Unlock the secrets to a balanced and fulfilling life with Lashanna Alfred, on the Self-Care Society podcast. Lashanna dives deep into practical strategies for nurturing your mind, body, and spirit, emphasizing that self-care is not just a luxury but a necessity. Imagine transforming your well-being simply by adding more water to your daily routine or incorporating a walk around your neighborhood—Lashanna shares how these small, yet impactful actions can enhance your physical health. We also explore the significance of setting healthy emotional boundaries, the power of journaling, and the benefits of therapy.
Join us as we discuss the power of compartmentalizing different aspects of our lives to maintain emotional balance and mental clarity, even amidst our busiest days. Lashana brings invaluable insights into emotional and mental self-care, touching on activities from mindfulness and meditation to learning new skills and pursuing hobbies. This episode is a treasure trove of advice for anyone looking to improve their internal health and achieve external goals while building a supportive self-care community. Get ready to be inspired by real-life stories of transformation and learn how you too can embark on a rewarding self-care journey.
Unlock the secrets to a balanced and fulfilling life with Lashanna Alfred, on the Self-Care Society podcast. Lashanna dives deep into practical strategies for nurturing your mind, body, and spirit, emphasizing that self-care is not just a luxury but a necessity. Imagine transforming your well-being simply by adding more water to your daily routine or incorporating a walk around your neighborhood—Lashanna shares how these small, yet impactful actions can enhance your physical health. We also explore the significance of setting healthy emotional boundaries, the power of journaling, and the benefits of therapy.
Join us as we discuss the power of compartmentalizing different aspects of our lives to maintain emotional balance and mental clarity, even amidst our busiest days. Lashana brings invaluable insights into emotional and mental self-care, touching on activities from mindfulness and meditation to learning new skills and pursuing hobbies. This episode is a treasure trove of advice for anyone looking to improve their internal health and achieve external goals while building a supportive self-care community. Get ready to be inspired by real-life stories of transformation and learn how you too can embark on a rewarding self-care journey.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Self-Care Society podcast with your hosts Celia Williamson, ashley Kuchar, louie Guardiola and Keri Shaw, a podcast devoted to those whose job it is to help others get or remain mentally, physically and emotionally healthy, but who also need to take care of themselves. And how we're going to do this? By first showing you the filtered, pretty version of success, and then the real struggles, real work and raw grit it took to get there, how they took care of themselves and also achieved their goals while doing it Together. We will work with you to improve and maintain your internal health and growth, while helping you achieve your external goals and your next professional achievement in life, and we're excited to show you how to follow your own individual and unique path and achieve the dreams you have while taking good care of yourself. So let's get started.
Speaker 2:
Welcome everyone to the self-care podcast. I am Lashana Alfred, and today this topic is nurturing your mind, body and your spirit. First, I just want to do a recap just to remind you self-care is not selfish. Self-care is when we make a decision to care for self and when we're caring for others. It shouldn't put us on the back burner or cause us to neglect taking care of ourselves. So today, when we're going on this topic of nurturing our mind, our body and our soul, or our spirit, I really want you to really understand the different categories and what we need to do in those different categories as we continue on our self-care journey. And so I talked with a group of ladies who have been on this self-care journey and to hear the feedback, the testimonies of the impact this self-care program has had on them has really been inspiring for me. To just listen to the community and the camaraderie that has taken place in this self-care community has been awesome. And so, as we continue, I just want to encourage you just to remember what we have shared throughout this time, remember the relationships that has been built.
Speaker 2:
And so, when we're looking at just practical self-care strategies from a physical self-care standpoint, we're talking about exercise, nutrition, sleep and hygiene. And so when we're talking about exercise, just wait a minute. It doesn't mean you need to go out and purchase a gym membership. Do you realize that you can get exercise by walking around your neighborhood, by going up and down the steps in your home, by going up and down the steps in your home? I just want to kind of jog your mind to really begin to think and reflect and focus on what do you need to do for yourself in the area of physical self-care. We're talking about exercise, nutrition, sleep and hygiene. Do you realize that all you may need to do is add more water to your daily routine? Just think about that. By adding an extra glass, a couple glasses of water to your routine, that literally can be assisting in your overall physical well-being.
Speaker 2:
The next is emotional self-care. Journaling, therapy, setting healthy boundaries and emotional check-ins are all underneath the category of emotional self-care. And so when we're talking about journaling and therapy, those are things we may need in order to learn how to set healthy boundaries. Oftentimes we set boundaries once we're mad at someone right, but setting healthy boundaries doesn't require us to be angry. Setting healthy boundaries just requires us to reflect on where we've been, where we desire to go and where we're currently at in our lives and being able to recognize what's needed and what's not needed. Maybe you need to set some healthy boundaries around mental well-being. So if every time you talk to someone and y'all get on topics that messes with your mental, then guess what? Those topics I will not communicate with that particular individual. But that will require taking time to sit back and self-reflect.
Speaker 2:
Mental self-care, meditation, mindfulness, hobbies and learning new skills all of those are under mental self-care. And so, again, our lives are so complex, and so we have to learn how to compartmentalize. You may be doing very well in business, you may be doing very well in your finances, but your emotions are all out of whack. So what does that say? Okay, maybe, if I'm doing 90% in my career, which is going well, and only 10% on my emotions, then I need to balance that out. How do I give my emotions that same amount of time? So now I'm not prospering in business, but my relationships are jacked up because I'm emotionally unstable or mentally immature, and so look, understand that. So physical self-care, emotional self-care, mental self-care.
Speaker 2:
And then the fourth one is social self-care building healthy relationships, socializing and community involvement. That's one of the testimonies that I heard from the ladies is the smaller groups help build relationships. It allows them to open up and be more transparent and vulnerable. I want you, or I encourage you, to look over your life and see what's actually hindering you from participating in community events, social engagement. Is it because you have anxiety related to being outside in large crowds? Can you find a smaller group Just looking at your life and really evaluating and seeing what can be blocking you from truly living the life that you desire to live?
Speaker 2:
The fifth one is spiritual self-care Meditation, again, prayer, nature walks and exploring personal beliefs. And so when we're talking about this spiritual journey, everyone may not have the traditional belief in God, right but when we're looking at the spiritual journey, it's really putting yourself in a place where you can just enjoy nature, enjoy life, being sensitive and and really open to what's happening on the inside of you. This work requires an inside-out job more than an outside-in job. Inside-out, really pausing to see what's happening on the inside of you. When you find yourself being anxious, angry, nervous, upset or depressed, pause and see what am I saying to myself. I've learned over the years that it's not so much what actually happens to us as much as it is the meaning that we place on the events that happens in life, the actual meaning. Can you believe that Even that can be challenging, and that's why, when we're looking at the emotional self-care, when it talks about journaling and therapy, sometimes we need someone else to help walk us through this thing called life.
Speaker 2:
And so, wherever you are, I just encourage you to really pause for a moment and just self-reflect. What areas do you feel is lacking? Is it relationships? Is it finances? Is it health? Is it mental, emotional, spiritual, is it physical? And whatever you identify, whatever comes up, physical. And whatever you identify, whatever comes up, I encourage you to write it down and create a plan, because it's one thing to know something is wrong, it's another thing to know how do I fix it, what is the solution, and then execute a plan.
Speaker 2:
Execute a plan, and so I encourage you, as you're continuing on this self-care journey, if you're on social media, write on social media some self-care things you do with the hashtag self-care journey, whether that's Facebook, instagram, tiktok, so you can begin to get make self-care the awareness. You can begin to make self-care the awareness, I'm sorry, of self-care more broad, because a lot of people don't really understand what it is because, due to upbringing, environmental factors, a lot of people will make you think that you choosing to take care of yourself is selfish and sometimes, because of our childbearing and our experiences, we can even send ourselves that same message and therefore, not doing anything for self, constantly doing things for everyone else, constantly doing things for everyone else, neglecting what we need to do to make sure we're whole, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically. Really understand that it's okay to set healthy boundaries. If you have a problem with that, I want you to identify what is the fear associated with me not being able to say no? What is that fear? Is there a fear of being neglected, rejected, abandoned? And then I would like for you to challenge that. If I said no to them, would they leave me? Would the relationship be over? And here's the thing if the answer is yes, I would even question that relationship. It's unhealthy to be in a lopsided relationship If all we're doing is pouring and pouring and feeding everyone else and neglecting ourselves, and then they're neglecting us. We're just an accident waiting to happen. So really understand this. We took the time to do this self-care group program because we understand the importance of individuals, understanding the importance of self-care and so our desire to continually help those that are in the helping field, to help them realize. Guess what? Sometimes we need to pull aside to take care of ourselves. And guess what? That's not selfish, that's self-care. Okay, that's not selfish, that's self-care. The importance of community, the importance of social engagement, even if it's a small group of individuals that's going in the same direction that you desire to go, you want to link with those individuals.
Speaker 2:
I have a book entitled the Power of Perception. I want you to challenge yourself, challenge how you're thinking, ask yourself the question is where I am? I want to always be. Is there more to life? If you're in your 30s, just imagine you have a good 50 more years left. If you're in your 40s, you have a good, at least 45 years left, right. And I'm just saying, if we live long and nothing get in the way. But even if you're in your 70s, right, even if you're in your 70s, right, it's like, okay, wait, what am I going to do with the years I have left? Or am I just going to waste away, thinking to myself, well, my time will come, but then you last 10 more years, only to realize you wasted those years. Time is precious. Time is precious. You can't buy time.
Speaker 2:
And so, again, even in our day-to-day busy lives, working, trying to balance work life and everything you must pull aside, even if it's 10, 15 minutes where you don't focus on any problem, you just allow yourself to embrace the present moment, you begin to meditate on where you desire to be, you begin to work and write down what you desire to do, speak words of life. Without a vision, the people perish. You want to have a vision for your future. You want to have a vision for your future, or you would just be walking aimlessly through this thing called life, taking care of everyone else while you're neglecting yourself in the areas of physical, emotional, mental, social and spiritual, exercise, nutrition, sleep, hygiene, journaling, therapy, learning how to set healthy boundaries, emotional check-ins Do you have someone that you can check in from an emotional standpoint? Meditation, mindfulness Do you have a hobby that you really enjoy?
Speaker 2:
Learning new skills, building healthy relationships, socializing and community involvement, prayer, going on nurture walks or nature walks, and exploring personal beliefs? Do you have any beliefs that will keep you stuck in your present situation? And if you recognize those beliefs, I encourage you to challenge them, challenge them, Challenge them. And so again, this is LaShonna. Challenge them. And so again, this is LaShonna. Thank you for tuning in to the Self-Care Podcast and I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:
That concludes this week's episode. And remember, it's not selfish, it's self-care.
