Self-Care For Real People

All right,

Good morning,

Everybody.

You're tuned to Radio Kidnappers,

The voice of Hawke's Bay,

And you're listening to a program called Your Time to Shine,

All Things Self-Love.

So welcome.

I am your host,

Celine Harlow,

And for the past four years,

I've been training women from all over the world to help them find self-love and the courage to live their best lives in just a few short weeks.

So if that's something that you're interested in,

Then listen on.

So today,

We are here to talk about self-care,

Oh,

Self-care.

Self-care is a very challenging topic for me.

It's usually the first thing that clients ask me when they start working with me,

And they just say,

Celine,

How can I take care of myself?

And to be honest,

This is not the right question to ask.

So I'm going to give you the answer in a little bit,

But first,

Let me start with a story.

Okay.

So let me give you an example.

I have a friend.

I really love him.

He's amazing,

And I see him every single week.

And so you know how it starts when you catch up with somebody,

You say,

Hey,

Da-da-da,

How's your week been?

How are you doing?

And my friend usually says,

I usually read always,

He says,

Well,

It's been really busy at work.

There's so much going on in my life and at work and in my marriage with my animals.

I've got so much on my plate,

But thank God it's Friday.

And in other words,

He starts to complain.

And I'm a life coach,

And I have spent significant,

Significant,

Significant amounts of time and money working on myself and constantly,

Constantly up-leveling my life,

And I'm still doing that work.

And in other words,

I am trying to find solutions.

That's just how my brain works.

I see a problem and I find a solution for it.

So anyway,

I'll ask my friend,

Well,

Have you thought about finding a different job?

Or have you thought about going part-time?

Have you thought about working for yourself or working with animals?

And it's honestly the same conversation we have every single week.

And he says,

Oh,

Well,

You know,

It's not that bad.

That job pays the bills,

It pays the mortgage,

I get to go on holiday twice a year,

And I've got enough.

I've got enough money,

I've got enough health,

I've got enough whatever.

And some people have it much worse than me,

So surely it's enough.

I don't have to.

.

.

It's enough.

And in other words,

What does that mean?

Well,

He's making excuses.

He started by saying,

My life sucks,

Cancel,

Delete,

My life stinks.

And then I said,

Well,

Here's a solution.

And he says,

Nah,

Thanks,

But no thanks.

So what's going on there?

Well,

For me,

There's a few things that are not quite right.

First of all,

I believe deep in my heart,

Deep in my soul,

That we're not meant to work all the time.

And I'm saying that,

And I love my work,

And I tend to work quite a lot.

But I still believe that we're not meant to work all the time.

And I don't believe either that Friday,

Yay,

And Monday,

Ugh.

It's just not something that's right for me.

And I believe that if you don't like something in your life,

You need to stop making excuses,

You need to stop lying to yourself,

And you need to make the changes happen.

I know,

It's a very honest episode from my heart to your heart today,

But it is what it is.

And here's another thing that I believe in,

Life gets to be better.

I think,

Well,

I've often mentioned the happiness cap in this show.

The happiness cap is my theory that we reach a certain level of happiness,

Of intimacy in our marriage,

And of satisfaction at work,

Of health and vitality and self-love and self-care.

Then we reach that level,

And then we think,

Oh,

That's it,

That's life.

It doesn't get to be much better than that.

I can pay my bills,

I can pay my mortgage,

I get to go on holiday and see my kids,

I get to have all of this.

So surely it doesn't get much better than that.

It is a lie that we tell ourselves.

So okay,

Let's start with this.

I would like you to take one moment to think about one area of your life that you're not completely satisfied with.

So it could be a relationship,

A friendship,

Your marriage,

Your health,

Your relationship with food,

Your relationship with your mom,

Your relationship with yourself.

It could be anything.

One aspect of your life that you're not completely satisfied with,

What is it?

And now I would like you to really allow yourself to focus on what you do not like about it.

So if it is your work that you're thinking about right now,

It could be your relationship with your boss,

It could be that you're bullied at work,

It could be that you're bullied at work,

It could be that somebody always steals your yogurt in the communal fridge,

It could be that you really are not enjoying waking up at half past five every morning and you find that schedule,

The nine to five,

Really inflexible and it really drains your energy.

If it's your marriage,

Then it could be,

Well,

I'm really enjoying being married to that person but there's that one aspect in the relationship that I'm not enjoying and it is what it is.

So really think about what you do not like about that aspect of your life.

And now I want you to be really honest with yourself.

I want you to stop lying,

Stop making excuses and be brutally honest with yourself.

Nobody's going to know,

I'm not going to know,

It's between you and yourself.

How are you justifying that situation?

So I believe that we create our reality,

We create our lives because in one way or another,

It's keeping us safe and it's serving a purpose.

So how are you justifying that situation?

How did you create it?

If it is your job again,

Then it pays the bills.

Lots of people do not have work,

So I'm pretty lucky.

It's not that bad.

That's how I would be justifying that situation if it happened to me.

If it was your marriage,

For example,

You would probably say,

Well,

He's not that bad.

He brushes his teeth three times a day and he wears clean socks and he takes me on adventures and he's not that bad.

Now that you've made all of that list,

That you've realized what you don't like about a situation,

I think that sometimes we tend to lie to ourselves.

We just make do with what we have.

It's just a way that our brain works.

But actually when we realize that the stuff that we don't like in our lives,

We can pay attention to it so that we can actually change it.

If you start by seeing the situation in your life and you don't like it,

But you just lie to yourself and think,

It doesn't get much better than that.

I should make do with what I have.

You're closing yourself that opportunity to heal and change that.

I'm not saying leave your husband,

Leave your job.

I'm not saying that at all.

You're completely responsible for your life.

But what if you could just acknowledge something,

One thing that you would perhaps like to improve?

What would it feel like to really have that honesty with yourself?

What would it feel like?

Anyway,

That was my tensions.

So next question,

What would be the worst about changing that situation?

And in other words,

How is it serving you to remain stuck in that situation?

Again,

I'm not telling you to leave your full-time job or whatever,

Or to leave your husband and go buy an island somewhere in South America,

Whatever.

No.

I'm telling you how is it serving you to remain stuck in that situation?

So really think about that.

How is it serving you?

How is it serving you?

Well,

The most likely answer,

And that's something that I've realized after working with hundreds of people over the past four years in my business,

The most likely answer here is,

I remain safe.

I remain safe.

And that is a beautiful,

Beautiful answer.

I know you were expecting me to criticize you.

But actually,

I am safe is an incredible answer.

Why is that?

Because it's an answer that comes from that primal part of your brain.

It's designed to keep you alive.

You know,

You're staying in that job may not be so fulfilling and maybe,

I don't know,

It may be so crushing every time you have to get to work and you'd rather just pick the weeds out of your veggie garden or pet your dog for the entire day or just sit there and read with a cup of coffee and then a slice of cake.

Where was I staying with that?

Anyway,

It's,

Oh yeah,

So you have your job and it may not be satisfying,

But it's not that bad.

And it's actually,

You know,

You contemplating the idea of potentially quitting your job,

Starting your own business,

Raising llamas in Peru or whatever,

It's such a thing that seems so out there,

It seems so crazy,

So like,

Oh,

I'm going to fail kind of thing that your mind is saying,

Well,

Actually,

Celine,

You're staying in that full-time job.

It's beautiful.

It's not quite what you want,

But it's paying the job.

You know how that,

Can you see how your mind is working to keep you,

To keep you safe all the time?

Well,

There you go.

Now I have been reading this amazing book by Bear Grylls.

It's his autobiography called Mud,

Sweat and Tears.

And it's amazing.

I just randomly found it on a shelf and I just started to read it because Bear honestly kind of looks like my husband and I'm not even lying.

But anyway,

I've been reading his book and I'm absolutely in awe of Bear's drive to really go further and take himself further to the next level and then the next level and the next level in his life.

It's really quite inspiring.

And you know,

This guy,

He just keeps going.

And well,

If you don't know Bear Grylls,

He is,

I don't know what he is actually.

He's somebody,

He's originally from the UK and he's had a few shows.

I think he has a show available on Netflix and he is a guy who loves adventures and he's been doing all sorts of crazy stuff that most of us just dream about.

Like I don't know,

What did he do?

He climbed Mount Everest.

He was one of the youngest people to ever climb Mount Everest.

I think at the age of 23,

Something like this.

He joined the army in one of this special British army,

Special forces,

And you have this crazy test just to get in.

And he broke his back three times in an accident and then he went on to climb Mount Everest.

Of course,

Why wouldn't you?

And you know,

I've been reading the story of his life and it's so interesting to see For me,

The difference between people who let life happen to them,

It's not that bad.

And people who make life happen,

I want this and I'm going to get it no matter what.

But enough about that.

Let's start talking about self-care,

Right?

This is how I introduced the show.

So let's really talk about self-care.

So the question is,

How can I take better care of myself?

Well,

There's various ways that you can take care of yourself.

There's physical ways,

There's emotional ways,

There's mental ways,

There's spiritual ways.

And there's no one formula fit all,

Right?

It's really something that is designed individually to suit your individual needs.

And you know,

I'm sure that you're listening to this and you're probably expecting me to give you tips and tricks about finding a time to take care of yourself and saying no to your husband and making him look after the kids so that you can have one evening with yourself at home alone so that you can finally have that candlelit bubble bath with a glass of wine,

A slice of cake.

Can you drink wine and have cake at the same time?

I don't know.

I'm not a wine drinker.

And just have peace for the first moment in 20 years.

And you know what?

I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to do that because if I just say self-care to you,

You think bubble bath,

You think wine glass,

You think slice of cake,

You think manicure,

You think spa,

You think weekend with the girls,

You think,

I don't know,

A full body massage.

You think,

I don't know,

Having your kids spend a weekend with their grandparents,

Whatever.

And you know,

That's self-care,

But that's such a tiny,

Tiny,

Tiny,

Tiny aspect of self-care.

So what is self-care then?

I've been telling you all about what self-care is not,

And now I'm going to tell you what it is.

So self-care.

Self-care is an aspect of self-love.

It is the power,

The ability to be honest with yourself.

That is such a powerful experience to finally have the ability to,

Instead of lying to yourself,

To be honest with yourself,

To see what you're,

I don't know,

Failing at in life,

What your weaknesses are,

How you're victimizing yourself,

How you're over-demanding,

How you're creating drama in your life.

I don't know.

This is something that has taken me years to learn because I just couldn't bear the thought of not being perfect.

But it is what it is.

I'm not perfect.

And I finally have the courage to say so to myself so that I can change it.

Self-care also is healing your stuff.

So we all have these powerful,

Traumatic memories of stuff that have happened in our childhood.

We all have stuff that has happened to us.

And sometimes we've learned to cope with these experiences by just pushing them down and burying them as deep as possible so that we can just learn to function anyway in life and we can just do the washing and do the cooking and go to work and get some sleep.

And there's just not any time to work on that inner stuff because it's so painful anyway.

So why would you want to do that work?

Again,

It's your mind trying to protect you.

And there is power in realizing how much of an impact those experiences still have in your day-to-day life.

Every single day I work with women and men who have incredible life stories.

You wouldn't believe what I hear on a day-to-day basis.

And it's just incredible for me to see that we experience these traumas and yet we become stronger from them.

And once we understand what that experience needed to happen,

What we were trying to learn from it,

If you were bullied at school,

This was my case,

Then that was my very hardcore attempt at learning how to speak up for myself anyway,

How to stand up for myself even when I was not liked at school.

I was nine when I started high school and it was not fun.

I was nine when I started high school and most other kids in my school,

In that class were 11,

12,

Sometimes 13.

And it was traumatic for me.

I went from being this very perfectionist,

Powerful,

I'm a powerful child,

I guess.

I don't know.

I don't think you can say that,

But positive and happy bubbly child to being a child that was really shy,

Self-conscious,

Self-conscious is the right word,

And who couldn't speak for herself,

Who didn't have any friends,

Who developed an eating disorder because she couldn't go out to the canteen because nobody would eat with her at the table and she'd rather stay in the library for two hours during the lunch break instead of getting some food and being seen eating alone at the table.

That was my life.

But when I realized that I had experienced this and it taught me a lot about myself that I wouldn't necessarily have learned in a different circumstance,

Well,

That's up for discussion,

But it is what it is.

Then I was able to heal that,

But instead of suppressing it,

And I was still a shy and self-conscious adult,

But until I learned to heal that stuff so that I could move forward and now talk on a podcast,

On a radio show with you guys in English,

Which is not my mother tongue,

By the way,

It's French,

And talk for 25 minutes every week about a topic.

It's something that I would never have even been able to imagine when I was 9,

10,

11 years old.

That was a long sentence.

Anyway,

Next point,

Self-care is also committing to your dreams and making them happen.

I believe that each and every one of us,

First of all,

Is meant to experience more in life,

But also has a dream,

Something that ideal life would look like,

I suppose you could say.

For me,

I have a dream of having a hobbit house and having a veggie garden in the back and having my border collie cross and a little kitten that comes and greets me every time I come through the door.

I have this dream of serving and inspiring and healing thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people.

It's very scary.

I have no idea how I'm going to get there,

But I can just take it one step at a time.

What I find with a lot of adults I work with,

Especially people who are in their 40s and 50s,

Is that they have forgotten how to dream.

They have forgotten how to dream.

Can you believe it?

Remember when you were a child and you had all these dreams of being an astronaut?

I personally dreamed of being a secretary because I thought that secretaries were nice,

But moving on.

We all had these dreams of inspiring the world and healing the world and changing the world in our own way.

Life is hard.

Well,

Cancel the lease.

That's a limiting belief,

But life is what it is and sometimes it is harsh.

We experience those harsh situations and sometimes it can be easier to just fit in the mold and try to do what's expected of us as adults and try to buy that house and get that mortgage and have that full-time job and have the kids and have the Labrador.

We have so many criteria that we need to check if we want to be respectable adults and it can be really scary to step out of that mold and actually say,

Well,

I know that something else is meant for me and I'm going to go for it.

Let me have a glass of water.

Much better.

Okay.

So the next thing on my list is that you need to stop making excuses.

That's self-care as well.

Stop playing small and stop being a victim.

I find that with a lot of women and men who come to me in search of self-love,

There's a tendency to really victimize themselves.

They are the victim and often these people will have been traumatized in their childhood in one way or another and it's easier to let the tears flow out and say,

Why,

Why,

Why did this need to happen to me?

There is power in realizing that that stuff happened to you and it was not your fault,

But the way you respond to it now is your responsibility.

So you have the choice between healing that stuff or letting it rule your life.

And I'm saying that and I've also experienced traumas and abuse in many,

Many different ways and I'm still here and I can talk about this.

So you have a choice.

Do you want to feel like the victim and really playing the victim really takes your power away because you're saying,

It's somebody else's fault that I feel this bad and I want that person to apologize to me right now,

Otherwise I will never feel good again.

Well,

Let me tell you that that doesn't work.

But when you choose to reclaim your power and realize,

Okay,

This thing happened to me,

It really hurt me in this,

This,

This and that way and I choose to rise anyway just because I can and I believe in myself.

That's self-love,

That's self-care.

Self-care is also stepping into your power and showing others to do the same.

I think that's why there's such a rise in people wanting to do healing as a business or coaching as a business and I'm obviously one of them.

And there's a lot of power in healing your stuff and stepping into your power,

Working on realizing your dream,

Achieving your dream and then showing others how to do it.

We need to support ourselves.

We need to collaborate.

We need to show ourselves,

Sorry,

Show each other how to heal and how to move forward in our lives.

Self-care is obviously taking care of your body,

But you know,

It wasn't the first thing I mentioned because it's not the most important thing.

Self-care,

Physical self-care really comes as a result of you believing that you're worthy of self-care and then everything else balances itself out.

So it comes from this understanding that you are a precious being,

You have a lot to give to the world,

But unless you get 8 to 10 hours of sleep every single night,

Then you're going to do a crappy job at saving the world the next day.

So instead you can choose to have that bubble bath if you like and then go to bed,

Have an amazing sleep and then wake up the next day ready to take on the world because you feel so good,

Because you've taken care of yourself,

Because you've recharged your batteries,

You've filled up your well,

Whatever you want,

However you want to say it,

You have done something for yourself and now you're ready to give.

So self-care is also taking care of your mind.

I talk to a lot of people and they all say,

Oh,

I would really love to meditate,

But I just can't sit still or I can't find the time.

Well,

It's not really about having 42 minutes,

20 minutes every single day to meditate,

Whatever that means.

It really is about taking care of your mind.

So I personally have a 40 minute breathing practice that I do every single day and for me it's like taking a shower for my mind.

It's just helping me to release all the stuff that happened the previous day and helping me to start with a clean slate.

So taking care of your mind is really important.

So whether that's,

I don't know,

Buying a crystal or meditating every single day or doing yoga or I don't know,

We often mention yoga and meditation,

But there's so much more to mental and spiritual self-care and emotional self-care than just yoga and meditation.

So whatever rocks your boat.

And self-care is also being kind to others.

I don't think I have anything to say about that,

But you know what I mean,

There is definitely power in being kind to others.

So that's self-care.

I think people often mix self-care and self-love.

To me,

Self-care is a very small,

Small,

Small,

Small aspect of self-love and self-care,

Some people think that self-care,

Self-love,

It's just the two are the same thing.

But actually self-care is one tiny little aspect of self-love and self-love is a much bigger,

Bigger,

Bigger virtue or spiritual project,

However you want to call it,

Than just self-care.

Now,

Self-care is often where people start when they want to learn to love themselves because it's something that's very simple.

It's very practical,

You know,

Take 20 minutes to read that book,

To meditate,

To listen to a podcast,

Whatever.

It's very simple.

So it's just a step that you can take.

But I guess my point really is don't get stuck there.

Don't get stuck there.

That's my advice.

And I just wanted to finish by saying thank you so much for joining me,

I really appreciate your time.

Thank you for sharing your time,

Your energy with me.

So really,

You know,

Join a self-love conversation,

I really would love to hear from you and I'll see you next time.

Bye!