Back to Basics - Episode 1

Welcome to Best You Year Podcast! In this week's episode we're going back to the basics and hit on the importance of having a daily routine and what my daily routine time looks like these days. We will talk about the basics of self care: what it is and is not plus why self care is important. I will also share insights focused on mental self care basics to help you start to intentionally plan for the upcoming holiday season!

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Best You Year! The podcast that equips you with the tools and resources to live your best year yet. I'm your host Jennifer Guidry, and today we're going to hit on daily routine time or as I like to call it, DRT. You will learn a little bit how I spend my time in my DRT and why. Plus, I want to teach you one way I maximize this time because we could all use extra time, right? We'll then take a deep look at what self care is and what it's not folks, and why it's important. I will teach you some tips that are focused on mental self care to give you ideas that will help shape part of your holiday self care plan. Welcome to Best Year podcast!

What's up beautiful people, and welcome again to Best You Year! Can you feel the energy building? I have been so excited to get back to this place where I'm connecting with you all. I hope that you had a wonderful week. Last week, I talked about being a big fan of Joel Olsteen and I also mentioned that the first part of every podcast was going to have something funny. I was going to start with something funny and I didn't connect the two thoughts together. So Joel Olsteen always starts his programming with something funny. I am totally borrowing from him with starting this podcast with something funny. I love to talk about real life scenarios that I have found funny that have happened to me. So you're gonna have to bear with me and listen in on these funny stories. If you aren't liking them, or if you do like them, please feel free to reach out, write me at bestyouyear@yahoo.com and share your either disdain or love for them. Either way, I'd love to hear from you. But hopefully, if you're listening into this, you'll know to take this in a very light hearted manner. So I'll start with the story that happened to me last month. Actually, no, my goodness, it's November already! Can you believe it? It happened actually going into my birthday weekend. So I don't know about you all but I used to use Uber quite a bit in like two roles prior to the one that I'm in now at work. I traveled like 45% of the time. So I essentially lived in an Uber as I was getting around major cities.

As we're getting through some semblance of normalcy or back to normalcy through the pandemic, I've started to use Uber a lot more. I'm starting to travel a little bit more personally, which is really exciting, right? So I'm flying out to meet a group of friends in DC for my birthday weekend back in September and I'm an early morning flyer. So I call up get my Uber scheduled for like a f4- 4:30am pickup. I don't know about you all but I talk to my Uber drivers. As I mentioned in the first episode, I love observing people, again, not to judge people, but I love and I'm so fascinated by people. I want to hear everyone's story. I just have a great appreciation for really getting to the heart of what makes people who they are, whether it's what they do, how they think about things, etc, etc. So, I know some people may not talk to their Uber drivers and my best friend is always appalled that I do talk to my drivers. We've been on a couple Uber drives or Uber rides I should say before. And

he has definitely made it very clear that he does not talk to Uber drivers. As a matter of fact, when we got into an Uber ride, he's like, girl, you talk to your Uber drivers and I'm like ,you don't?, like that's a strange thing. So I'm completely digressing. But you get the you get the point, I talk to my Uber drivers. The other thing I will say is I am a huge watcher of my Uber rating, because I always want my Uber ride to arrive on time and I've heard all these horror stories. If you have a bad Uber rating, you get slower response time, etc, etc. So going back to my birthday weekend flying out to meet friends in DC - super excited. Hop in the Uber at like 4:30am go into my regular mode of talking to the Uber driver. We're having a great conversation. We start talking about really, where am I going. Why am I going and I mentioned it was my birthday weekend. He gets all excited because I think his birthday was within like a week or so timeframe. And so he starts talking about Virgos, etc. I'm not sure if you follow or don't follow horoscopes, I do not. But we did start to talk about just really some of the similarities and patterns that people born during this timeframe often have. And so we talked for quite a bit of time about that. We talked about how that plays out in life and relationships, how we approach life in general. And so it was a great conversation,. We get to the airport, unload my bag, I hop onto the curb. And he looks at me and he says, I would love to continue this conversation would you like to? And it's early in the morning, I have not had my first cup of coffee. So I'm a little bit slow on responding because I'm processing is he asking me to continue the conversation before my flight. And then it dawns on me, my Uber driver is asking me for my number.

And I was so taken back, because, again, I watch my Uber rating like a hawk. And in the matter of five to seven seconds, I'm literally playing out this mental chess game of if I say no, is he going to give me like a low rating. But I had to be true to what I was feeling, which was absolutely nothing, and was not interested, for various reasons. And so I looked at him. And I said, I appreciate the offer but I'm going to take a pass. I hope you have a great day.And like any other respectable person, the next thing I did was take my 20% tip that I usually give and put it to 25%. I know that sounds crazy, but I had to let this driver know that like, hey, you're cool. Not feeling you on that level but please, please do not mess with my Uber rating. So I literally watched my Uber rating for two days my birthday weekend on and off Uber app to see is this guy going to just totally tank me and take my 4.9 whatever rating to like a 1.5. So I will happily report back that he did not. So I'm super, super grateful for that. But then it started me thinking about like, what's really the etiquette for like Uber drivers asking you for your number...very weird situation. They already know where you live and they have this control over your destiny within this world of Uber. So anyway, I thought it was a funny story. It totally stressed me out for like part of my birthday weekend. But I had a chance to step back and thought it was completely funny. I hope you did too.

It's DRT time people or daily routine time. So if you don't have one, as I mentioned in the first episode, no worries, no judgment. Again, this is all about a journey to get you to the right space. And as I think about my daily routine time, I'll say just give a disclaimer, I'm going to talk about mine but really your daily routine time should be unique to you. It doesn't need to look like mine. Unless you have similarities to me in terms of your style. But I would imagine that we're all super, super unique. So everyone's routine time is going to have some nuance to it. The other thing I'll say is it should fit your schedule and your most important priorities. There are things right now that are important to me, that I am focused in on that give nuance to my daily routine. But there are certain things that are at the core of my daily routine that won't be changing, so you have to set those for yourself. The last thing I'll say is it should feel like fun and not work. You should ease into your daily routine. It doesn't mean that it's not going to take practice to establish the habit, but overall it should feel like fun and not work. So really quickly, my daily routine. I love waking up super early. I'm a morning person. I'm also an anytime person but if I have to default to either morning or night person I'm going to default to morning just because it fits like my workday. I'm a professional. I have early morning meetings. So I love waking up super early. I used to be in this space of waking up at like 4:30am and getting started. When we had our spring forward, I sort of got off that but this weekend being daylight savings time, when we fall back, I'm hoping to get back to my 4:30am wake up. Until that time I've been waking up between 5am and 5:30am... about that timeframe. So having that established wakeup time is important to me. I drink about 20 to 32 ounces of room temperature water first thing in the morning. I have my water bottle on my nightstand. So why? The reason why I do it is because number one, it wakes me up. The last thing I want to do, the last thing any of us should do is have caffeine pumping into a body that hasn't been hydrated. It really does help to refresh your organs. I always like to think of it as like I'm totally nurturing myself from the inside out as I wake up. There's a ton of other benefits, which I have an article that I'll attach to this podcast transcript so you can go into and see but it talks about muscle relaxation, circulation, and so on and so forth. So tons of benefits there. The other thing is I spend 30 minutes in what I call a free form. I'll call it free form, spiritual and gratitude practice. I am a strong believer in the power of words, Death and life are in the power of our words. And so the first words out of my mouth are always words of gratitude, and thankfulness to God, Whether you believe or not, you can still come into this practice being grateful for many things. So I am grateful for the sun rising. I'm grateful for those moments that I get to look out into the darkness. I love looking out into the darkness in the early morning hours. There's something that just really empowers me about it. I don't know what it is, I probably need to spend some time thinking about what that may be that's driving me but I love those wee hours of the morning. It's dark. It's quiet. I feel like I'm the only person on the earth and I feel so connected and grounded to the earth. I am thankful and thanking God for a good night's rest. I'm thankful for my body that's functioning, my family, my friends, whatever I feel led to be thankful for. But it could be as simple as I'm alive. It could be as simple as I get to look out into this world when there's no movement.

The other thing is, I will say, when it comes to words of gratitude, I know that people practice affirmations, and I believe in them as well. For myself, personally, I like marrying the affirmations with gratitude. So thanking God that I am more than a conqueror, that I am equipped, and I am well able to get through successfully whatever this day brings me. I like to declare victory in every area of my life. I even speak health over my body and my mind. I am grateful that I have a mind that is sound. I have a heart that is stable. These things may sound crazy people and I'm okay with that. I'm totally cool with it. I'm totally cool with being foolish because I've seen the power of the spoken word change my life for the better. It really helps me to approach my day in the right mood, the right attitude. And I've seen movement in my life in big areas. Because I've been able to speak life words or life positive words, before my day even gets started.

The other thing I will say is I typically mix in prayer and meditation time, moments of just silence where I can just sit and be. Sometimes I'm praying for my family. Actually,  everyday I pray for my family. But I'm praying for family, I'm praying for friends. And then there are times where I'm just sitting and being still and quiet and listening for where I'm being guided. I will say that in those moments of quietness, it really allows me to tune into that spiritual frequency of calmness and peace. And then finally I head off to the gym for exercising for an hour and then I'm back home to shower breakfast, start my workday. And you may be wondering by now, you talked about maximizing time, Jennifer, you're doing a whole lot here. How much more can I do? How much more time can I make out of my day? Well, guess what, folks, there's a lot more time we can make or derive out of our day. In my car drive to the gym sometimes I'm continuing my prayer time or my gratitude time. I'm being grateful for the things that I'm seeing along the way. I have a great drive. As I go into the gym, there's water. I'm a huge water person. I love being near water. I must live near water again. I used to live near water and trying to find my place back to water but being grateful for those elements for the things that we see around us. The other thing is I will use my car drive to the gym either going or coming to listen to TED Talk daily podcast. I love love TED Talk daily podcast. It's my way of being able to feed into my mental space, having some awareness of what's going on in the world being a more well rounded person so I can talk about climate change and I can talk about different Native American cultures. I'm tuned into those things and I'm so grateful to TED Talk daily because they really allow us to get snippets of information whether it's 10 or 15 minutes long. You know
car ride quick, easy, digestible information. The other thing that I will say is that I use to maximize my time is, I rarely listen to workout music when I'm at the gym. I listen to spiritual teachers that are pouring into me spiritually that are helping me to build myself up spiritually -that is my focus. So I'm working myself out physically but then I'm also feeding my spirit, which is working myself out too. And once I get through those, if I have time, I'll pivot to like a TED Talk daily, or some other interesting podcast that has something that's going to stimulate me mentally. So as I said, daily routines are important. Get one established that fits your needs, it should feel like fun and not work. Every episode, I'm going to share a little bit more. This was just a quick glaze over of my daily routine.

We have so much to talk about, right? We're coming up on the holidays and as I promised, we're going to talk about self care, because planning for self care is a must. So I don't know about y'all, but how many of you are already stressed out about the Thanksgiving holiday? I hope that's very few people. But I have a feeling with us getting through a little bit more of this pandemic, having some sense of normalcy across the states, we are going to be seeing more people gathering together for Thanksgiving. Which, if your family is anything like my family, at least my my Virginia family, it's all about how much food we can cook. And I don't mean that in the ability to cook. I mean, like, do we have enough because I promise you sometimes I feel like my family is like low key Italian, even though they're obviously not. Because we cook so much at Thanksgiving, it's crazy people, the amount of food, the amount of energy that goes into preparing for Thanksgiving, I love Thanksgiving, it's my favorite holiday. But it can be super stressful. So I can't even believe we're two weeks out, which is sort of stressful in and of itself. Because we are getting closer to that time of preparation. I'm going home for Thanksgiving, I have already told my parents look, we are not going to stress out about Thanksgiving. Let's keep it low key this year, if we want to even eat out since I'm flying in on Thanksgiving Day. I'm even cool with that. So I don't know how many of you can relate but self care for me has not always come so easy. And I've been working on being intentional about self care, because I don't think that it's something that most of us would do if we didn't set the intention. And as I think about practicing self care, I would have said, if you would have asked me pre pandemic, oh yeah, I practice self care. Like I totally like, I have a skincare routine and I exercise and I am somewhat conscious of what I put into my body. But I think that going through, at least for myself, the pandemic has really taught me to rethink that. So what is self care? And I did a lot of research just because I was curious, not because I don't know what self care is. But I did some research. And I found tons of definitions really focused around the intention of taking care of our mental, emotional and physical health. The thing that I would insert into that, if you haven't already guessed is spiritual. I am a huge believer that we are all spiritual beings. And to neglect that side of ourselves is so detrimental because, again, my personal belief is at the core of us, we are spiritual beings.

At some point, we're going to drop these bodies. And what's going to be left is just a spiritual being. And if we haven't dedicated time, on a daily basis, to really tap into taking care of ourselves spiritually, we are going to be at such a loss when it comes to being able to be successful in life. So what isn't self care? Self care is not a luxury. So I would equate self care with my spa appointments, which was a complete fallacy, because we should not think that spending enormous amounts of money or any amount of money equates to self care. And then finally, self care is not selfish. Others may look at the time that we pour into ourselves as being selfish, but it's actually really about nurturing ourselves so we can be in a position to nurture others.So I think that it makes sense for us to pause and to really think about, are we already practicing self care? And I think what it goes back to is that level of intention and not routine. And for me, that was really the tipping point. Is it routine? Or is it intentional? Or is it both? And for myself, I found that it was, there were some elements of self care that were going on. I would, you know, set up a spa appointment here and there. But it wasn't intentional. And then I also challenged myself in terms of
what does self care really have to look like? Like, am I right to equate my spa appointment with self care. So I challenged myself a lot on that. And I would challenge all of us to check in, because if we say we're practicing self care already,and we find ourselves feeling depleted, and not being able to give in the areas of life that matter, like meaningful relationships, connecting with people, being a blessing to our workplace, being active and operating and cherishing and having a healthy body, if we're out of whack with self care, it's going to cause an imbalance with any of these areas. So I think that things, we should be able to say yes to, should really determine how we feel, and where we are when it comes to self care. So why is self care important? So again, to have the best life, I think that we want to all contribute at our highest level, right? We want to shape this world, we want to be a blessing to this world, we want to be a blessing to our partner, we want to be a blessing to our family, our friends, our workplace, we want to leave this world better, and the people that we have access to better than how we found it. And with that we can't operate from a place of lack. And what I mean by that is specifically a lack of energy, lack of love, a lack in health, mental clarity, physical health, and emotional stability. In order to make a difference, we have to be in a position to really make a difference. And that doesn't happen by accident. And I think about self in the sense, it's, it's recognizing, at least, my personal belief is that in order to pour into someone else's cup, because that's the goal, right? Making a difference, as we talked about, and all those different areas. In my mind, we have to be positioned in sufficiency. And I'm using this whole analogy of cup, how far it's filled how, how it may be halfway or filled to the brim, to really articulate this point. I've heard so many people say that in order to fill someone else's cup, my cup has to be fille in a lot of times. At least for myself, I'm not sure if you can really. I've always envisioned that cup has to be filled to the brim and what I've really stepped away with is not necessarily this position of abundancy but sufficiency. Because I've learned that my cup does not necessarily have to be filled to the brim in order for me to give myself to someone else. What I can say is I can realize and take note that my cup is filled sufficiently, and maybe sufficiently is halfway, maybe it's three quarters, but my cup can be filled sufficiently, I have my place of peace, my place of ease and groundedness. And again, that's going to look different for all of us. But I can be in that place of sufficiency where I say, yes, I can not only give to you, but I'm in a position to give to you. I can give to you in a manner that still keeps me joyful. It doesn't rob me of my peace, it doesn't make me feel depleted. In other words, I don't have to empty out myself to that level of feeling depleted. And I think part of that is because if I'm being intentional about practicing self care, that I'm continually pouring into myself, I'm not looking at self care as an event. I'm looking at it as a continual process. And so I see that me giving to someone else is connected to my ability to take care of myself to continually pour into myself
which allows me to continually pour into someone else. So my cup never necessarily has to run over. But it's constantly being filled and it's constantly pouring into someone else. So I think that's the analogy that I think about that I've leaned into and have really dialed into as I think about what self care is, to me, and why it's important. So what can self care look like? I can say that self care can look like a lot of things. I don't believe in a one size fits all approach when it comes to self care. But I wanted to share my top tips that I challenge you all to think about and leverage, as we think about creating our own self care plan, specific to again, going back to mental self care, because there are many components right that we talked about self care, today. We're gonna hone in on tips for mental self care. So first, that starting your day with quiet time. So if you haven't already connected it - that reason to my DRT, it's all about my self care practice. The time that I have to just be in the morning, doing my own thing. For you, it may look like at nighttime. I've talked to someone, and who's close to me and they said, you know what, I have like that same vibe, but I get it like late at night. Whatever your vibe is, for you - go to it. For me, it's those dark hours in the morning, that empower me, that make me feel in control of my time and more in control of my day and I am honestly in a better mood. The other piece of the mental health care or self care, I should say, that I'm really working on for myself is making time to connect with others like that real, genuine, authentic connection. Not just setting up lunch dates, or time with girlfriends to meet over lunch, etc. but real authentic connection. So I'll say I am such an introvert. It doesn't mean that I don't love people because as I mentioned before, I love observing people. I talk to people all the time. I just don't get my energy from people. I am like one of those people like I can totally be cool by myself. I am completely independent. I love people but I don't get my energy from them. And I'm reminded by a time not too long ago, where I was working like crazy. And I was sacrificing my ability to make time to connect with others in a genuine, authentic way. And honestly, my wake up call was I remember I was working. It was a Friday night. My mom calls me up. And she's like, What are you up to? And I said, Well, I'm in the office working. And she said, Jennifer, you never going to get married if you're working on a Friday night at eight o'clock. And, of course, like in my mind, I know that. But when your mother tells you something like that, and you're in the midst of like work mode, it just hit me like a ton of bricks. And I really,really, at that moment, wanted to be intentional about making authentic connections, not just in, you know, from a dating perspective, but really just overall, it made me take a step back and question how I was connecting to people authentically. And I will say, I have not like arrived. I think because of my introvert nature. The fact that I am so ambitious, like it's always gonna be one of those challenges for me to like, not be thinking about my next goal and working towards it, and prioritizing that versus prioritizing authentic connection. But I'm aware of it, I've left the station. And so I would say that being able to connect with people is such a huge component of that mental self care, because it makes me feel good when I have made time to have those authentic connections, it has definitely made a difference in how I feel. The last tip that I want to talk about, which again, work in progress over here people is saying no. When we say no to one thing, we allow room for something else. I'm not great at saying no. I'm getting better because I just can't do it all and I'm learning that. But one thing I have learned is that in order to say no, we have to understand at least for myself, what is refueling me and what's draining me. And there are things that I want to do that in and of themselves I gotta say are great things right? We all get asked to, you know, do things whether it's a committee or a cause that's important or helping someone helping a friend, but at the end of the day I have to get back to is this going to refuel me? Or drain me? And like where am I in that, in that sort of continuum? Am I in a space where I am able to help? It may be an arduous task, it may be something that I want to do, it's a good cause. But am I in that continuum where if I do it, I'm going to be fine. It's not going to leave me feeling depleted. And I think with that same token, we have to be clear about the people and things that are worth saying yes to ,right? So again, I go back to the whole comment with my work, situation in the past where, yeah, work is a great thing. And like giving your all and wanting to give your all of your talent and your skills, to be a blessing to your workplace, your team, etc, are all good things. But I was sacrificing my ability to make and have authentic connections with people, because I couldn't say no to leaving work on a Friday night, at like six o'clock. And I don't know what that is for you. Maybe your situation is you have so many other things on your plate, you're pulled in so many other directions, that you feel like you can't say yes to the thing that you want to say yes to. And what I would challenge you is I'm not a I'm not a subscriber of like, all or nothing, finding that balance, challenging yourself to find that balance. Because when it comes to the end of our time here on this earth,and I will say this from a space of having lost people who are close to me the things that we talked about, in those last moments. The things that I know we're running through their mind, in those last moments where they're approaching death. It wasn't about did I spend 60 hours at work.It wasn't about meeting a sales goal.
It wasn't about all the things that we consume ourselves with. It all came down to connection.
What difference did I leave this world? What difference did I make in this person's life? What did I give of myself to form that authentic connection with them? You'll have to forgive me a little bit for getting a little emotional on this. Again, I have a photographic memory. So I'm remembering certain snippets of my life that have played out with loved ones, or people dear to me that were were dying. And so I challenge us all to think about, what are we saying yes to? What are we saying no to?
And how do we say yes more to things that really make a difference. Because they don't just make a difference in the here and now. But they also make a difference. When we all get to that place in life, which we inevitably will. When we have those last moments, we'll be thinking about the people that we connected to.So I'll take a step back. As I mentioned, mental self care plan. These are all suggestions, right. So as you start to put together your self care plan for the holidays, I hope you'll have these tips in mind. There are numerous ones and I'll do my best to try to attach some additional resources within the podcast to things that you may find interesting, and that may help shape that portion of your self care plan for the holidays. In either case, I would love to hear from you what you've come up with in your self care plan so far. I think it may be a help to others, it may be a help to obviously myself. So write to me  - share, share what your self care plan for the holiday is shaping up to look like. So next week, we're going to continue the self care conversation. I'm going to share some of my mental health care tips and teach you how to develop some self care strategies that not just help us during the holiday season, but help us surpass the holiday season. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, and you want more, please hit subscribe to Best You Year on Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcasts, as I mentioned, your podcast platform of choice. You name it, I'm on it and if this self care topic is hitting you in all the right places because I really do hope it is, please, please leave a review on Apple podcasts or write to me at best year@yahoo.com I would love to hear from you. Thank you for listening!