I won't let my body out be outwait everything that I'm made, don won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning love who I am again. I'm strong, I feel free, I know every pardon me, it's beautiful.
And then will always out way.
If you feel it, but your hands in the air, She'll some love to the view. I get there.
Take you one day?
Ana, did you and die out way?
Happy Saturday? Outweigh Amy here and I'm with Leanne. This is week two of a self imaging series asking the question do you know your true value and worth? Like?
Do you really know it?
And Leanne's helping us define what that looks like. Last week we talked about self acceptance. This week we're talking about self care. Week three will be self esteem, Week four, self worth five, self Endorsement. So Lann, let's do this week's self care.
It's so important in my opinion, to really define and refine that definition and then align it with who you want to be because so many times, I know, for me, I was throwing out words like self worth and self love and really not even knowing what they meant. So that's what we're doing, is we're deep diving into these five ingredients that I believe if you put them together in a mixing bowl, you are going to feel true
worthiness down to your bones. And as we talked about last week, it is this ongoing journey.
It's not a one and done.
We're really just here to get those wheels turning, get those synapses firing in your brain so that you can have an awareness, awareness that takes you down a different trajectory if you are currently down that trajectory of not necessarily knowing your worth. And so you know, self care is kind of a buzzword. It has been for probably ten years now, and a lot of times it's associated with bubble baths and manicures, which, don't get me wrong, I love me some bubble basm manicures.
You could hear the Tennessee and and me coming out now, love me some.
But that being said, I feel like we leave so much on the table when we don't account for this true definition. And honestly, I equate self care with health, you know, and really needing to redefine what health is because if you're anything like me and you learn this definition of health where it's this whole eat less move more thought process, or like you know, white knuckle your way through it and then the counting, the measuring all
of that. Or for me too, my definition of healthy equated to chasing skinny, which anybody who's led with that probably knows how unhealthy that can lead you down roads
of as well. But that being said, we really need to redefine health if we're going to talk about this definition of self care, and so to me, this definition of health and self care needs to be this three dimensional, really like nervous system driven conversation where it's taking care of your brain, your head, your heart, your nervous system.
And honestly, a lot of times this.
Lead people think they immediately go to the physical side of it, But I believe that's where if we don't start with the mental, emotional and even spiritual side of it, the physical stuff really can can tend to go out the windows. So part of it is first and foremost looking at it as this three dimensional mental, emotional and
physical conversation. But I truly believe that if you start at the mental emotional side of it and have like essentially a self care plan for that and ways that you process, and you're emotionally available to yourself and you're gaining the tools for that the physical stuff as well. I mean, obviously you need to up level your commitment on that side of it too, if it's if it's
lacking in that department. But I truly believe you're going to be better served if you flip it on its head and start with the mental emotional side of it. And obviously there's so many different ways to do that. There's no one recipe. It's such a personal equation. But that's the first thing I wanted to lead with, is redefining health and redefining self care because then you can look at it of like, okay, now self care becomes this conversation of what do I need right now to
be my optimal self? And what you need when you are stressed and you have kids that have the flu and you're, you know, do juggling a thousand different things might be very different that when you have all this extra time and you can prioritize your physical health care or for physical self care. And what happens is when we don't acknowledge those things and again we're just focused on the physical, the mental emotional stuff goes out the window.
And then when the mental emotional stuff feels kind of haired or frazzled, the physical stuff goes out the window. So that's why I think we really need to change our definitions and really redefine. I'm giving you mine, but I invite you as you're listening to create your own, Like what is my definition of health and what does it need to be to really cater to all of me?
You know, from this headheart, mind, brain side of it, leading all the way down to physical and backup, Like it's this ever, never ending kind of cycle.
When I was in therapy, probably it was twenty twenty doing some stuff like as a family, and this particular therapist was a psychotherapist out of Colorado, and he was so focused on mind body spirit connection and he like, all of this is a waste of time if you're not connected mind body spirit, like waste of my time.
And I thought, oh okay. So he really challenged us to tap in to that and have a full blown mind body spirit connection during our process of healing or trying to work through some stuff that eventually led to healing. It had never been presented to me that way in therapy before and after I went through and intensive we did like a five week intensive with him, and I understood why he was so focused on that the entire time.
Yeah, and if you think about it, like when you are just singularly focused on like a typical eat less move more conversational, we'll focus on like what am I eating? What am I putting in my body? And how am I moving my body? When you think about that, when you're like life is butterflies and roses and everything's great, like, yeah, you're on point, you're you're getting to the gym, you're
doing walks, you're grocery shopping, you're whatever. But then when your mental, emotional, spiritual health goes down the window, that's when you stop taking care of your physical body, especially if you have a belief of like, oh, when I'm stressed, I don't have time for that, right, and especially if what it takes for you to take care of your body is such a tremendous amount of effort, time and care,
it goes out the windows. So I think when we go to set air quotes health and self care goals from the former definition of health, we think of it in this bubble of oh, when I'm motivated, I'm going to set these goals and everything's going to be great, But why doesn't this work for me when life isn't going great? And I think we should not to be kind of skeptical and cynical, but we should start there, like, what does my life look like when I have zero time,
zero energy, zero you know, capacity in bandwidth? And what do I really need in those moments? Because telling me to go to the gym and you know, pump iron and you know, eat a kale salad or whatever people tell themselves is not going to sit and you're not going to even do it, and then it's going to go in the category of great.
There's one more thing I'm failing at. So I really think we need to because it's not a failure. That's right.
That's because it's literally not a failure. It makes me think of exactly what Brene Brown has said at times with her family and how she divides one hundred percent with her husband. It looks different depending on what is going on that week. There may be some days where she's able to give a eighty percent and her husband can only give twenty. She's able to give, you know, thirty percent, and he's like, okay, you know what I can come in and fill in the seventy or there.
Some days where she's like, dude, I only have twenty percent and he's like, yeah, me too, And they go to the drawing board to see how are we going to survive this day, this week if we're both only at forty percent total. And that's a partnership. Some people you're navigating it alone. So then you're like, okay, well now I'm only at twenty percent and I have nobody to even give me another twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or
eighty percent to equal out to one hundred. But they have a strategy, they have a plan as a family when they have those moments. I heard her say, she's like, if I've got produce in the fridge, I throw it in the freezer so it doesn't go bad because I know I'm not going to cook it. I don't have the bandwidth. We figure out our favorite takeout places boom.
We know we're going to be fed and nourished and feel good about that, and we take care of what we need to take care of so that they survive that day or again that week, or who knows, maybe it's even a month or a couple of months. I think pregaming is important. Having a blueprint and a plan of what that looks like for you is super important.
And also what came to mind when you were talking is I've been doing meditation this year for the first time, and so many people that I do guided meditations with, or I'll watch different videos they have up on YouTube or whatever, and they say, if you think your day is too hectic for meditation and it's too crazy, which I get it, maybe it will be. I'm just telling you what they say because it is interesting to think about.
It this way.
They're like, that's exactly the day you need to meditate.
Like if you think.
You're doubles double it right, if you think you don't have time for it, or you're telling yourself I don't have time for that, then that's exactly when you need
to sit down and do it more. And so just asking yourself that question or being like, okay, am I saying I don't have time for this, and would it serve me better if I were to pause instead of running around frazzle to hectic, busy, all the things, whatever, Can I pause right now and do something for my mind and my body and my spirit to resettle, so that way, if you do need to come up with a plan, you're in a more calm space.
Absolutely, you just dropped so many wisdom bombs, but one of the golden nuggets that you first said is this concept of a partnership, and that really comes down to your beliefs about your body too, and your health and your self care. Because if you feel like your health and self care is a burden, or maybe you're for many years, I was in a war with my body. It was something I needed to punish or I resented it.
And so part of it too with the self care conversation, is like acknowledging, like, no, my body, my brain, my well being, we are partners in crime for the rest of my life, whether I like it or not.
So what if I waive that white flag.
And got on board and created partnership and union with my body and then entered into those conversations. I think people don't realize often that they are unknowingly in a conversation where they're kind of at war or like on opposing sides with their health and their body. And so
even that mental shift of entering into a partnership. But you also touched on the belief of it's the number one belief I hear with my clients about self care is when stress goes up, I don't have time for self care and what that needs to be and I
use that word needs like very mindfully. But what would serve us best would be actually when stress goes up, like you were saying the meditation example, when stress goes up, self care, mental emotional self care needs to go up because all these people and things that are in line to get my time, my attention, my thought, my care, they need me to be my best self. And then
what happens if you're not. Then you resent people, you resent yourself, you're not the best version of yourself, and then you're numbing out and the time goes to things like numbing out. So it really is the awareness of and redefining what is health, redefining what needs to happen when stress hits, Redefining like this separation or divide between you and your body and your health and getting on
the same team, creating partnership. But then also seeing it's a three dimensional conversation that honestly, if you're leaving your your mind, body spirit conversation and the mind heart and spirit side.
Of it is left like to the gods, you know.
Then you're leaving the majority, in my opinion, the majority of your what you truly need for optimal health on the table and it's not getting attended to.
Yeah.
I use the meditation as an example, and it may be like, Okay, I think some of the videos are the people that I've been watching, They're like, that means you need to do an hour. Okay, reality is you may not have an hour. But what if when you're
driving you do breath work. What if on your lunch break at work you go outside in the beautiful fall weather depending on where you live, and get a little vitamin D and go on a five minute walk with nature, no earbuds, no people, nothing, but just taking that five minutes. It doesn't have to be something really crazy or a
huge time commitment to get you there. And I know when I was in my super unhealthy ways or patterns that I actually defined as healthy at the time, I would have thought, oh, well, if I can't go to this class at the gym, or I can't commit to this hour workout, or I can't cook all this food that I wanted to cook. Then suddenly I just I collapse, like I sort of just I picturing like myself just falling inward and being like, Okay, I give up. You talked about waving the white flag. I was sort of
waving a different flag of the surrender. But I was surrendering to the wrong thing. And what you're talking about is surrendering to the thing that's actually going to give you more life and add to this journey of knowing your true value, knowing your true worth and giving yourself the capacity to get there. So last week self acceptance into this week self care. I'm excited for the next three weeks for self esteem, self worth, and self endorsement.
And speaking of self endorsement in a different way, Leanne, where can people find you?
Yeah, everything that you need to know is over on Liannellington dot com. I'm also Leanne Ellington over on Instagram, And if you want to take a deep dive into the female brain and self image, you can check out my masterclass over there as well.
Awesome and then What's God Got to Do With It? A podcast of Lian's that loads up every Tuesday and over on socials. I am at Radio Amy and we'll see you next Saturday, Bye bye