Self care: "Take care of Rebecca" list

Self-care isn’t about bubble baths or spa days. At its core, self-care is about self-compassion and self-knowledge. It’s knowing how to take care of your own, unique self. In this episode, I share what’s on my “Take care of Rebecca” list–and encourage you to consider how you care for yourself, every day. 

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Transcript

Welcome to the Get Yourself Together Chica Podcast, the show that helps you thrive, or, you know, sometimes just survive. I'm Rebecca Fernandez. In each episode, we dive deep into something that has an impact on our lives as women, whether that's money or love, motherhood or friendship, our careers, or just making space for joy. 

This is episode number 21, and it's all about self-care. And you know, I think that self-care is not about bubble baths or spa days. At its core, it's about self-compassion and self-knowledge. It's knowing how to take care of your own unique self. So in this episode, I'm gonna tell you what's on my "Take Care of Rebecca" List, and I'm gonna encourage you to think about how you care for yourself every day. Make sure that you are on your list. 

But first, I wanna share what's bringing me joy right now. At the time of this recording, we are almost halfway through the January Get Yourself Together Chica program, which is a six-week program that I run for women. I have women bring together in their own minds a sort of council or advisory group of their biggest friends and fans. So people who just think really highly of them. And the exercise is go through and make a strengths inventory. So really understand who are they, and remember that, what are the special unique qualities that they bring to the world? 

And I probably don't have to tell you that many, if not most, women find this exercise extremely uncomfortable in the beginning. But in our most recent cohort, there was one woman who just sort of took that and flipped it on its head. And so when we finished the exercise, I asked, "How was that for you?" And she surprised me. She said, "Oh, it was so great. I feel so warm and fuzzy just sitting imagining what these people would say about me." And I said, "Hmm." And I could see the looks on the other women's faces, which was a lot of surprise. And I said, "Okay, tell me more about that." 

And she said, "Well, you know initially, I was uncomfortable with this idea." But then I asked myself, "What would my husband say if he were doing this exercise?" And I realized right away he would jump right in and think of all kinds of positive things to say about himself. And then I realized, you know, I'm really falling into kind of a trap here. This is sort of, I don't know, anti-feminist to feel like you can't say nice things about yourself, even if it's a friend saying it, that you have to reject it or be uncomfortable with it. 

So she said, "You know, I just leaned into that rebellion and I said, No, I'm going to set that aside and I'm going to listen to what these people would actually say about me and I'm gonna put it down." And she said, "And once I shook that off, I just felt great." 

And I thought, "What a beautiful self-awareness and rebellion to be able to recognize, hey, that is a messed up way of thinking that, you know, I'm pretty much every woman I know has internalized and I reject that. That is not in my best interest to think that way, to be uncomfortable, writing positive things about myself." So I loved that and it brought me such joy this week and I've smiled several times thinking about it. 

So I wanna walk you through what's on my Take Care of Rebecca list throughout the day. We'll start with morning, go all the way through to nighttime, and then I'll circle back and talk about some special moments like travel. 

First up on my, what does it mean to take care of Rebecca? list is: accept that I am a morning person. So what that means to me is I make sure I maintain an early bedtime. I need to be in bed in the nine o'clock, 10 o'clock hour, maybe 11 o'clock if I'm feeling wild and crazy or I'm really hooked in on a book or a show, but for the most part, the best times of my day are earlier in the day. 

And I have often felt this internal pressure to resist that or to try to change that because for whatever reason, I'm often drawn to people who are night owls. My partner in fact, he's much more of a night person than a morning person. And I remember even in college, that's a time when there's not a lot of morning people around and trying to stay up late studying and it just really messes with my health, messes with my mood. So I just have to accept that I am a morning person and I need to go to bed on time. 

So part of taking care of myself is really respecting my natural rhythms and finding ways to accommodate other people's needs without letting go of my own. So for example, my partner and I when we're together in the evenings, there almost always comes a point where I say, I need to go to bed now. He is very rarely going to be the one who says that. And if he's ready to go to bed, then he will. Sometimes he'll come up and read his book and I'll fall asleep faster. And if he's not ready for that, then he might stay up later and that's okay too. 

That's pretty unusual if it's just us here, but if all of the kids are here, it's more likely that they will stay up, at least some of them will. My daughter actually is quite disciplined about that. She knows she likes to go to bed early and in fact she goes to bed at eight o'clock, even as a teenager and she just loves to wake up. She wakes up at 4 a.m. That's how she's wired and she enjoys that quiet time before anybody else is up, because that's early even for me. But typically she'll go to bed first if everybody's here and then I will follow maybe an hour, two or three after that I'll just say, all right, I'm going to bed. And if it's a time when I can tell, you know what, my son also needs to go to bed. This is pushing the limits for all of us. Then I'll also just tell him, all right, you guys need to go home, we gotta go to bed. And you know, it's funny that it's uncomfortable. The first time you do something like that if you're not used to setting your own boundaries and taking care of your own needs but it quickly just becomes like, oh, right, that makes sense. It is getting pretty late. 

You know, the night owl does not pay attention to the clock. The morning person doesn't have to pay attention to the clock 'cause you feel your body is wearing out. 

Along the same lines of respecting my natural rhythms, another way that I take care of myself is that I always try to remember that writing and thinking work comes first. So what I mean by that is if I'm working on my novel or I am drafting some kind of piece for a client and it requires thinking and writing, that has to come as early in my work day as I can manage it. In fact, I often will cut other activities short in the morning to ensure that I've got the mental capacity to do that writing and thinking work. 

And you know, my morning routine, it's actually more of a checklist. Really it's important to me to have flexibility and freedom of choice. I don't like feeling constrained and I don't like feeling like I might not accomplish all the things I need to accomplish in a given time. So instead of thinking of the stuff I typically do in the morning as a routine, more recently I've started thinking of it as it's kind of a loose checklist. 

It's important to me to know what I treasure and to prioritize it. So for me, that includes morning coffee with my partner, whether it's a weekday and there are a few weekdays where we manage to have coffee together in the mornings or it's a weekend and we get a chance to sleep in and then watch the birds on the back porch. That is important to me. And so I work very hard not to cut that short when possible. That means if the dentist offers me an appointment at that time of day, I'll probably try for a different one. 

It's also important to me to have quiet time with a book, at least a couple times a week. So again, I will prioritize that. It's easy to flip on the television, but actually if I haven't had a chance to read in a little bit, it's more important to me and it's gonna be more rewarding to me to reach for a book. 

Meal times with my kids and connection opportunities with my kids are also really important. And I prioritize that both by making sure that that happens ideally every day when they're here, but if not at least a few nights a week, or a few afternoons a week, but also by thinking about my energy and I'll talk more about that. 

Another thing that I prioritize is getting sunshine and fresh air. That is a big part of taking care of Rebecca. So even just sitting on the porch if it's a day where I feel like I can't manage a walk, but more often I will go visit the lake, which means I'll walk about two blocks down to the little pond/lake thing around the corner for my house and just have a look and come back. 

I also try to build strength or endurance most days. So I take yoga a few days a week and I really like the community aspect of that. I have found I'm better off going to the studio than doing it at home even though there's an online option. So whenever possible, I will make that drive. I could just be going for walks as I mentioned, a bike ride if it's a lovely day out, a hike with a friend if it's a weekend and we can manage it, doing some push ups if I can't get anything else done. And lately I've also been doing quite a bit of rehabilitation exercises on my shoulder and on my groin because getting older and the body needs a little bit of help sometimes. 

Another rule for taking care of Rebecca: always have easy, healthy food on hand. So I am not a great person to be around if I get hungry or thirsty. It took me a long time to realize that I get very snappish and irritable if something is off in my sensory environment. So if I am hungry especially, I have a really hard time just kind of managing my responses. And even though generally I'm able to keep myself from being grouchy, I feel the grouchiness inside me and it makes me feel bad. It makes me feel bad that I'm fighting this urge to be unpleasant to people that I care about. 

That means I work pretty hard not to let Rebecca get hungry or thirsty. So if I'm going out, I try to always bring my water bottle with me and a little snack. Could be a banana, an orange, some nuts, maybe an energy bar, but the point is something easy, appetizing, healthy goes a long way. 

And the same is true for me at home, making sure that I always have something easy and healthy for lunch and ideally available for dinner as a backup plan too. Makes a really big difference. If I don't have food in the house, things just don't go well and I'm not taking very good care of myself. 

I've really come to accept that I am a sensitive person. I have to take care of my senses in a way that a lot of other people don't seem to have to. For me, that means dressing for the elements. Even if I am just going to take the dog outside, I need to, if it's winter, I need to put on warm socks, I need to wear gloves, I need to put on my warm coat. I am known at home to wear a fleece onesie because I get cold just sitting in my office. I have an endless collection of warm, fuzzy blankets. I keep a space heater and a humidifier in my bedroom and a space heater in my office. In the summertime, I keep a fan in my office. These little weather and temperature differences, they make a big difference to my mood and how I feel. 

And one thing I have learned too is even for little tasks like taking the dog out, pay attention to what bothers me about this task, what is it that makes this task more or less difficult? And so I have learned, oh, when I take the dog out in the winter time, it's hard to get the little dog bags open. They kind of like stick together in the cold. So now I will always open a dog bag and get it ready and stuff it in my pocket before I go outside. In fact, I usually do two, just in case. 

And I also in the evenings bring a flashlight, so I'm not sitting there squinting in the cold and the dark trying to figure out, okay, did he leave his business and I don't want to leave it in the yard. So I want to take care of it, bringing a flashlight actually makes a big difference there. 

I have little comfort things too that I use. So on my back porch, my partner is more cold tolerant than I am when it comes to being willing to sit out there. And one day I realized, you know, for $30, I could buy an electric blanket and bring it out there and plug it up when I was sitting on the porch. And oh my gosh, it's amazing. Like now I actually enjoy sitting out there in the cold, even on pretty cold days. And of course the dogs are all about that. Now I'm, you know, they think this blanket is like magic because it generates heat. 

Another way that I take care of Rebecca is I build movement breaks into my work day. So what I mean by that is I'll do little things like keep my coffee and my water in the kitchen to force myself to get up and refill. And then I try to drink a lot during the work day too, so that I'm forced to get up and use the restroom now and again. But whatever I'm working on, if it's something very engrossing, where I'm gonna be easily sucked into my computer and not get up for hours and hours, which does happen to me, then I will often set a timer. It will tell me you've been sitting for 45 minutes. Doesn't mean I have to get up, but it's enough of a little indicator and reminder to me that I remember, oh right, if I don't get up now, I'm probably not going to for at least another hour or two or three. And when I don't get up frequently, I start having pain, right? I get headaches, neck pain, back pain. So a little bit of movement in my work day helps prevent that and it's a good way of taking care of myself. 

Next on my "Take Care of Rebecca" List is follow the one minute rule. The one minute rule is if you can get it done in a minute or less, do it now. And the benefit for me and why I put this on my "Take Care of Rebecca" List is that it limits the clutter and noise in my brain. If it will take me one minute to unload the dishwasher, I might as well do it now rather than think about the fact that I need to do it and put it off several times during the day. If it will take me one minute to log into the doctor's office portal and reschedule an appointment, better to do it now than to sit there and think about it three or four or five times this week. 

Next on my list is something that I've always had to do… Manage my boss's expectations. The irony here is that I am now self-employed and I still have to manage my boss's expectations. I recently joked to somebody that I had a really long work day. My boss just would not let me get up from the desk until I finished what I said I was gonna get done that day. 

And then I admitted, well, I'm self-employed. But there's truth to it, right? Sometimes we are a servant to our own expectations and sometimes we have to manage other people's, especially when they have authority over us. So for me, managing my boss's expectations, whether that person is someone else or me, means resisting the urge to over commit. Resist the urge to stuff my daily task list with more than I can conceivably achieve. I've really had to work hard at kind of low-balling that. So commit to doing about 75% of what I believe I can get done in a day. 

And for me, that means there will be emergencies that pop up that eat up at least 20%, sometimes 30% and make it really a crunch. And if there aren't, great, I'll work ahead a little bit. 

But my default is to think that I can get more done than I actually can. My default is to assume that it's unusual to have something come up during the day that requires working around. It's actually unusual to have nothing come up during the day that requires a little bit of working around. So one of the ways that I compensate for that perpetual optimism about how the day is going to go is to lower my boss's expectations a little bit. 

The next thing that is on the "Take Care of Rebecca" List is each day to devote a little bit of time to doing something that brings me joy. That could be a trip to the library. It could be watching some comforting television like the Great British Bake Off or Lupin or Couples Therapy. It could be reading fiction. That's just fun and easy to read. It could be sitting by my fireplace and enjoying the ambience. But I like to build a little time into every day, usually in the evenings, to do something just for joy. 

I also take care of myself by building something social into most of my days. That might just be a cup of coffee with a friend or taking a walk with my kids or my partner or giving a friend a call. 

And when I'm feeling lonely, I make a point to reach out to people who have previously made an effort or signaled their interest in friendship. Even if admittedly, they aren't my preferred company. I think we all sometimes fall into that trap of, we pursue the friends who we most enjoy being around and who we most enjoy spending time with. And we neglect the friends who maybe we don't find quite as interesting or maybe they're newer to our circle, and so the socialization just takes a little bit more effort. It's not as effortless as it is with some of our other friends. When you're feeling lonely is also a good time to reach out to people who you've been meaning to cultivate more of a relationship with, who have signaled interest that maybe you haven't taken and moved forward because you've been busy or because your life's been filled with other relationships. So one of the things I do when I'm feeling lonely is to use that as motivation to widen or deepen my friendships. 

I also have an anxiety SOS toolkit on hand and I reach for that when I feel low. It's one of the best ways to take care of myself. It's just a list of stuff to do that helps my anxiety that helps me feel better. And I'll just kind of run down the list and try a few things. 

So this brings us to more of the afternoon evening time. I try to mark the end of the work day for myself. So I try to engage in some kind of transition activity that signals, okay, Rebecca, you're done working now. Now it's time to relax, recharge and spend time with people outside of work. 

So that might be a meditation. Sometimes that's a nice way to kind of ease from one activity to another, especially a guided meditation that's focused on letting go of the work day. It might look like a walk around the block. It might look like sitting down on the sofa putting on some good music and petting my dog or catching up with my kids. 

I will often make note of my energy level right at that moment when I'm transitioning from work mode to life mode. And the reason why I do that is because if I'm feeling depleted, especially if my introvert side has kind of been talked out for the day, or maybe I've been really stressed out today and I'm just kind of feeling overly jacked up. I know that I'm not quite ready to be there with other people yet, especially my kids. 

And I hear from a lot of working mothers that this is a real challenge for them. They feel like they need to go part time, not because of the hours they're working, but because they're struggling at the end of the day to be present. They're struggling to unhook from their thinking and their thoughts about work and be there and enjoy the time with their kids. And so they often feel like I need a lower stress maybe part time job to solve that problem. 

But for me, it's more about recognizing even if it's been a long work day, to be the best mom that I can be for my kids, I need a moment to myself before we go there. So I might go for a walk by myself around the block. I might sit down on the back porch and let my kids know, hey, I just need a couple minutes to chill. I might make myself a cup of tea. I might do almost anything except walk out of my home office, land in the living room, and try to listen while the kids talk and talk and talk and talk and talk about all the things they're excited to share. 

Because I just, I don't, it's not in me, I don't have it right then. I have to kind of recharge my batteries a little bit. Even if I go lay on my bed and put on some headphones and listen to classical music, or I go fold some warm laundry while I listen to a podcast, I need to do something between those two activities on a busy or stressful day so that I can hear what my kids are saying and not hear it as, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. 

That's my thing, yours might be different, but don't beat yourself up if you need some kind of transaction activity, right? Even back in preschool, they sang a little transition song to help the kids out. It's just human. 

And along the lines of accepting myself, one thing that I do to take care of myself is accept and embrace my need for peace and quiet. I am not the sort of person who can have a television, playing in the background, who can have people talking at loud volumes around me. There are certain rules that exist in my home with my kids and they understand why. We have one television. It's right in our living room in the middle of the house and the kids know if they want to watch, they need to wear headphones and they need to ask before they turn it on. 

And often they don't. They just go read a book or something because they know the answer might be no. But even if they're wearing headphones, I may not be okay with them watching TV in the middle of the day when I'm in that common area and trying to relax. It's just too much visual stimulation. 

And they definitely know no TikTok, no YouTube, none of that stuff on speakerphone, on their phones. They know like, Mom just can't handle that. Especially some of these YouTubers, my God. I would lose my mind. 

Another thing I've learned over the years is to actually carry ear plugs around with me at all times in my purse. So if we are out somewhere and somebody's got to watch their phone on speaker phone or, I don't know, a baby's crying and nobody wants to take it out of the restaurant, whatever's going on. Someone's having an argument at the table next to us. It's just a great source of comfort to me to know I can pull my little ear plugs right out of my purse, put them in my ears and take the edge off of things. And I can do that too if the kids are having, you know, a really fun and heated argument in the back seat and it's just a little too much. I don't have to tell them to keep it down. I can just sort of mute it a little bit. 

I also have learned to adjust the volume of background music and also to play some ambient music. Sometimes I really just need either classical or jazz or something quiet and sort of easy listening in the background. It just kind of takes the edge off of other sounds. For me, sounds that might be outside the house, you know, the godforsaken leaf blower that the neighbor is always going to bring out if it's a beautiful day outside. I'm very sensitive to those kinds of things and I need to have a peaceful environment and ideally I like to have quiet. 

So that is probably way more than you need to know about my idiosyncrasies around sound, but I hope that it will be a little bit freeing for you too to think about what are those strange things that you really could do to take care of yourself and they wouldn't necessarily bother anybody around you. You know, my kids understand this is a challenge I have and they're very accepting of it and they're very forgiving of it. In fact, it took me a long time to be okay with putting your plugs in because I didn't want to offend other people. So assuming that you're generally a decent person, you know, the people in your life are probably more willing and happy to accommodate your needs than you think. 

All right, next on the "Take Care of Rebecca" List is know what is for dinner by the time I'm eating breakfast. That's important to me because if I wait until two or three o'clock chances are I'm going to just not have a plan for dinner and I'm gonna be hungry and grumpy, it just puts me in a bad state of mind going into the evening. 

And when my motivation lags for cooking, I aim to make meal prep as easy as possible. Or I might make a really appealing dish. So something like vegan macaroni and cheese or I really love spaghetti. So I might just make spaghetti. That helps me kind of get back into the spirit of cooking and not feel, I don't know, sort of obligated to do it. 

I always try to have at least two pantry meals available as well. So that might be a frozen pizza. There's a pasta dish we make that has crumbled tofu in it's very yummy and easy. Peanut noodles are popular around here. But essentially just something I can pull together with a couple of ingredients that we always have in the pantry or long lasting stuff from the fridge or freezer. Now, tofu may not be an ingredient you always have in your fridge but I pretty much always have a block of tofu. So a lot of ours involve tofu. 

All right, next one is to think about Future Rebecca. So fill the gas tank on your way back home. Wash those dirty dishes now. Don't leave them for the morning. Do the laundry before it's an emergency situation, right? Think about: what is Future Rebecca going to think of Present Day Rebecca's decision making? If you're making work for her, don't do that. That's not a nice way to take care of your future self. 

And last in my day is when I want an evening cup of comfort, I make it tea, instead of wine. I've got an entire collection of tea, tea is much less expensive than wine. It's better for my sleep as long as I avoid the caffeinated varieties and it's better for my health. So you'll find that even if a little glass of red wine at the end of the night is part of your kind of wind down ritual, if you replace that with something else and if that's something that's important to you to change, which if you're drinking every night, frankly it probably should be, if I can be a little preachy there, but if that's part of your wind down ritual, you will find that if you replace it with something else, soon the new thing becomes just as comforting. 

That is my ordinary list for an ordinary day of how I take care of myself, but let's talk quickly about two rules for travel and adventure. So when it comes to traveling, one of my rules for taking care of myself is to as soon as I land or even before I get there, find a smoothie or bowl restaurant spot, somewhere that serves healthy smoothies without a bunch of sugar and goop added into them. And somewhere that serves beans, vegetables, rice, lentils. Those are things that are really important to my health to eat pretty much every day. And so finding them when I'm traveling is really important to me. 

I also buy food for the plane and nuts and fruit to keep around as a snack. I like to remember one time I decided, oh, I will just request the meal that's a strict vegetarian meal they offer on the plane. And I woke up, after many hours and many delays, to the scent of everyone around me eating delicious smelling pizza… and they offered me a white bread sandwich that contained some kind of non-dairy margarine and slices of cucumber. I don't ever want to face a cucumber sandwich and pretend it's dinner again, so I travel prepared. And if the meal on the plane happens to be good and edible or I can scavenge little pieces of it great. If not, I've got something for myself. 

I also when I travel, pay special attention to whether I'm feeling overwhelmed, tired, hungry, and attend to my needs. 

And because fun and adventure and novelty are such important parts of my life and my personality, one thing I do to care for myself is plan ahead for the weekends. Usually on Thursday of each week or sometimes Friday, I take a look at least two weekends out on the calendar and I try to put down something fun and interesting for us to do. It doesn't have to be time specific, just putting it on the calendar tends to mean that we'll end up doing it at some point during the year if not that specific weekend. 

So those are just some of the ways that I take care of Rebecca. I hope this inspires you to make your own list. What does it mean to take care of you? 

Well, it's time to tell you what's been blowing my mind this week. The magic of timing. I was kicking myself because we had planned to go to Florida to visit my parents, and there was a mix up with the flights, and we had to cancel the whole trip. 

Well, wouldn't you know it? The first day that we were supposed to be gone, our dog became incredibly sick. We had to rush him over to the animal hospital. He's all right, thankfully, but I was so happy that we hadn't made the trip just then. 

It was just such a nice, helpful reminder once again that we never really know what is a good thing or a bad thing. 

Well, Chicas, that's all for today. For more episodes or links to the resources I might have mentioned, visit getyourselftogetherchica.com/podcast. If you liked today's episode, please share it with your friends, post it on social media, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any episodes. I would value so much if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts or whatever app you listen to podcasts. Until next time, Chicas.