Is it just me, or has 2019 been an intense year of change and transformation so far? I’m talking about the kind of change that’s messy, chaotic, and full of ups and downs. Personally, I’ve decided to make this a year of radical self-care, and I invite you to do the same. This is the best anchor I have found to keep me grounded and centered through the turbulence.
When transformation is initiated, existing structures, both internal and external, need to be broken down. Chaos precedes new order, the breakdown before the breakthrough, just as the caterpillar disintegrates in the cocoon before emerging as a butterfly. Personally, and collectively, I feel like we are in the cocoon…breaking down what no longer serves us so we can emerge into new potential in our lives, and in our world.
Sounds kind of poetic, but unfortunately, not very fun! Since the only way out is through, how do we navigate the process with as much ease as possible?
3 Keys
There are three key things to focus on when navigating the turbulence of transformation – surrender, creation, and radical self-care.
Surrender is acceptance of change, and a state of allowing the transformation process. It is the absence of resistance.
However, let me be clear…surrender is not resignation. Surrender is about accepting and allowing what needs to shift, whereas resignation is about giving up. There is no effort in resignation, and also no real transformation. Resignation is giving up and checking out, and it skips the next step of creation.
Creation is where we take action to direct our energy into what NEW we want to create in our lives, and in our world. It asks us to define a clear vision for our individual and collective future, and take appropriate action to create it. We get to choose how to move forward, who we will be, and what new chapter we want to live in.
The third aspect, and the focus of today’s blog, is radical self-care -nourishing and nurturing the body, mind, and soul. It’s a practice that’s become an anchor through my own transformation process, and in today’s world, it’s a necessity.
Radical self-care supports us through surrender, and provides the resiliency, resources, and inspiration to create the next chapter of our lives and world.
Beliefs about Self-Care
What are your beliefs about self-care?
Do you prioritize others needs before your own… your spouse, children, boss, clients, and maybe even your friends? Are you a card carrying people-pleaser, who tries to make everyone around you happy, often at your own expense? Many of us adopt these patterns of self-sacrifice to gain love and acceptance, and avoid rejection and abandonment. Unfortunately, our own self-care ends up last on our list.
Or…are you’re a driven over-achiever perfectionist type, who neglects self-care due to the demands of your career or professional goals? Perhaps you feel like you’re too busy, or have too many responsibilities. Ironically, many of us become over-achievers or perfectionists to find validation…to feel good enough. Yet, when we neglect self-care, it only validates the not good enough story.
I’ve struggled with both of these patterns in my own life. From an outside perspective it may have looked like I practiced basic self-care – a mostly healthy diet, moderate exercise, the occasional vacation, or massage. Yet, there were lots of ways in which I wasn’t caring for myself – negative self-talk, toxic relationships, and self-sabotaging patterns. A major health crisis in 2011 quickly taught me the need for a whole new level of radical self-care. Yet, it did not come easy. In fact, to embrace it, I had to make a significant mindset shift.
Excuses
My biggest excuse around self-care was always lack based…“I don’t have the time, money, or freedom to do more. Although I understood that basic self-care helped me to be more productive, and ultimately achieve more. The self-care I practiced was typically motivated by lack, not self-love….to help me achieve so I could feel of value.
Further, I believed radical self-care was a selfish luxury or indulgence, which I judged as bad for a long time. In fact, selfishness is one of the biggest excuses I hear from my clients. Therefore, I think it’s important to make a clear distinction here, and it comes down to your intention and motivation. Cheryl Richardson, author of The Art of Extreme Self-Care, addresses this issue beautifully by making the distinction between ego selfishness and soul selfishness.
Is Self-Care Selfish?
Radical self-care honors the soul; it is soul-selfish. The motivation is to care for yourself so you have more to contribute, to life and to others. Nourishing your body, mind, and soul, fills up your energetic tank, which increases your capacity. It also honors the God within you!
Whereas, self-sacrifice – putting yourself last, or ignoring your needs all together – drains your energy and empties your tank. As a result, you give from a place of depletion, which leads to resentment, anger, anxiety, depression, and separation. It’s lack energy and it’s life draining…and by the way, it creates more lack in your life.
In ego selfishness, you care ONLY about yourself. There is no concern for others, even your loved ones. It may even include hurting others to feed your ego’s need to feel special, better than, or important. The motivation is only self-serving.
What is Radical Self-Care?
Radical self-care is a practice of nourishing your body, mind, and soul – in ways that are both life-sustaining and life-enriching. It is addresses the whole of you, and it goes beyond the basics of survival (eat, sleep, and move), to help you thrive. Radical self-care heals you and fills you up– emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. It gives you energy, increases your mental and emotional resiliency, fuels creativity and inspiration, creates peace of mind, and enhances your health and wellbeing.
When going through times of chaos, challenge and transformation, everything in your life can be impacted in some way because YOU are being asked to change. This type of change impacts your psychology, emotions, soul, even your physical body. Further, the change ripples out into the world…your relationships, work, and even your finances. When change and transformation is initiated, it can make everything feel a bit ungrounded.
A practice of radical self-care can help you find an anchor in the chaos. It increases your resiliency to deal with the stress of change, and fuels inspiration and motivation so you can create the next level of potential in your life, and in our world.
The Holistic Nature of Radical Self-Care
Radical self-care is holistic in that it address all aspects of the self – body, mind, emotions, and soul. And…as I said, it goes beyond your basic survival needs. So let’s take a look at just a few ways you can increase resiliency in each area of your life so you can thrive.
Body
Most of us know that to feel our best we need a healthy diet, and adequate hydration, sleep, and exercise. But what do you need to thrive physically over the long-term, and create greater physical resiliency?
In our modern world we are bombarded by toxins in our air, water, food, and environment. There’s simply no escaping it. Add to that the pervasive use of medications, both over the counter and prescription, that we use to treat the symptoms of a body in struggle. The buildup of toxins takes a toll not only on the physical body, but also on your emotions and your mind. This toxic overload is a significant factor to the immense rise of autoimmune disease, chronic illness, obesity, and cancers in our society.
A practice of radical body-care considers how these issues impact us personally. My own struggles with chronic illness have opened my eyes to the need for regular detoxification. In order to treat the root cause of illness, rather than just the symptoms, I made some radical lifestyle shifts. I eat a primarily organic diet, that’s whole food and plant based. In addition, I minimize plastics, avoid toxic cleaning products, and am very mindful about the products I use on my skin. I also detox and cleanse my body several times a year.
Do you listen to your body’s signs of distress – pain, fatigue, low energy, or other symptoms?
How do you respond to these signs? Do you treat the symptom with a quick fix – or – seek to understand and treat the root cause?
How often do you renew your body with cleansing and detoxification?
Mind & Emotions
The next major issue in our fast-paced world is STRESS, which is the #1 cause of most illnesses and disease in the body. It’s also a leading cause of depression and anxiety. Stress-related illnesses are on the rise and there are many causes…physical, mental, and emotional. We are bombarded by stress all day long, just turn on the news! Further, our technology-driven world has dramatically increased workloads, and set a new expectation to be available 24/7. And there are no signs of this slowing down, rather, it seems its only getting amplified.
With that in mind, learning how to manage our stress through radical self-care has never been more important. So what does a radical approach to stress look like? Well, it goes way beyond the basics of exercise and meditation. Although both are immensely helpful to any stress management program, it’s also important to implement additional strategies.
Nervous System Regulation
Resiliency is critical to stress management, and it’s created through nervous system regulation. This is the ability to shift out of a state of fight or flight (the stress response) and into a state of relaxation. You see, the autonomic nervous system has only two settings – fight or flight (sympathetic – arousal) and relaxation (parasympathetic – rest, digest, & repair).
Healthy regulation allows the nervous system to fluctuate easily between the two states…to enter the stress response state when needed, and to down regulate back into relaxation when arousal is no longer necessary.
Unfortunately, in today’s world, many of us end up in a chronic state of fight or flight, and our nervous systems have forgotten how to down regulate into relaxation. Some of the most common ways this shows up includes chronic muscle tension or pain, digestive issues, and/or anxiety.
To build resiliency, we need to ensure we have the ability to down regulate. If you have trouble relaxing, or are experiencing any of these symptoms, I encourage you to reach out to an experienced therapist, counselor, or somatic practitioner to help you learn how to tune into your body, and retrain your nervous system.
Are your currently experiencing chronic muscle tension or pain, digestive issues, or anxiety?
Do you have trouble relaxing, even during a massage or on vacation?
Trauma & Emotional Work
The second aspect involves healing any unresolved trauma and releasing unprocessed emotions. Unhealed trauma is often a key factor leading to nervous system dis-regulation, and unprocessed emotions are the ones we try to avoid feeling, typically out of fear or shame. Unfortunately the trauma and emotions don’t go away. Rather, they become stuck in the body, which creates a block in the system, eventually leading to pain and/or dis-ease.
Both unhealed trauma and unprocessed emotions can have a detrimental impact on the quality of your life, and reduce your bandwidth for handling stress. However, when you heal trauma, and learn how to process your emotions, you can build much greater resiliency.
Are you get easily triggered by others, often feel on edge, agitated or anxious?
Or, have you shut down emotionally, feeling numb or little emotion at all?
Managing the Mind
The third key aspect of radical mind-care is about taking control over what you feed it…and I’m not talking about food! What you feed your mind will have a direct impact on your level of stress.
Your subconscious mind is a record playback mechanism that records your environment and experiences. If you have the news on 24/7, or watch a lot of violence on TV or in video games, you are feeding your mind a lot of fear, violence, and negativity. Further, it increases the stress hormones circulating through body and fuels anxiety. Think of your mind like a computer that is programmed by your environment. How do you want to program it, and what do you want it to play back to you later?
A practice radical self-care asks us to practice healthy boundaries for the mind. Rather than watching the news, in which I have no control over the content, I read it. I can scan the headlines and content, and read only what I want without bombarding my mind with excessive fear. Of course I want to stay informed, but it’s about balance, and taking control of my own wellbeing. In addition, I feed my mind with inspirational stories, and new ideas, that help me expand my thinking about what is possible. Another great place to set some boundaries for the mind is social media.
In addition, I try to surround myself with people that have a positive influence on my life, and limit interactions with those that don’t. You see, we have something called mirror neurons, which are found to simulate the emotions and movements of those around us. An example of this is when someone smiles at us, it’s natural to smile back – it’s an automatic response. The same can be true with negative emotions. Have you ever found that being with someone who is in a bad mood, can easily put you in a bad mood?
We not only absorb and mirror the world around us, but also influence it. Creating a positive environment for the mind serves two purposes…it builds our inner resiliency, wellbeing, and capacity to problem solve – AND – allows us to have a more positive impact on the world around us.
Do you watch violent movies, TV, or excessive amounts of news? Tune into your body while doing so…how does it make you feel?
When a stressful event happens in your life, what kind of scenarios run through your mind…are they worst case what if’s, or possible solutions?
Do you have any relationships in your life that make you feel drained, depleted, or badly about yourself?
Soul
Your soul is your true essence, and the source of your core values, unique gifts, and greater purpose. It is the innate life force energy within you that is always seeking to be embodied and expressed, much like an acorn that grows into an oak tree. It is the seed of your potential, and the part of you that is driven toward purpose, contribution, and growth.
Living in alignment with the soul, allows us to access greater life force energy. Further, it brings us into our wholeness, which enhances health and wellbeing, and allows us to make the greatest impact with our lives. On the other hand, denying or repressing the soul, limits our access to life force energy. This is because we shut down a significant and essential part of ourselves.
Here’s the thing…although the soul naturally seeks to emerge in our lives, it requires nurturing. Just like an acorn cannot grow into an oak without good soil, water, and sunlight, your soul requires love and care in order to bloom. A practice of radical self-care nourishes and nurtures the soul, creating an ideal environment for it to bloom into its full potential. So how do we tend to the soul?
There are three key aspects to radical soul-care: 1) knowing and honoring yourself – your core values, needs, dreams and desire, 2) cultivating inspiration, passion and joy in your life, and 3) embodying and expressing your unique gifts.
When I think about the honoring the soul, I am reminded of this quote:
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
Jesus Christ
Have you reflected upon your core values, deepest desires, dreams, and personal needs?
Do you honor those things in your life through appropriate action – or – do you neglect them?
How can you cultivate more inspiration, passion or joy in your life?
Are you embodying and expressing your unique gifts and purpose?
Next Steps
I hope these suggestions give you a few new ideas about how to increase your health and wellbeing, and increase your resiliency – body, mind, and soul. However, if you’d love more support, please apply for a complimentary breakthrough session. I’d love to support you!
And…if you find yourself going through a period of chaos, change, and transformation, I invite you to embrace a practice of radical self-care, and check out my article on How to Find the Gifts and the Purpose in the Darkness.
Although the cocoon can be messy, confusing and stressful, it is a powerful time of healing and creativity. Remember what I said about surrender and creation? To get to creation, you must first surrender and accept what is, and practice radical self-care to build your resiliency and inner resources so you can create your next chapter.