early age that being the responsible one, the one everyone can count on, can earn me a lot of praise—while helping me avoid my anxiety. So I at an early age, I adopted the mantra, “I Got This.” I say it to myself when I am overwhelmed as a reminder that I can handle it. 

The downside is, being the go-to responsible one also can cause a lot of anxiety. There is a fine line between “I got this” being motivational and being masochistic. When I take “I got this” to the extreme, I push myself too hard, I demand too much of myself, and I forget that I am not a machine. 

One way I have eased this mantra is to add a different mantra—lean in. When I hear myself saying, “it will be ok, You got this,” repeatedly, I remind myself to lean in. Lean into the hugs my husband gives me. Lean into the support of friends and family. Lean into the emotions, joy, sadness, fear. 

Being the independent soul that I am, I tend to pride myself on ‘going it alone,’ not needing anybody and handling all-the-things. But when I am going it alone all the time, life becomes very one-dimensional. I become robotic because everything is just about doing the next task in the most productive perfect way. And I lose all the flavor and color of life. 

Frequently when my husband hugs me, I will remind myself to ‘lean in,’ pause, and soak up the hug take the hug for all it’s worth. Or when I am having a stressful day, and my first inclination is to forge ahead, dig deeper and become a virtual stress machine, I will remind myself to ‘lean in’ either in asking for help or leaning into my need to take a break. When I lean in, life gets better, my relationships get stronger, my peace of mind is greater, and I am calmer. 

Leaning in is more than just asking for help. It is leaning into everything I am experiencing, the fear, doubts, insecurity, The fact that I might be tired and need to lean into taking a quick nap. Or lean into the areas of life that aren’t clicking the way I want them to and seeing what changes might need to be made. When I can stop running, turn around and lean into what I am trying to avoid, life gets easier. To be clear, leaning in is not an intuitive action, and it is definitely not my first response. It is something I have to remind myself to do. I have to make a practice of reminding myself to lean in.

When my husband and I aren’t clicking, maybe we are arguing, or maybe we are feeling distanced, and after we have gone to bed, I lie there feeling raw and exposed. My instinct is to shut down and close off, and then I hear my Biggest Fan quietly whispers, lean in—he loves you. It is a just disagreement. So I roll over and give him a hug, and I feel us both relax. I remind myself we are a team, I am safe, and everything is ok. Lean in, take a breath, feel the feelings, and then take action.

Most importantly, I have to be reminded to lean into the joys of our life. Last weekend, celebrating the Fourth of July with my family, my “I got this” mantra kicked in as it got closer to dinner time. I started going through the list of what needed to be done and could feel my anxiety rising. As I sat there, I told myself to lean in. No one cares if dinner is on time; just sit here and soak it up for 15 minutes. Lean into the moment: the laughter, the warmth, the conversations happening around me. I soaked it up. Too often, I miss those moments because I am too busy doing all-the-things.

I often visualize walking down the street on a windy day. The easiest way to maneuver is to lean into the wind. Standing straight and tall, being rigid and stoic will just make it that much more challenging to walk. And a bonus, if I can link arms with someone as I walk through the wind, it gets even easier. 

When we lean in, we naturally relax, and we can shift and move as needed. The wind is still there, but rather than fighting against it, we are moving with it.

Where in your life could you use a little ‘lean in’?

Self Care Starts with Self Awareness

Last week I did a presentation on self-care. Self-care is one of my favorite and more popular topics, and I have presented on this topic numerous times. Self-care is at the crux of all we do. If we aren't caring for ourselves, nurturing ourselves, we aren't as happy, productive, and engaged. Self-care is also such a 'buzzword' these days. We all know HOW to care for ourselves.

As I was preparing for the presentation, I pulled out my usual information about taking care of the self-body, mind, and spirit. I looked at my information on taking three deep breaths, getting enough sleep, exercising, eating right, and drinking enough water. Then, I thought about my struggle with self-care. It isn't so much that I don't know HOW to do it or don't know what the ideal steps to self-care are. It is that I get so caught up in my to-do list, obligations (real and imagined), and the anxiety that surrounds them that I don't even notice that my neck is hurting or my breath is shallow and from my chest.

I am most successful at self-care when I am taking the time to build self-awareness; when I take the time to notice how I am feeling, to pay attention to my body and not just what comes next. I have found, self-care has to start with having the self-awareness that we need to take care of ourselves. To break the cycle of push, push, push, we need to establish the time to do that. We need to establish rituals that break us out of our familiar patterns.

Rituals such as:

• Every time you hit a stoplight, take three deep belly breaths.

• At work, every time you hang up the phone, take a drink of water.

• Every hour get up and walk around or do some stretching.

• When you are eating a meal, pay attention to what and how you are eating.

• When you are in the shower, take the time to be in the shower, not reciting your to-do list.

When we can establish these rituals we bring to break the cycle of push push push, we hop off the proverbial treadmill for a period and bring awareness to our mind, body, and spirit. From this place of awareness, we can then bring some self-care, self-acceptance, and self-love. The trick is to engage in the rituals and after each ritual or as we are doing the ritual to bring awareness to our body, mind, and spirit.

Self-awareness gives us a chance to tune into what we are feeling, what we need and how we can best care for ourselves. The bottom line without self-awareness, there can be no self-care. Without self-care, there can be no growth because we are too freaking exhausted from life's obligations to think about what we need, want, and desire.

Giving Yourself the Pause

This weekend, I heard one of my favorite speakers, Tara Brach. She wrote the book entitled Radical Acceptance, one of my favorite books of all time.

Something you hear me talk a lot about is awareness. We need to be aware of our feelings, thoughts, needs, values, what we like or don't like, how we want to spend our time, etc. Without awareness, there can be no growth, no change. I also believe that from our awareness, there needs to come curiosity--a desire to dig deeper about ourselves and figure out what's happening beneath our feelings and needs. However, the step I forget about, especially personally, and the one I think is most needed is the step between awareness and curiosity. This step involves allowing what is happening now. Having a pause between awareness and curiosity and giving ourselves space to allow the emotion, thought, or need. To sit in non-judgment of it, to just allow it to be. It doesn't mean you have to like it or feel comfortable, but that thought, emotion, need a chance to come up and be acknowledged.

It was a refreshing reminder for me of the power of that pause, that space to allow myself to feel and be whatever it is I am aware of. In Tara's book and presentation, she tells an impactful story about a psychologist who had Alzheimer's. He had come to a conference with his wife to present on his latest study. As he stood before the audience, he couldn't remember what he had come there to say. The psychologist stood there utterly perplexed as to why he was in front of the audience and what his speech was about. Can you imagine the terror, the sheer panic that must have been running through his veins? But rather than panic, he started naming everything he was aware of,

"I am afraid." He bowed his head, 

"People are staring." He bowed his head, 

"My heart is racing." He bowed his head. 

He did this over and over, and when he finished the speech, people came up to him and said how they had never seen someone teach them awareness/presence and meditation like that before. He was able to be present to the flood of emotions, thoughts, and needs he was experiencing.

As a therapist, I admit I am constantly looking for meaning, analyzing and figuring out WHY I am feeling a certain way or what is going on underneath. Sometimes the power just comes in the allowing, surrendering to what we are aware of and doesn't need to go any deeper than that. When I practice this surrender, it is like a vast exhale occurs, an opening up of my heart and body.

 I can give myself a break and just allow myself to be present in love and kindness.

So today, pay attention to the awareness you have and then bless them. Whether through a silent or verbal 'yes' or physically bowing or touching your heart (my personal favorite). Allow yourself to be present to whatever comes up, then, if necessary, to dig a little deeper and have some curiosity.