Ep200: Self-Care and the Journey to Empowerment and Self-Worth

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello friends . I hope you had an amazing week .

Today we're going to continue on with our refreshed episode series , and this week we're going to continue on with our refreshed episode series , and this week we're going to talk about self-care why it's important , why it matters and how it's really at the center of empowering everything that you want in your life .

In order to do and be everything that we want and could be , it requires us to take exceptional care of ourself .

And in order to take exceptional care of ourself and to put that kind of effort and discipline and diligence into it , it requires us to believe that we're worth it , that we matter more than , say , some of the other things that are vying for our attention . So I hope you enjoy this episode .

We're going to examine it through the eyes of one of my coaching clients and through some of my own personal experiences , and I hope that as you listen , you'll reflect on how you're spending your time and the degree of care and effort you're taking in nurturing yourself , because you , my friend , are worth it . Enjoy this episode on self-care .

Today I want to talk about a really important topic and that is prioritizing self-care . Now , when you hear that , you might be thinking wait a minute , I thought this was a career podcast and I will say it is .

But as I coach people in either the aspects of getting ahead in their corporate career or starting or growing their business because I do both of those things many times , as we go through the process of helping them to work through whatever their situation is or the challenges so that they get the things that they want from their career in life , many times other ,

what I would call periphery things come up . For some people it might be around weight management . For some people it's about making time for themselves , for hobbies and things that they care about .

For other people it might be issues in a relationship I'm not a relationship coach by any means , but sometimes that comes up and sometimes that issue will be a root cause that's causing them problems in the workplace because that really is the crux of it is that we are all humans and so we don't just exist at work between the eight and five .

The other things that happen in the rest of our life affect us during those hours and vice versa . When we come home , we don't just turn off the day during those hours , and vice versa . When we come home , we don't just turn off the day .

Some of the day bleeds in in our mindset , in how we feel and in how we treat and act towards the other people in our lives , and even what I'm talking about here , in how we actually care or not for ourselves in important ways .

So I'm excited to talk about this , and I'm going to start by talking about through the eyes of one of my clients that we'll call Rebecca , and we're going to talk about her struggles with self-care and some of the things that we've discovered as we've coached her through this , and then I want to talk about what I think are the three big reasons why we don't

prioritize self-care , if that's an issue for us , and then I'm going to leave you with some thoughts on how to stand up your own daily self-care practice . So I'm excited about this episode .

I think it's really important and I'm excited because if you learn how to do it effectively in a way that matters to you , I do think it can pay huge dividends in literally every part of your life . So let's go ahead and dive in Now . Let's start by talking about Rebecca .

So she is about 27 years into her career , so she's late 40s , and she really enjoys what she does . She's in an aspect of marketing for a mid sized healthcare organization on the East Coast and she really loves what she does . You know she enjoys it and it's fast paced .

She's been with the company a very long time and has kind of moved up at a steady pace . And when she came to me about a year ago she was trying to get from a senior director level to a vice president level , which was a big jump .

It's always a big jump to go from , like , senior manager to the director levels , and then it's a really big jump to go from the director levels into senior executive , like a vice president plus .

So we're working on that and how she needed to kind of show up in new ways in order to kind of be that vice president level before she got it , because that's really the key right .

And as we work through that , we also started talking about a passion area she has , which is around music , and she had this little gem of an idea for starting a side hustle e-commerce business around her hobby , which is music .

I won't go into the details , but so we've been working on those two things for a year and she's just gotten promoted to vice president and a couple months ago she launched this little tiny e-com business around the music industry and she's super excited about both things . She's really happy with where her life is .

However , as we've been working together , we have continually had things come up where she felt like she wasn't really being true to herself in some important ways . She's married and she has two children , and so then she's got all this other stuff going on right . That sounds like most of our lives . You know what I mean .

And really , as we got into some of the assets , especially some of the aspects of trying to get her promoted to vice president , we started working on how she was showing up as a senior director at that business , because she'd been languishing at that level for longer than she really wanted to I would say about seven years , right , and she'd been used to before ,

that sort of moving up at a good clip like every three years or so , right In that company , and she sat there for double that time and then some , and she wasn't happy about it .

So we had to do a lot of exploratory on , well , how was she showing up Like , in what ways would she be demonstrating to these people that she actually was vice president , material right ?

And so when we try to do that , when we try to get promoted or move ahead in some way , whether it's to the next level of entrepreneurship or the next level , the next title in our career , we have to first realize that you don't get given the job and step into that .

You get that by being that person first , and I'll do a whole episode on that down the road . But as we got into the exploration of who she was being , she realized that she hadn't been showing up her best in terms of her image . That those were her words and that was her conclusion and her evaluation .

And her words around that were she felt like she had not prioritized caring for herself in some really important ways and I would say tangible ways , and I think many people might say more superficial ways . I'm not judging that , but I'm just saying they're more about literally our image that we project to the world .

So when she did this evaluation around her mindset and then how she would show up every day in her career , she realized that when she thought of what a VP in her mind was , it was a person with a very polished exterior these are her words .

It was a person who was very poised and together , no matter what crazy was going on right , and it was a person that really , for her , was kind of reflecting the best of who they could be , I would say , in a very exterior packaged way . And that's just . These are Rebecca's thoughts and words , not necessarily mine .

So as we explored that and then I had her go back and say , okay , well , if that's your image of a vice president in your company , now let's take a look at where you are right now . How closely do you match that ? And it was interesting because that's when we started to get into well , how are you taking care of yourself ?

Like , in some very real , tangible ways . And it led to this exploratory around other things that were going on in her life , outside of her career , that were getting in the way , in her mind of being able to , at least on occasion , put herself first .

And so she found herself being last in line for , you know , shopping for new fashionable clothing , for keeping her shoe wardrobe up to date . I know they seem like trivial things , but for her it was a symptom of a bigger issue .

So we started there and she was like you know , I can't even remember with COVID and like stuff , like the last time I went and got my hair done , like and you know , I'm using makeup from three years ago Like these were all her evaluations and it was . It was a realization for her .

Like that was a , a moment I'll never forget it Cause did the exploratory . And then we went into the session and for a lot of people that would have just been like , oh gosh , I just need to get online and buy some things and spruce it up .

But for her , when she saw it all written down and I started to ask well , why , obviously money for them wasn't an issue Like she could have bought new makeup , she could have gone to the hairstylist , she could have bought some new shoes , like she could have done all of that stuff , but she wasn't doing it . And so , as we explored that .

That's when we got into what I would say are some of the more deeply rooted aspects of why a person doesn't necessarily prioritize their own self-care . I mean , we're all busy , right . So I'm not saying it's easy to keep all the plates spinning . It's not for any of us , right . We all have to kind of find our way to do that .

But when there are long periods of time which is the conclusion that Rebecca reached that's what she told me in that session as we explored it , she really was silent for a long time and as she thought about it she said I just don't feel like I'm as important as the other .

Things are that I have to do after work , things are that I have to do after work . Now , that is a clue of what I'm going to say next . So when I heard that , I knew where we were going , I knew we were going towards . I don't matter , I'm not enough , right . And it's hard to go there in a session with a client . It can take .

It can take a longer time , and I like to kind of ease into it and let them discover it themselves in a gentle way , because it can be a very painful realization to look at your life and to look at the ways that you're showing up and to look at the evidence of that and to realize that when it comes to your free time , when it comes to your time out

of work , you just don't treat yourself like you matter . And as she started to have that realization , over a couple of episodes we kind of gently eased into it . That can be a very emotional thing and I think people have to kind of explore their way into it so they can do that with ease .

We started to look at , well , why Because there's a reason we do anything why do you feel like your own needs are not as important as all the other stuff that you got to do and all the other people in your life ?

Some of it had to do with , I guess , her observations of her own mother , who she had a lot of respect and esteem for but who put everyone else ahead of her . And as she looked at her own mother and her own mother examples of other women she respected she respected sort of how they cared for their family and she respected how giving and kind they were .

But as she looked at it through a different lens , she realized that her own mother didn't practice self-care . You know , sometimes she wore clothes with stains on them , or sometimes you know she was driving a really dirty car , or you know there were little clues that she wasn't important .

And as Rebecca looked at her own life , she could see that in ways that she had never really connected to before . She was trying to model what she thought was so wonderful about her own mother , but in doing so she wasn't prioritizing her own self-care . So that was part of it .

I think the other part of it was that in her relationship with her husband , there was not for her and she came to this conclusion herself there wasn't a true partnership there , and she felt like she was not only carrying the load on the income earning , but she was disproportionately carrying the load with the children and the care of the home .

She was kind of doing everything , and I won't go into the details of their relationship because I'm not a relationship coach and we only coach there on the periphery .

However , the only thing I will say , and the only area that we did coach on , is she has some decisions to make in that area and some things that they'll probably have to work on together , but as we were coaching through it .

We really spent a lot of time talking about how that made her feel and that she was kind of bringing in the bulk of the income , being the one driving around , carting the kids all over the place and going to all their events and all that kind of stuff buying the clothes , cooking the dinners , doing or arranging for all of the housework and all the things

that kept the house going and her take was I'm obviously not there with them . That you know . He sort of went to work and came home . Now you know that goes both ways

. I know people who those roles are reversed and it's the man who would say that this is not a gender bashing thing . This is just Rebecca's observations about her own situation and as she got into it she realized that that was not what she wanted . She doesn't necessarily care about the income balance .

What she cares about is the fact that the relationship is more of a partnership and that they kind of have each other's back , and that she was envisioning kind of a more modern relationship where they could back each other up in important ways when it came to caring for the kids and things around the household .

And yet they fell into these very traditional gender role , things outside of income .

So , even though the income thing was non-traditional , everything else about it was more traditional and it was making her very unhappy and she had never really even gotten in touch with that until we started exploring all of the things around , honestly , just getting her promoted to vice president .

That's how all this came up , because then she was like , oh gosh , I'm not really showing up like a vice president , I'm not even you know when was the last year and a half since I've cut my haircut , you know , and I've just been whacking away at it myself , like you know , like , as we got into all of that and got deeper into it , because there's a reason

we do everything , that's how all this stuff came up .

And so for Rebecca , the big realization was and I would say the headline for her , the epiphany was that there had been , in this 15 year relationship that she had with her husband , there had been long periods of time that she and these are her words went sort of on autopilot or she went kind of numb and she just started going through the motions and when

she went into those periods of time she didn't matter , she didn't go to the gym , she didn't work out . She didn't even shop online for herself . She didn't make time to get her nails done , like I'm not saying those things is the most important thing , but all that stuff , and then you can connect the dots . She also didn't go for a regular annual physicals .

She didn't prioritize those things . She only went when she was sick , right .

So you start to see how one thing in a relationship dynamic between her and her partner , coupled with the fact that she had a role model for a mother who was more of a traditional mother and also was not necessarily great at she took care of everyone else , she didn't take care of herself , right . So Rebecca found herself doing the same things .

So that was a huge moment for Rebecca and obviously we've moved beyond that because now here she is , a year later . She's three months into her vice president role . So I'm going to talk later on the podcast about what some of the things that she did and the impact that had on her state of mind , on how she thought about herself and all of that .

But I want to talk first about as we've kind of used her as an example . I want to talk about the three reasons . I think that we don't do that . I don't know if you can relate to this .

If you're a mother or if you have a partner in your life , you know where , maybe you're not always happy with the division of labor in the household , or if you just even if you're a single person and you have a career that you enjoy but find yourself sometimes being overwhelmed by , and it's easy to fall into bad habits that get in the way of taking care

of yourself .

So I want to talk about the three reasons we don't prioritize our own self-care , and one of them is and you can heard this in the Rebecca example one of the biggest ones is that we don't value or prioritize ourselves , and that is a very hard realization and that's why I said , like when I get there with my clients , to be very honest with you , like most

of us walking around on this planet , to some degree we feel like we're not enough , maybe not in every aspect of our life , but in some aspect of our life . It's just a human thing to fear that we all have , and so coming to terms with some very real proof that you haven't valued yourself or prioritize yourself is kind of hard .

I think it's very it can be for people very painful to kind of wake up from being on that automatic pilot of just shoving your own needs down . When you start to awaken and you really look at all the ways that you've ignored yourself and not taken care of yourself , it can be very painful .

I've done some of that myself and I'll even say , like the summer I think I've shared several sessions ago that my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in May .

My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in May and so from that diagnosis to the time when we lost her in August , it was very difficult and I live in Dallas and my parents live in St Louis and I've got three siblings . So between the four of us we were really trying to rotate through on a weekly

basis . So I kind of went into like this place in my mind where I was like I have to be able to get through this . I can't deal with all of the grief and stuff right now . I'll never be able to go bouncing back and forth and dealing with my business and dealing with my , my corporate job . I just won't be able to do it all .

So I tried to stay rooted in gratitude and I definitely started taking it one day at a time . But what was really interesting is that , because I wasn't really processing through all of the stuff that was going on , I kept telling myself I will do it when I have a minute I can't do it right now because I'm , I just have too was going on .

I kept telling myself I will do it when I have a minute . I can't do it right now because I'm , I just have too much going on . I can't , you know , and I've got to be there for my family and , honestly , for my employer and all that stuff .

So I realized that there were a lot of old bad habits starting to show up stopped going to the gym , stopped taking my supplements , stopped my I try to do this keto eating routine and it requires cooking and stuff like that and you know , planning ahead mainly and I just kind of stopped doing that and falling into some old patterns of behavior and it just

started to snowball right and my life started to work less well and , as I know from my own self-discovery work that there have been , like Rebecca , there were long periods of my life in my past where my own needs were ignored because other , more pressing matters came to the forefront .

So I have that tendency as well and I've realized what my mother's illness and the loss of my mother and now we're dealing with my father's . He's got some health concerns . He's getting up there in age and she was his primary caregiver , so now that is on the four of us children as well . So there's a lot going on .

But I've realized that I can't go numb , I can't go on automatic pilot like in order to sustain this level of performance . You know , being able to bounce back and forth between Dallas and St Louis every month and being able to perform at my highest , not only in my you know my corporate job , but also in my business . I've got to be there for myself first .

It can't be something that I get to when all of this problem goes away and it's so easy to forget that , like it has to be the most important thing . And I've never well , I'm not going to say never , but there've been lots of periods in my life where I have not felt that my own needs needed to come first . It seemed like a platitude .

That wasn't really true . It seemed like there were lots of other things that needed to be done first and then , if I had time , I would go do the other things I needed to do for myself . And underneath all of that is just this fundamental belief that we're not as important as everything else . That's going on , and that is 100% false .

And we learn that by watching others in our life , usually when we were young , maybe our parents or parent and it's just something that we tell ourselves , that we can get to it when there is time .

And I will tell you that is the wrong way to look at it , because for you to be able to do the things you really need to do , or the things you really want to do , and to do them well , you have to be functioning at your best .

That means you have to be mentally strong and you need to be projecting to the world the best image of you , right , the image you choose to project .

And that takes time and it takes care Caring for your health , your mental health , your physical health , your dental health , your eye health , caring for your wardrobe and the image you present to the world , caring for aspects of your body . You know , getting into the gym and keeping your body strong , and all of that is really , really important .

And you can say well , who has time ? That's a full-time job ? It really isn't , but you know you need to think about it in a structured way and that , I would say , is the second thing is that we we don't have a routine right .

We get to our self-care and the things about it when we get to it or when we think of it , versus having it as a scheduled part of our day and our week and our month . When you have it scheduled , you'll do it . And I know , like for me , I have spent . I really don't love schedules and I don't love it .

My theory is because , as a marketer and I've spent probably half my career in go-to-market like advertising sorts of things that is like deadline central , it's stress central and so , like in my personal life , I sort of balk at having anything scheduled . I hate it , you know , and I like to just go with the flow .

But the truth of the matter is , when it comes to self-care , you can't and I learned that about four or five years ago you need to think of your meals in advance . You need to-care . You can't and I learned that about four or five years ago you need to think of your meals in advance .

You need to think about , you know , when are you going to slot time to go take care of your hair or your skin or your nails . Or when are you going to get to the gym this week ? Right , schedule that time in . When are you going to refresh your wardrobe for the next season ?

Schedule that time in and do it , because it's so easy to just not do it , and I know some of the stuff to some people can seem really trivial , but it's really important . I feel like taking care of how we look is just as important as taking care of how our body functions or how our brain is functioning .

It's a manifestation like the degree of respect we show in the image we project to the world , and how we allow ourselves to care for ourselves tells people how we feel about ourselves , and it can be a painful thing if you've for a while , just been ignoring your own needs . But I guess what I want to tell you is like scheduling .

It is , you know , the second big thing , but I think the third thing is just allowing yourself to be important enough , to believe that you're important enough to be worth the time and the money and the effort that it takes , and to believe that by doing that you're going to be showing up in the rest of your life in the strongest possible way , like when

Rebecca who I used as the example at the beginning of the thing , when she started to list all the ways she wanted to show up better ways . That would be more reflective with the image she wanted to portray to the world , to her company , to the people who reported to her when she , piece by piece , started to shore up those things was really interesting .

It's like the relationship dynamic was really interesting . It's like

the relationship dynamic . She was able to have a tougher conversation with her partner at home or spouse , and they are working right now on sort of renegotiating who does what . I don't think it's probably easy . I'm not coaching her in that area , but she's doing it right .

She found the courage to say things that maybe she hadn't said within the context and my guess is , like you know , when we talk about it down the road , it's going to make her relationship stronger , right ? She got promoted probably six months after she started putting some of those things in . You know why .

It wasn't because she had a new wardrobe or got her hair done . It was because of how she showed up , because of the respect that she was showing herself . She projected a different energy during her work day .

Right , she showed up as the best version of her and sometimes like as as trivial as we can make the make what you wear or how your hair looks or all of that kind of stuff it's like in the car you drive , like whatever car you drive , like taking care of that . That is about respecting yourself .

Are you driving around on bald tires or do you go and get the oil changed and the tires rotated when you know when you should like ? All of those little things make you stand up straighter , make you realize that you're worth it .

And when you realize that you're worth it and that you matter , you show up in your life in ways that matter and even though , like for folks who have children , I know that adds even more . You know , for Rebecca that was a big part of it was . You know , she had this demanding career that she loved and she wasn't going to give up .

But she also had this definition of being the kind of mother she wanted to be to these two children . And you know she has come to realize that her own self-care isn't detracting from her being the kind of mother she wants to be .

She's actually showing up for them in more powerful ways and she believes that when they see her go off to the gym for an hour three times a week , that that hopefully imprints on them and that when they become adults they can do the same thing .

Like she's realizing that they're paying attention to everything she does , not just to the things that she says , and that when they see her balancing her care for them with her care for herself , she's actually being the best possible example and role model for her children . Right ? So how do you do it ? So the three ways .

Like I said a lot of times , we don't value or prioritize ourself , so that's one reason we don't do self-care . Number two was that we don't schedule the time right . It's just , it's something we do when we get around to it versus something that's scheduled in . And then I think number three is we don't know how to do it right , and I know that sounds dumb .

It's like , well , just book an appointment in the hairdresser , but I feel like you know it's about more than just doing that stuff .

Like you can schedule time for the gym and you can plan your meals ahead and you can do whatever , but the only way you're going to stay with it is by first getting strong in your mental health , by realizing that you are important . You are the central nervous system of your world , really , and so you have to take care of yourself first .

It's kind of like that , that adage like on the plane , like put the oxygen mask on yourself first so you don't pass out when you're trying to help the people around you , right ? It's the same thing . It's like your self-care comes first , you come first , and so you have to start with that .

You have to start with some coaching around that belief , because for many of us particularly women , but some men too putting yourself first is not what you learned when you were growing up , it's not what you saw from the people around you , and so because of that , you might be approaching your own self-care in every aspect in a sporadic way , and that's not

gonna serve you . It's not something you can just get around to , it's something that has to be important to you . So , like , how do you do it ?

Well , I do think it is about a schedule , and I would start your day like I do every morning I start my day with my coffee and and I get up , or I do get up early , I get up around five , sometimes four , 30 , honestly . But I do go to bed early , I go to bed , go to bed about nine , nine or nine , 30 . And I make sure I get enough sleep .

That is a very important thing for my own self-care . But when I get up I make my coffee and the first thing I do before I get ready for work , before I do anything else , I do a half an hour of self-coaching because I want my day to go the way I want it to go .

I want all the things on my to-do list to get done , and the way that I do that is by directing my thoughts . And so if you realize that you have an issue with your self-care , my challenge to you would be a great way to start making that a priority is by making the start of your day a mental health priority .

Let that be the start of your day and let yourself , like for the next two to three months , every morning , do the coaching around your own self-worth , your own value and why putting yourself first is not selfish and just start to self-coach on that .

If you don't know how to do that , go back and listen to episode 89 and 90 , because I tell you in 89 , I explain the methodology that I use in an episode 90 . I tell you how to do your own daily self-coaching .

If you just follow those two episodes and then stand up your own 15 to 30 minute coaching practice and do that every day 15 to 30 minutes for three months , it will change your life . And if you have a problem prioritizing self-care , make those first three months of self-coaching be 100% about how you see yourself in terms of value . What is your value ?

How much do you feel you matter ? Are you worth your own time , attention and energy ? Yes is the answer to that , but you may not believe it . Right , and that's what you want to uncover , because that's where it starts . The easy part is like scheduling the stuff .

The easy part is picking a doctor and going , or scheduling 45 minutes to go to the gym three times a week or four times a week or all the other things that we need to do . It's just a routine and it can get scheduled in . That's easy .

But believing that that's not time better spent somewhere else , believing that you showing up as your best matters not only to you but to everyone that's important in your life and to your employer and all of that stuff , that is what you have to coach on first , because you can schedule all you want .

You will not stay with it unless you believe that you are intrinsically important and your own self-care is the most important thing . Important , and your own self-care is the most important thing . So I think that self-care is it can be a touchy subject .

It can come off as selfish to some people through a certain lens , but I know from personal experience that there's nothing worse than letting yourself give 100% of yourself to everything else your job , your business , your partner , your kids , your church , whatever your things are and that you have nothing left for yourself .

That's a recipe for getting run down and for getting burned out .

And if you reverse that and take care of yourself first , feed yourself like spiritually speaking and self-care speaking , first take care of you you're going to be better able to take care of everything else , right , and it's going to be a better life and a life that is more about being aspirational and making sure that it's everything that you want it to be , and

that is my wish for you . So with that I'm going to leave you until next

time . Make it a great week , my friends . Do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach . I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level . Inside we take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then apply it . Join me at the purposefulcareercom backslash next level .

Don't forget the purposefulcareercom backslash next level . Join me and together we'll make your career and life everything you dream of . We'll see you there .