Self-Care vs. Self-Love Solosode

In this episode I take a dive into my book 29 Days: The Self-Love Leap.  I discuss the difference between self-care and self-love, the importance of cultivating a relationship with ourselves, and we explore Day 9 in the book.   

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:19

Welcome back to today's episode of Unapologetic Living. I'm Elizabeth Elliott. I'm your hostess. And today I'm gonna record recording a solo episode. There aren't that many solo episodes on my podcast. If you go back through the history, this is uh podcast number 118, and I thought it fitting. It is February, um, and in February of 2020, I decided to create a daily video on um Instagram for self-care practices, uh partly because many people think February is the month of love, right? We do celebrate Valentine's Day on February 14th or somewhere thereabouts. And oftentimes, um, although there's that uh part of me that's like, okay, this is just another money grab, it's another holiday, maybe man-made my Hallmark or whatever, really, we should be honoring and celebrating the ones we love every day. Um, there's also right that small part of me that wants to be honored and acknowledged. But uh if we aren't partnered, which um many aren't, uh the creation of the original videos were for whether partnered or not, but at that time I wasn't partnered, is that we can still we can be our own Valentine. We can be our own Galantine. Oh my goodness. Boly moly. Okay, so just I'm just gonna give you a little heads up. My garage door, I record from home. My garage door was open, it never is, and so that kind of panicked uh me a little bit because um, you know, you don't want to leave your garage door open overnight. Uh, but I realized that my daughter's car is in has just pulled in. So, and she hasn't been parking in the garage because of the snowy, crappy weather that we've had here in Kentucky. Uh, so anyway, um, I created these videos because I wanted to um bring awareness of the fact that we can love ourselves and we can be our own, our own Valentine, and we can do that for ourselves every single day. Um, because the only relationship that we have absolutely 100% guaranteed is the one that we have and cultivate with ourselves. Our siblings might leave us, our children might reject us, our parents, uh, our friends, our family members. Like there's a lot of sadness in the world. But when we feel good about ourselves and we feel lovable, even if all of the things around us are crumbling down, then we um well, first of all, or more likely not to lose those relationships, um, but that we will find comfort and enjoyment and pleasure uh spending time with ourselves. And that's when I created these videos, and three years later, I decided to make them into a book. Well, over time, I took them down from Facebook, I I went back and transcribed them, and then I wrote them down into a book, and I titled it 29 Days: The Self-Love Leap, a Journey of Reflections and Practices to Loving Yourself Better. So uh it is 29 days because in 2020 uh it was a leap year, and uh I wanted to make it doable. So a lot of these practices really are simple, yet they are and can become profound. When we take these baby steps, big, bigger things can happen, and that is I wanted to break it down uh into these baby steps so that it is very doable, and many of them are actually self-care practices. So I was on um I was having a conversation the other day. Uh, I was being interviewed for the No Knockouts podcast, which I think is going to be released on Wednesday. And Pam asked me, what do you think the difference is between self-care and self-love? And to me, self-care does include um activities and routines such as brushing your teeth, taking a shower, getting your daily exercise, um, maybe a meditation or a um practice or daily prayer or scripture reading or a daily um inspirational reader, it might be yoga. Like we all have different daily practices and routines, which are a part of our self-care. But I think what I think is when we are um practicing self-care, true self-care, which would mean to nurture the mind, the body, and the spirit, then it becomes easier to love ourselves. And when we love ourselves, we show up better for the collective, whether it's uh for our children, I'm a mom, whether it's for our partner, our spouse, our parents, our colleagues, our church community, wherever that is, when we are making decisions and taking care of our mind, body, and spirit, it just makes it easier to truly love and enjoy our own company. So I just want to go into day nine because it is February 9th. Uh, and February 9th is um well, we're just gonna say day nine. And the practice on day nine is to eat mindfully. Um so I know for me, I have struggled with digestive distress for as long as I can remember. Um, and I think partly it's because of the spinal fusion and where I'm fused, uh the nerves that happen to be connected to digestion are in the same place where I have screws in my back. But it could be for a multitude of reasons that you struggle with digestive and distress. And so day nine is about eating mindfully. Again, this is just one of the many practices, but what do you think of when you think about or reflect on what it means to eat mindfully? And just take a moment. And actually, I'm just gonna walk you through meditation practice where you um, if hopefully whether you're seated or not, I just want you to take a few moments and imagine you're sitting at your breakfast table, your dining room table, whatever that is for you, and think about grounding down through those sit bones in the chair. And while you're seated and imagining you're seated, just shrug the shoulders up towards your ears, roll them back and down. And maybe you're actually doing this in real time. And just close your eyes. Right? Many people, individuals that bring prayer um to their meal just before to bless the food. And you may or may not be one of those individuals. And then go ahead and take a big deep breath in. Take a big deep breath in through the nose. I want you to imagine you're filling your belly up, low, low belly, down by your pubic bone first, and then the mid-belly fills, and then the upper uh belly just below the rib cage fills, and then the lungs begin to expand out towards your arms. And then you're gonna exhale nice and slow, releasing the air from your lungs first, or at least trying to. It might be a new practice for you. And then you're gonna release the air from the upper belly, the mid belly, and then the low belly. We're drawing that belly button in towards your spine, trying to create a pancake. And then I want you to just return to normal breath. So we're just gonna practice one of those. And I want you to think about sitting down, your table is set, you have a placemat, you have a fork on your left, and you have a knife and a spoon on the right side of your placemat. And in the middle there's a plate of food. It doesn't matter what the food is. You have a plate of food, maybe it's lunch, maybe it's dinner, maybe it's dessert. And just take a moment to think about mindful eating. What does that mean to you? And I want you to think back to when you were a child and what sitting down with your family meant to you. Did everybody sit down at the table together? Was it stressful? Was it peaceful? Was it a time of joy? Did people talk to each other? Did you all share about your day? Are there things about that childhood, dinner, breakfast, lunchtime experience you wish were different? And just notice what arises in your body. You may even have a memory pop up, and that's okay, and it may be a memory that you don't want you don't care to remember. And that might be worth noting as well. Might be it might be um something to consider journaling about to release and let go of. Find gratitude for the food, thanking it for all of the energy it's going to provide for your body. And then slowly maybe open those eyes. And if you're in person, open those eyes, right? If you're doing this in real time, open your eyes. So we've thought a little bit about this. If you have um something, and this is actually, I mean, it's a practice that you could do on your own. Um, think about, I want you to think about how you might run into the pantry and grab a snack and quickly eat it, or maybe you're on the run and you're um chewing up beef sticks in the car between clients or right after a workout as you head to work. There's so many different ways. And I am sharing this because it's something that I do, I have not even fully mastered because uh, you know, we are human and we are living in this world that can feel very busy, and we are go, go, go and going. And sometimes we don't even realize that we've eaten. And so the benefit of eating mindfully is that we get to slow down and take the time to really notice the flavors, the textures, the way the food feels in our mouth and the way we feel eating it, right? What does it taste like? What are the textures? How does it feel when I'm chewing it? What sounds am I hearing as I chew? What comes to mind specifically is like, let's say, an almond. Sometimes I've eaten my dessert that I've looked forward to so fast I don't even know what it tasted like. And guess what? I might find myself going back for more. But if I take a few moments to eat mindfully and slow down, then I can actually have time to savor it. But the benefits of that too is like when we are chewing slowly and eating mindfully and maybe putting our fork down between each bite, then we actually nourish our body, our mind, and our spirit. And so it is important. You know, you can eat the most perfect diet, but if you are rushing through your food by chewing it too quickly and then digesting it half full or swallowing while it's still in chunks, it's much more difficult for your stomach acid and the digestive secretions to break that down than if you chewed it 20 or 30 times almost to liquid. By the time it gets to your stomach, there's far less work for it to do. And so when it's not just what we eat, but it's actually what we digest, absorb, and assimilate, and what actually makes it to our cells and our muscles. And that is why it's incredibly important to eat mindfully. So this is just one, this is just a nine. And you know, sometimes it comes back to like I get in the habit, I was waiting tables and I would order food and I'd take bites and run back and forth between serving, you know, patrons. So it could be that, but it could be that you grew up rushing around and had to eat really quick before a ball game, or that your family uh eating, sitting down at dinner wasn't peaceful and it felt stressful and tense, which can also disrupt the way your body assimilates that food. So again, this is day nine. I wrote this book, um, and then uh to help you integrate tiny things that could make a huge impact on the way you feel, on the way you view yourself, on the way you move through the world. And so I just want to invite you to check my work out. If you are struggling with self-love, if you need some new inspiration, some inspiration to cultivate self-love, how can I do this? Because at times it feels difficult, I think. I know, you know, for me, uh much of my self-loathing did have to come from food and body image issues, and uh for a multitude of reasons. Um, and much of that is is shared in in my story in my book on the various different days. Um, but uh I invite you to check it out. It is February, it's on sale right now for$9.99. There are some awesome little daily pages where you can read, uh write about and reflect on uh various elements, aspects of your mind, body, and soul. And so I just thought this would be a great time to bring up um uh 29 days, the self-love leap. I hope uh these little practices help you in your life and help you uh cultivate that self-love because I, for me, as I've integrated these practices, it's so much easier for me to love myself and think that I am worthy, I'm enough, and I am a valuable asset to the collective consciousness. I hope you all have a great day. Uh stay tuned. We've got some really great guests coming up, and uh um happy love month.