Ep 71 Reframing Self-Care as Self-Awareness

Today, I wanted to talk about self-care because I have been thinking a lot about it and what people think of it.

And there has been, I think, a pretty healthy shift in self-care.

The thought about self-care, I feel, used to be, oh, eating chocolate, watching TV, eating bonbons, you know, those kind of things, taking a bubble bath, going on vacation, getting a massage.

And I'm not saying that those things are not helpful, but I believe self-care is more than that.

And self-care can be done all the time.

I believe that self-care isn't necessarily a vacation and it's not time away from your family or from work or anything like that.

And there's a few reasons for that.

Part of it is you may not have the resources right now to go on vacation, to go do something extravagant and lovely and get a weekly or a monthly massage or a pedicure or anything like that, right? So we don't need things like that to have self-care.

And sometimes self-care seems like it's just one more thing to do on our to-do list.

And if self-care becomes one more task that you're failing at, then that's not self-care anymore, right? It's just more stress on your nervous system, more pressure.

And so today I wanted to offer you a different definition than maybe you've thought before.

I believe that self-care is spending time becoming more self-aware.

And this isn't like spending hours or minutes.

It's just micro-moments of shifting your thoughts.

So when we can go from self-care to self-aware, what do I mean? Well, let's get into it.

And I will give a disclaimer, when you do become more self-aware, this isn't to judge yourself in the process.

This is just to think about it, to notice it, and not make a verdict on who you are as a person.

It's just an observation.