017: Redefining Self-Care

Hi, my name is Katy Blommer and my passion is helping women learn how to put themselves first, I learned all the tools for success on my own 12 year journey that has led me to finally figuring out how to live my best life. My journey included overcoming body image issues, and yo yo dieting, climbing the corporate ladder to a multiple six figure career, navigating mom guilt through a 60 hour workweek turning around marriage issues and much more. Now, I'm truly living my best life. And I've pretty much become obsessed with teaching others my tried and true methods for creating balance, maintaining healthy habits, improving your relationship, career development, and how to stop tying your value and worth, to the way you look and how you serve others. I'm so passionate about helping others learn this, that I created the working mom happiness method to help you get there too. So if you're ready to learn how to live your best life, pull up a chair or put on your walking shoes and get ready to dive in. This is the working mom happiness method podcast.

Welcome, this is our episode all about self care. And I'm excited to jump in. Quickly before I do, we are in module four of the working mom happiness method. Module Four is the last method it's all about or sorry, the last module, it's all about tools for success. And there are lots of topics in module four. Because there are lots of tools for success, we spent modules one, two and three learning values, boundaries, goals, and we created our best life master plan there. And if you haven't done that, I highly encourage you to go back and do that start from the beginning Module One officially starts in episode two Episode One is an overview of the program to talk a little bit more about me and my journey there. And the reason I recommend doing that as well, number one, it'll change your life. Number two, we build upon it as we go throughout the program. So we use the best life master plan document in our morning routine, which we've already learned all about that. And then in this episode, specifically, you're going to do a little exercise towards the end where you're gonna write down some self care items. Because ultimately, what we're going to use that best life master plan document for and all of the things we're learning is to create your best life schedule at the end of this at the end, that's sort of how module four ends and how their program ends is with your schedule that you live your life by based on your values, goals, boundaries, and all the tools for success here. So I'm just giving you a heads up in case, you want to have something towards the end of this episode that you can write things down with. Now, that's certainly not required. If you're exercising, going for a walk or you're driving while you're listening. No problem, don't change your plans. Keep listening, this is a very small portion of the episode. And you're just going to make a mental note of some self care things after you listen to what I say that you're going to want to jot down and use later when you're creating your best life schedule later on. So if you have a running electronic list or paper lists that you've been keeping, as you've been doing exercises here, great, just add this to it. And if you're out and about you can just remember and add it later when you get a chance no big deal. Alright, so in this episode, for our agenda, we're gonna cover redefining self care what self care is, and is not seeking pleasure in life. And we're gonna do that quick exercise at the end. So let's jump in with redefining self care. I have a love hate relationship with the term self care in general, on the love side, self care is amazing. We want to be taking the time to take care of ourselves, it's hard for us to instinctually do because society has taught us that our value and worth is placed in serving all those around us. I love that self care is much more talked about now and discussed. And on that hand, I love that there's a term for it, something we can call it and something that we can strive to do more of. So I love that on the hate side of the term self care. If we were all valuing ourselves in the way that we should be, we wouldn't need a term called self care, we wouldn't need it. And I really like to think about men as it relates to this concept. And all disclaim as always, I'm not talking about every man. But I do think in general, this is one of those stereotypes that is true. So not every man but I do think most men don't use the term self care and they don't really think along those lines specifically. So let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. My husband back when we were both working in the office pre COVID days, he would come home from work and have no problem walking in and doing something to decompress. Right. Usually for him it was going to play his guitar. There wouldn't be a whole thought process when he walked in. What do I need to do what needs to be cleaned up? Who needs dinner? Where are the kids How are they doing, I need to talk to the kids because I haven't seen them all day and I feel guilty, I need a snack, there would be no mental process like this, he would just go and know. And he would know instinctively, that he needs to go do something to help unwind or decompress for the day.

Whereas me, I would come in and think all of those things in my head, and I would feel some sort of guilt or need to ask for permission or clear it with him or, you know, with somebody in order to just go decompress when I got home versus doing something for somebody else, it wouldn't be natural to me, I would have to actually really deliberately think about it and sort of push myself to do that. And, you know, I think this is why we don't hear men talking about self care all the time, because they are quite frankly, much better at this than we are. And that's not our fault. It is because society didn't teach them to place their value and worth on serving and taking care of all those around us them. They didn't see their dads coming home from work, and cleaning up the house, cooking the dinner, taking care of all the kids, they just didn't see that. And we did. We saw that with our mothers. And so that's why it is harder for us. And I just I wish for us that we didn't even have to have this term called self care that it was just so automatic and daily for us that it was just there and innate. Okay, so that's kind of my love health help. Sorry, love hate relationship with self care. That was a tongue twister. I found this quote, just randomly on the internet that said, self care is not an indulgence. It's a discipline. And so as it relates to redefining self care, this is huge. self care is not an indulgence. It's a discipline. And the way I want us to redefine self care in our minds going forward, self care is not going to the spa once every three months with our friends or going on a girls trip. Or I don't know, buying amazing sheets now. Are all those things, forms of self care is society's definition? Yes. Are all those things good? Yes, those are amazing things that I hope you're doing and if not that you should be doing. However, I want us to reframe the notion of self care. And I like to even think of it as radical self care. Because for me to do regular self care, and take care of myself in the ways I should I have to think of it as being radical and that I am worth radical self care. I hate that I have to think about it that way. But I do, I have to give myself permission to do air quotes, radical self care, when, you know, my husband will laugh at some of the stuff that I call radical, because to me, I get so much guilt about things, or I used to I've done a lot of work in this area. So I want us to think about

radical self care being an everyday thing. So not going to the spa, you're not you're never going to go to the spa every single day. That's not real life. I want us to think of self care, as just these very basic things that we do each day to live our best and happy lives. And these are things like if you're in the stage of maybe you've had a baby, or you have lots of little children in your house, you know, that sometimes you can't even shower right or go to the bathroom, depending on the circumstances of what's going on. So so these are the types of things that I want us to continue to consider self care. So if you're in that stage, taking a shower, you know, maybe it's just getting ready for the day, if that's what you like, if you don't like that, you don't have to do it, going to the bathroom, right? Getting help from somebody so you can go to the bathroom. And then if you're in a different stage where maybe your kids are a little bit older, maybe you know you work outside of the home full time, it's getting in time for body movement, you know, going for a walk or going to an exercise class or something like that. Self care. So the very, we have to start thinking about the very basics day to day as self care and value ourselves enough to make time for those things. So one example is this whole thing that we've talked about in other episodes of for a lot of us, especially moms, we tend to have our me time, at the end of the night when everybody's in bed and we ended up staying up too late and not getting enough sleep. So basic, everyday self care would look like creating that time for yourself during the day. And I know that sounds hard and impossible to a lot of us. But I promise if you value yourself enough, you can make that happen by asking for help paying for help. radical self care. This is where the word radical comes in, because a lot of us think that is so Radical to pay for help to pay for some sort of childcare or ask family member to come over and help just so you can scroll your phone for an hour during the day. That is, you're worth it, you're worth that, versus scrolling your phone for an hour at night and losing out on critical sleep that's going to make you feel good and the rest of your life huge for an example of everyday self care. And, by the way, that's also a sign of burnout, when the only time you feel like you can get me time is at the end of the day, if that's something that's happening to you regularly, it's a sign and a signal that you are in burnout mode, and you need to make some kind of a change. Now, a lot of you listening to this will think Oh, that's great that she says that. But that's impossible, I can't make a change. And that's where I challenge you. radical self care, is that true? Can you really truly not make a change. And for some of us, it may be but I promise you it is a very, very small percentage of us. For most of us, it's that we're not valuing ourselves enough to upset someone else we care about or ask for help or put a burden on someone else we care about in order to take time for ourselves. Okay, so this is what I'm talking about redefining the term self care. Now, like I said, those more more common things that we call self care going to the spa, or, you know, really getting outside of the home to do something special, those are great, too. I'm

not discouraging those, I'm just saying we need to encompass every day basic items into self care. And that needs to include the five healthy basics that we talk about all the time, which are water, meaning drink enough water, sleep, getting enough sleep for you the amount of sleep that you need to feel good and have good energy most days without relying on caffeine all day. Reminder, nothing bad with some caffeine, but not needing it all day to have energy, body movement, eating foods that make you feel good and stress management, those five things need to be included in your daily routine as self care. Okay, so that's redefining it. Now let's talk about what self care is and what self care is not. I want to start with what self care is not. And the first thing is, it's not selfish. self care is not selfish. In the way society has defined the term selfish the negative definition of selfish. The other way you can think about it is that it's okay to be selfish. It's just It's okay. It's okay to upset somebody we care about or to put a burden on somebody we care about. If our intention is to really, truly take care of ourselves in a way that is needed to be healthy and happy and feel good in life. It is absolutely okay. Self care isn't going to the spa once per week, but not taking care of yourself daily. Okay, so we need to prioritize taking care of ourselves on an everyday basis, before we even start to do those bigger things. Because you can still be burned in full on burnout mode and regularly going to get a massage or the spa. You know, those types of things are great things, not saying those are bad, we really need to take a step back and look at what are we doing on an everyday basis to truly rest and take care of ourselves. And it might not be every single day. But let's say most days, self care is not allowing yourself to skip your body movement all week, because you're busy or stressed or we're at work, right? That's a big one. When we get busy, we think we're being nice to ourself by giving ourselves more time to finish the work project, and skipping our workout to in order to do that, because we're just so tired, and we don't have time for it. And that's true, we are tired. And when we're in that mode, we don't have time. But the reality is your that's going to impact your health. And when it comes down to it, your health is always going to be more important than your job and also but also when it comes down to it. If you are truly having to sacrifice your health for your job, you need to get a different job. And I'm not saying that simple. I'm not but you're worth it radical self care. If you truly do not have time to get in your your body movement, or any of those other five healthy habits because of your job, really radical self care, it's truly time to make a change. And I promise that when you do, you're going to be much better at your job. It doesn't work the way that we think it does. It does when we set boundaries at work we actually come across as more confident we actually have more mental space to be more strategic at our jobs and to lead better to do better, higher quality work. I promise when you start setting boundaries and getting brave and valuing yourself enough to do that your work is going to improve it's not going to have the effect that we think that doomsday effect where we think if I set a boundary if I come into work later if I don't do all this work by saying no to things We our brain tends to think we're going to get fired, when in reality at most jobs, it's actually quite difficult to get fired. It's actually really difficult. I know, because I've had to do I've had to fire people before, it's actually quite difficult and rare that somebody is, you know, not pulling their weight enough to where they have to be let go, it happens. Don't get me wrong, but it's actually it's harder than you think. And for us, high achievers are brain things. If we set a boundary come in later, you know, make sure we do our exercise or whatever it is have time with our family, those those types of self care items, that we're going to get fired and lose our job. And then our family is going to be homeless, we really do go down that path way too quickly. So I promise if you take a chance, I mean, this, I did this. And it was terrifying. I walked away from, you know, an amazing career because I was in full on burnout mode. And it wasn't meeting my needs for, you know, my own health, and seeing my family. And then I went back to the same company a year and a half later. And the only thing that changed was my mindset and being brave and valuing myself enough to walk away from something that wasn't meeting my needs, and then come back in a way that I had hardcore boundaries that were meeting my needs. Alright, so I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not. But it really does work. And it's awesome when you get brave. And by the way, it never feels comfortable. But remember, ready is a decision not a feeling, okay?

self care is not using food or drink everyday to avoid feeling your feelings. We just did the intuitive eating two episodes a few episodes ago. And we talked all about how we need to stop using food to avoid our feelings, and that it is okay to do it occasionally. But we want to be aware when we're doing it, we really want to understand this as a moment, where I just really need to choose this food, or this glass of wine or a couple glasses, whatever it is, because I've had a rough week and I need I just need to numb out occasionally that's okay. But when we get to the point where we're doing it more days than we're not, that's where it's not serving us. It's not good self care, we need that awareness. And we need to stop doing that. self care is not occasional and self care is not optional. It is mandatory radical self care. On most days, okay, I can't stress it enough. Let's talk about what self care is. Self Care is turning off the TV instead of watching another episode because the alarm is going off early to start your morning routine. So it is not self care to stay up late and scroll your phone and get your me time in in the sacrifice of your sleeps. Scroll your phone, watch your TV, I'm not judging those those activities, that's fine. But you have to prioritize yourself and value yourself enough to get that time in earlier in the day where it's not encroaching on your bedtime. Not easy, but you are worth it. That is definitely self care. So when you're staying up late, and it feels like self care, it's actually not because losing the sleep makes us feel like crap. It really just does. Okay, self care, is saying no to the thing you don't want to do even if someone is going to be upset or angry or disappointed with you. Self Care is still saying no even when it's going to upset someone else. All right, self care is letting other people take care of themselves. That's a massive one. Right? And hard. We all know that. letting others take care of themselves is good not only for us, but for them as well. And if you have somebody in your life who is close to you, and they can't handle it, when you set your boundaries, that person is not meant to be in your life. Now let's talk about your children because you can't cut them out of your life. Right? When we let our children take care of themselves in ways that are age appropriate and they're capable of and we set boundaries with our children. Getting children used to having boundaries in their life is a critical game changer for their adult life. Children who grow up watching their parents have no boundaries, will expect the people around them not to have any boundaries and will not know how to handle it when they do and they will also have no boundaries themselves. So you are doing a favor to your children by letting them take care of themselves. Now I'm telling this to myself too, because I struggle with this one. My husband's really good at this one. So I have been working on this and learning trying to be more like him in this way. But I promise self care is definitely letting other people take care of themselves. And then self care is I'm going to repeat it I already said it but it's worth repeating self care is drinking your water getting enough sleep, moving your body, eating your foods that make you feel good and doing your Stress Management Tools. All right.

Let's switch gears a little bit. This is still absolutely in the realm of self care. And let's talk about seeking pleasure in life. When we start to adult, get into our adulting routine, we start having kids working, maybe both, we get we fall into a rut sort of automatically, even when we're even if you're not somebody who feels like you're in a rut, you're you're, you feel good, pretty happy, pretty good in life, we get into this rut where we stopped seeking pleasure like we did when we were kids. I mean, one perfect example is, do you ever notice your kids skipping down the hall, like like around the house, like they either skip or they run because they're just like happy and it feels good, and they love it, right? That type of thing, we sort of lose that. Playfulness are that just seeking pleasure, that joy feeling as we get into our adult routines, bringing that back in deliberate deliberately can be life changing from a happiness and a self care perspective. It creates, I mean, it hits those dopamine and serotonin centers of the brain. It gives us a moment to process depending on what the thing is we're bringing into our life. And so this is huge. And one of the things that you're going to do is when you start to create your best life schedule later on in the program, you're going to start scheduling in. So every week, typically on Sunday or Monday morning, you're going to schedule, you're gonna plan out and schedule your week. And I don't want you to get scared. If you're not somebody who likes to live on a rigorous schedule, it doesn't have to be sort of that type a it can, if you like that, I just want you to at least roughly schedule a few things. And this is going to be one of them. So what things are you going to do this week as it relates to seeking pleasure in your life, and it can just be a couple, it doesn't have to be every day. So let's talk through some examples. And then this is something I want you to think about as we go into the exercise that I mentioned earlier.

So one example is gratitude. If you can bring a gratitude practice into your day, it is incredible. And we know all the studies have been done on this, that people who practice gratitude regularly are happier people. So this can be a part of your morning routine. We know that writing or journaling is one of the components of the morning routine. So if you just want to do just really quickly three things you're grateful for, as part of your morning routine, that's an awesome way to do it. Or some people love working in just actually reaching out to somebody that day, and just telling them how much they appreciate having them in their lives. Or even just practicing gratitude in the moment. In present moments notice when you're feeling grateful and just sit in it and be in it and recognize gratitude and be have the awareness of it. Game Changer. Service is a common one. For people seeking pleasure in life service is on that list of the list of things that can like help help people get out of depression brings a lot of dopamine and serotonin just really can help with happiness. I always like to caution us, as busy working moms and women on service. I think it's amazing. And I believe in the power it has in so many ways. So I'm not discouraging anyone from doing service. I just think we have to learn how to service ourselves first, before we commit to lots of service outside of ourselves. However, I do think there's value in like separate and special service outside of your home. So let me just give you an example if you were going to go serve food at the homeless shelter, so it's not something that you're doing necessarily all the time, maybe you're doing it once a quarter once a year, twice a year or something like that. That type of activity even when you're you are feeling busy can really kind of snap you out of a rut and really help you to have a perspective and have gratitude and appreciate your life and then also you are genuinely providing service and helping others which is amazing. So that I'm okay with but it's more like don't sign up to be the volunteer director of the homeless shelter when you're, you know, sort of like barely taking care of yourself and holding it together at your job and with your family. That's more what I'm talking about when I'm saying we really have to be careful with service like don't volunteer for the lead position at your church. If you are exhausted and overwhelmed all the time it's okay to say no in those aspects it really truly is okay to say no to those things until you are working on servicing yourself. But service is certainly can bring bring pleasure and joy into life. Learning something new is huge. The way that that works in our brain can help us with serotonin and dopamine and those are the feel good chemicals in our brain. So if there's been some You want to learn, that's an awesome thing to start doing. One of the things on my list is singing lessons. And I really do mean learn because I cannot sing. So I am excited to start those taking back up a hobby. So something, there's something you used to do that you used to love. And I have a good friend of mine who took this, she took my program in a group, and she had put off she is really good at painting and really, really loves it. And she had had kind of painting on the backburner for a number of years. As you she had gone through a divorce and been a single working mom and all these things. And she recently as she went through my program, this program, brought it back up. And she actually even created the cutest little art studio in her house. And I'm just so excited about how much joy she's getting from bringing painting back into her life. So I love that. So any hobby that you used to do that you've put off for a while because you're busy, just try to bring it back in. Even if it's just in 15 minutes here or there at a time, get rid of the all or nothing mindset and bring it back in. Doing something scary or exciting is a huge this is huge for happiness and bonding with a person you do it with. So I'm talking kind of about like, maybe it's going on a roller coaster, or I don't know bungee jumping, which actually sounds terrifying to me. I can remember Mike and I we were in Costa Rica on a vacation and we did a zipline tour, which wasn't terrifying to me. But at the end, there was this thing called a Tarzan swing and it was a freefall you're you are clipped into a rope and harness but the rope didn't catch you until you had like a good I don't know, I think they said it was like a seven second freefall or maybe four seconds. I don't want to exaggerate it. But it was it felt really scary to me. But I did it. I didn't dare do it first, but I ended up doing it. And I did feel like that was really exhilarating. Even when I think about it, now I can feel like the the the dopamine, serotonin kind of feelings going on in my brain. So I'm so glad I did it. So if there's something like that scares or excites you or gets your adrenaline pumping, you can try that. And that can be more occasional, doesn't have to be all the time. But planning a trip can be really joyful for a lot of people because it gives you something to look forward to. And I don't know, for me, I enjoy looking at hotels and VRB o's and things like that. And just fun activities, just plan in fun activities throughout your week that bring sort of back like that childlike joy. My son Sam is really into skateboarding, he's really good at it. And so I thought, hey, that kind of looks fun. I want to try it. And oh, my goodness, it is so hard. Even just pushing on flat ground is so difficult. So I've had a little goal. It's been winter, we're just coming back to spring now. But last summer, I was trying to do it like 10 minutes three times a week. And I actually genuinely did get better. I am not good by any means. But I can at least just like push on flat ground. And that's been something that's been really kind of just a fun activity for me. And something that I can relate to him on. Well, I can't really relate to him because I'm not good. But you know, it's something related to him, which is fun. So I had another woman who took my program one on one. And she ended up identifying puzzles as something that she really enjoyed and hadn't done for a long time. So it's kind of cool. If you can figure out something as well that you can do that you don't even have to leave your house like you don't have to find a babysitter or anything like that, you can just do it in your house in a quiet spot. And she did that with puzzles and really enjoyed that. So it's whatever you like to do. Whatever helps you to bring that joy feeling or get a little relaxation in that's just deliberately bringing joy back into your life. Alright, so the quick exercise that I'm going to have you do is and you don't even have to you don't have to pause, if you want to pause it you can if you're actually if you want to stop and write things down. That's amazing. Feel free to pause the video. Otherwise, you can kind of just like visualize it as I speak. But I want you to really think about when we think about daily radical required self care, where do you need work? So which of those basics drinking water getting enough sleep, moving your body eating the foods that make you feel good and stress management? Just think about? What do you need to work on? And what do you really need to deliberately schedule in as we get as we approach creating that best life schedule? And we've got quite a few episodes in between now and then so you have time but just you can jot them down or think about them. What other things on a daily basis Could you do better at? Are you missing your bedtime? Consistently and why do you need to take radical self care and ask for help or pay for help in the daytime? To get that self care time and because the the solution is not stopping it if you're watching TV or scrolling social media or reading a fun fiction book or whatever it is you do at nighttime. That keeps you up late. The solution isn't to just not do it. The solution is to get it in during the day. And maybe you don't do it for as long. Right maybe you're a little bit more discipline on how long you do it for, but it's not just to give it up. You want to plan that in. So so if that's on your list, put that down. And then think about these. seeking pleasure in life bringing joyful activities deliberately into your life. What are a couple things that you can work on, even if it's just something small you can do without leaving your house, that you can start to schedule in a couple of times a week to purposely bring these activities back into your life. All right.

Okay, we're approaching the 30 minute mark, quick recap. It's critical to redefine self care and think about it as something that applies to your everyday life. And you are worth radical self care. Even when you think it sounds dumb or crazy, you are absolutely worth it, even if it's going to upset someone else, or burden someone else. Remember that self care isn't letting yourself off the hook with your health, healthy habits. Self Care is actually hard work until we change our mindset and make it a habit. That is huge. We didn't get super into that. That self care isn't always easy. Like, like the spa example I gave before self care actually, a lot of times is hard work. Until we do change that mindset and make it a habit. Bringing pleasure into your life deliberately is key for happiness. Okay, and then your your homework is to keep that list of items from the exercise we did. So you can work the self care activities and pleasure activities into your schedule at the end of this. Alright. Thanks so much for listening. As always, please spread the word about the podcast. If you're getting any sort of value added value out of it, if you can like or subscribe if you're watching it on YouTube, leave a comment or leave a positive review if you're listening to it on one of those podcast platforms. I'm asking that because it helps it get shown to more and more people. That's how their algorithms work. So it's much appreciated because I just want it to reach as many people as possible so thanks and I will talk to you in the next episode.

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