Faith & Self-Care: Putting Your Oxygen Mask on First Ep. 7

In this episode, we dive into the importance of self-care and how it directly connects to our faith. Just like on an airplane, we are reminded to put our own oxygen mask on first before helping others. Self-care is not selfish; it's essential for serving others with a full heart. Learn why prioritizing yourself spiritually, emotionally, and physically is a key to living out your God-given purpose.

Key Takeaways:

• Faith and self-care are deeply connected—both are essential for living out your purpose.
• Self-care isn’t selfish; it allows you to show up for others more powerfully.
• Scripture reminds us to love ourselves as we love others (Mark 12:31).
• Practical tips to prioritize your health and well-being to serve with a full cup.

7-Day Summer Self-Care Reset: Sign up at Jaimemcfaden.com for your reset.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, welcome to What's the Word. I'm your host, Jamie McFadden. I'm so excited to have you here. This podcast is all about faith, self-care, and the journey of parenthood. I will be interviewing some of the most inspirational people I know. So join me and let's grow together on What's the Word. So we hear it all the time. Self-care is important. Self-care is a vital component of our daily lives. But have you ever just stopped to think about what's the word? why it's so crucial for serving others. Today, we're diving into the power of daily self-care practices and why it's not a luxury. It's actually a necessity, especially if you want to live out your calling and the things that you're being called to do and serve others around you. with a full heart. So hello, everyone. Welcome back to What's the Word. I'm your host, Jamie McFadden. So excited to be here with you today doing this solo episode talking about absolutely one of my all-time favorite subjects. In fact, I've turned it into my brand, my business, and it touches on every area of, I believe, our lives. And when it comes to self-care, let's just a little brief intro here. So self-care by definition is taking a daily practice to enhance or to sustain our well-being. So the things that you're doing on a regular basis, drinking your water, nourishing your body, getting your rest, all those things are vital components of self-care. Now, you know that amazing saying, in fact, I don't know if you know this, but I used to be a flight attendant. And back when I was a flight attendant, one of the things that I used to say was, you probably know this one. You know, if the cabin pressure changes and oxygen masks happen to drop down, please be sure to, if you have little ones around, please be sure to put yours on first. Why is that? Let's go into this for a hot minute here. When we are giving, it's great. We're giving, we're supporting, we're helping someone, we're showing up. That's all awesome. But if we're not continuously, simultaneously, even pre-giving, pouring into ourselves, then we're going to quickly run out. It's just like that oxygen. If you don't have that oxygen on yourself and you're trying to put it on your kid and the cabin pressure's changing and going down rapidly, it's not gonna be good. So when we think about self-care, I like to think of it as, and especially as I'm a mom of two, I'm passionate about what I believe in, my ministry of motherhood, but also the brand that I have created and I'm building in this village and supporting the community. And in order to do this, in order to actually serve out what I believe is my God-given purpose for being here in this life, is that I have to understand self-care is, it's not a maybe every day. It's not a, well, I'll get to that on Sunday. Or, you know, okay, on the weekend, I'll do that. No, it's cultivating things every single day. I'm going to share a brief story with you. I have many of them, because I also believe in the reality that it takes one to know one. And we can become, I don't know who this saying is by, and I might totally butcher it. So please forgive me on that. But we can become the best teachers and share what we need to learn the most. So as someone who in my own life witnessed so many of the women in my life consistently just giving and giving and giving and not understanding how to receive or even asking what it was and supporting their own self-care, it taught me a very great way of how to neglect my own self-care. And so brief story. And this has to do with my business and also motherhood. And maybe you'll relate with this. So I'm going to use the scripture Mark 12, 31. So what's the word? Mark 12, 31. Love your neighbor as yourself. This is one that we've probably heard, whether or not you've read scripture. You've probably heard this at some point in your life. I believe this. I've always believed this. And yet it's so fascinating when I look back and I go, okay, so Let's just dive into, here's Jamie in my late 20s, living in LA, hustle bustle, working in the fitness industry, doing all these things, flight attendant simultaneously, maybe even at one point working in a restaurant so I could support my passion of doing performance because that's what happens. So for so many of us, and anyways, I jump into, I get into motherhood. Okay. And this all happens. And I immediately know, okay, the rest of my life is dedicated to providing and being responsible and doing anything I can for my child. However, I was, during that whole pregnancy, spending so much of the precious energy and time that I had, anything that I could do to outwardly serve others without actually pouring into my own cup. And so here's what happened. I ended up getting really burnt out. I ended up feeling frustrated. I ended up feeling way more alone and isolated. I was building communities for companies, for people. I was building out these mom programs. And guess who was the mom that was the most lonely of all in that situation? Me. So it took me to raise the awareness to what I was currently doing and or not doing to practice my own self-care so that I could then truly be leading by example. Love your neighbor as yourself. Think of it this way. That means we must be loving ourselves the way that we do others. We cannot neglect our self-care. So in this scripture, Self-care is directly tied to how we're treating ourselves. I believe God has called each and every one of us to practice better self-care so we can show up better every day, any moment of any day. And that's why we're so blessed to have all this information and all this stuff that constantly gets convoluted and misconstrued. How are you spending your energy? So Let's fast forward. So I became very burnt out, stressed out, all sorts of things, very burnt out. Okay. When I say burnt out, it was extreme burnout. And if you've ever, we hear that word and it gets tossed around a lot, but extreme burnout is when you actually get to a point where then you can't really actually do anything. So then you went from wanting to serve everyone and now you have literally nothing to give. And now you have to pour into yourself because you're unwell. So that was a big aha moment for me of, okay, clearly this isn't working. Clearly this isn't, I had all the best of intentions. I was thankful to be helping others, but I also then realized, okay, this isn't sustainable. So that's what led me into building a self-care brand. Because I also realized I wasn't alone. And there were many moms that had said to me, wow, thank you for creating this village. Thank you for creating this program. Thank you for creating this prenatal workout system, whatever it was. And lo and behold, you know, here's Jamie on bedrest because I had done too much. So here's a real life fact. Burnout is the most common for people who don't practice their own self-care, right? Self-care is a way that we can reduce our stress. We can improve our wellbeing in all areas. And think about it like this. Today is a perfect day to start. Whatever happened yesterday is in the past. Today is here, here and now. If any of this is resonating with you right now, I want to share with you something that I created and I'm just going to tap on it briefly and then I'm going to personally invite you to join me for the Summer Self-Care 7-Day Reset. 7-Day Self-Care Summer Reset, whatever. And it's something that I've created. It is free. And for anyone who is listening to this podcast, I want you to jump in today and dive into this. So I created a system, the wave system. You may or may not know this system. It's a very simple system that you can remember because think of the ocean. The ocean is waves. It's constantly moving, just like life, right? Our life doesn't just stop until it stops. But then there is eternity. depending on what you believe. I believe in eternity. I believe that the soul will carry on. Now, back to where we are today. We can only focus on what we have in this moment. That's why being present and mindful is so important when it comes to your self-care. You could think about, okay, what am I gonna do 10 years from now? What does self-care look like when I'm at this different phase in my life? That's one thing, but we need to focus on what's happening right now in our lives and then when it comes to the waves the waves of life right now there's a lot of stuff going on in the world there's a lot of natural disasters there's a lot of tragedies there's a lot of people struggling with mental health there's a lot of polarity there's a lot of all sorts of stuff now i just listed off a lot of the negative things that are happening but there's also simultaneously a lot of beautiful things that are happening like you and i practicing better self-care so we can go out and serve others There are so many people in this world that are doing everything they can to enhance their lives and also the lives of others so that they know they're serving their God-given purpose and mission. Another thing I want to share about the wave system. Just like the ocean, life is constant. It's always moving. Sometimes you might be feeling great. Other times you might be feeling like you're drowning. But we must... like the ocean, like the waves, we must focus on riding them either way. So I very much believe that we are never alone. We are all divinely connected. And it wasn't until I reestablished, and I say reestablished, I've always had faith. I've always had a belief in God. I've always had, um, I personally have always considered myself to be a very faith-driven person. However, I will admit wholeheartedly, there were many years of my life that I went astray, that I maybe didn't think about it too much. I am so grateful. I feel so, so blessed to have the grace of God and that God is such a patient God who has allowed me to go through all of the different steps and phases that I've gone through to get right here. And I don't know if that Sounds like anything about your life, but when I do a little reflection, especially when it comes to self-care, I'm like, oops, there are definitely things that aren't so pretty. Let's just put it that way. So let's think about self-care in your life right now. The wave system, four parts, well-being, awareness, vision, energy with those four key components. You can literally change and transform your entire life. I've seen this happen time and time again with so many clients, friends, family members, and it's something myself all the time. I use the wave system every day, every week. It's something you can come back to all the time. So we're just going to talk about briefly what the wave system is and how this can help you. And then I'm going to invite you to say yes. and commit to the seven-day summer self-care reset. So we have well-being in your life right now. What does it mean to be well? What are you currently doing? That's the awareness. What are you doing? We are consistently being pulled by the enemy of distraction and all sorts of things that are going to be pulling and vying for your attention. Where are you putting your energy? is going to be inevitably the wave that you're riding. Whatever waves are coming your way that are out of your control because that's the other fun thing about self-care. Life, so often we think we have control. I know I've done this. I catch myself doing it all the time. I want to control things so things can be smooth sailing. And then life happens and you get shaken up. Whoa. So much is out of our hands. But the way that we respond and the way that we react to what's going on around us, within us, is a huge part of our self-care practice. So if you are someone that struggles sometimes with feeling burnt out, disconnected, or quite frankly, you're just not sure what to do because maybe you're feeling stuck, I want to challenge you today to choose one thing. So you think about the wave system, well-being, awareness, vision, and energy, those four components. Think of one area of your life. Maybe it's that you really finally this summer want to commit to getting outside and being in nature. Maybe you want to start putting your phone down more often, stop scrolling. Maybe you want to go volunteer somewhere and do something to serve someone else. Whatever it is for your self-care that will enhance your well-being so you can serve others. Choose one simple, small thing that you can do today and then go do that thing. When we think about, I know when I became very convicted, convicted about God, convicted about the life and teachings of Jesus, convicted that I am a follower. When, once I felt that conviction, it became an inner knowing that, sure, could someone argue with me and tell me, okay, well, this thing in the scripture, you know, how can they prove that this and that? Go ahead. You could you could argue all you want but once you have had a specific spiritual experience and each person has their own so it's not for me to say okay when you have a dream like i had with jesus then you'll believe no i have no idea i will pray i pray for the the entire all of us the universe humanity that we can all feel god's presence that we can all feel the energy of faith, of the belief of the things that we know, but maybe we can't prove on a paper document or in some sort of a scientific journal. That's a whole nother topic here. Okay. A couple of things. So choose something you're going to do to practice your self-care today, and then Join all you need to do right here, right now. It's in the show notes. Click on jamiemcfaden.com. Get into my newsletter and you will be automatically involved in the seven day summer reset. Okay. This is going to be seven days where we're going to dive into a daily practice each day. We're going to do something that's going to enhance our wellbeing. And the best part is we're going to be paying it forward. So someone else is also going to be getting the benefit based on what you're doing. So you're not just doing this for yourself. That's the other thing. You're doing this so that you have more to give. And if this resonates with you, not only join, but please share it with anybody. This is open to anybody that's feeling called for seven days where in under 20 minutes a day, roughly 10 minutes a day, you can make lasting changes for the rest of your life. So if you, like me, have felt at some point in your life tired of saying you're going to do it and not doing it, being inconsistent, and you want to have some accountability, this is the perfect thing for you. I would say of any of my God-given strengths, being the disciplined person that is great for accountability, that will show up in your inbox, in your face, from a place of love that's like, hey, did you do that thing today that you said you were going to do? It's really important we do. That's faith-based. and our action. So I am your host, Jamie McFadden. I absolutely feel honored that you chose to listen to this today. And I look forward to doing this seven day with you. So thank you for joining on what's the word and I'll see you soon. Bye. Thank you for joining me here at What's the Word. Follow us on social media with the links on the screen and don't forget to like and share with your friend. Your support helps us grow and continue to make inspirational content. See you next time on What's the Word.