Hey - before we dig into this week’s episode, I want to tell you about some super cool things coming up with my affiliate relationship with ULTIMATE BUNDLES:
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Okay, so why does Self Care matter and why do we need it? One of my favorite quotes is from Eleanor Brown: "you cannot serve from an empty vessel." And that goes for your side hustle as much as it goes for your day job, work-life balance, and everything else. Without self-care, you cannot take care of anyone or anything - and that includes your side hustle.
This quick-and-dirty episode gets to the heart of self-care and why we need it. And I'd LOVE to hear from you on what kinds of self-care YOU utilize. As always, here’s a transcript of the show, or listen in by clicking above.
today I want to talk about self-care and the side hustle.
That's like sex and the single lady, but different.
I have been struggling with this area of my life myself, and I thought sometimes the best way to improve a particular area of your life is to talk to other people about it. So I am here today to do exactly that.
Why does self-care matters and how do you treat yourself? And you've probably heard the term self-care in a lot of different circles. You hear it at your day job. You hear it on podcasts like this one, you talk about it with your friends. Maybe your supervisor talks about it. Maybe you're talking about it in your professional associations, self-care covers a lot of areas and it is something that's really important to focus on because I think it was Eleanor Brown that said this,: “we cannot serve from an empty vessel.” So when we get to feeling so depleted, so exhausted that we're not able to focus on ourselves. Then we can't really put ourselves in a position to help anybody else.
And I don't know about you guys, but I got into my day job because I wanted to support students. I wanted to help students on their journey in higher education. I started the swim team with my husband, because I wanted to help other adults learn to swim and become comfortable in the water, which is really my husband's place to shine. But supporting that talent of his became a huge why for me. And so I help him run the team on the backend and then came the desire to have my own thing: time management coaching piece for me became important because I wanted people to be able to understand that you can have a side hustle, you can make room to do these things to either make extra money for yourself, have a hobby that can support you financially, or find a way for you to just tap into something that has meaning for you and share it with the world. And that's why I put myself out there. But again, these are three arenas of my space where if I'm not tending to my particular needs as a human being. I can't help anybody. I can’t help anybody in my day job, I can't support my husband. I can't support our team and I can't help you guys if I'm not taking a very careful look at how I treat myself day in and day out.
So benefits of self-care, let's just start there. Spending time and effort on yourself can rejuvenate and energize. Taking time to indulge in your own self-interests, demonstrate your worth leading to improved self-esteem and a more positive outlook on the world. Self-care helps you better cope with stress. That is a huge piece to this and to prioritize what's important to you.
Let's talk a little bit about some examples of self-care. Oh my God. I can go on and on about this for me, sometimes a little bit of self-care is just getting up in the middle of the Workday, grabbing my phone and taking a walk around the block, listening to whatever music is, fueling my soul these days, or catching up on another podcast or listening to part of an audiobook or being at one with being outside and listening to nothing. That is a huge way to do some self-care. That's fast and easy and doesn't cost you anything,
Now, if you've been a fan of the show for a while, you know that I'm a big fan of the morning and the evening routine. And that's a great place to indulge in self-care. Morning-Routine self-care can be journaling. Self-care can be meditation. Self-care can be your morning workout or your morning exercise. For the evening self-care. I like to do a gratitude list every night. Before I go to bed, then I'm grateful for each day or rather that I appreciate writing those things down and being familiar with aspects of my day that have made me go, “I'm so appreciative of that.” And that's a great way to fit self-care into the day. I think that you need to be flexible with your care. There are days when the most amount of self-care that you can do for yourself is one minute of meditation. And there will be days when you can spend a whole two hours at a spa taking care of yourself and indulging.
I think that self-care doesn't have to be grand gestures, epic things. But if you're telling yourself each day, this is what I'm doing to take care of myself. This is what I'm doing to engage in self-care. That's all you need to do. You don't have to have an epic schedule or calendar.
Make a list of five simple self-care routines you can fall back on when needed. This is a great thing to keep in your arsenal for when you have those busy days or when it's just, you know what, I don't want to think about self-care today. I just want to find a way to do it. And then you pull from that list.
And again, some simple things that you can do every single day. Meditating going for a walk journaling, taking time to snuggle your dog. If you have a dog, boy, let me tell you. Duke is one of my chief self-care advocates in my home. He is such a great little fella to snuggle up to when I'm feeling like I need a little bit of self-care.
Also, you have heard me talk over the years on the show about the appreciation rant that I do with my friends tomorrow in Janice. Although currently I am not doing them as regularly as I would like to be, but working on that and we call each other each day, actually we leave voice messages. And we share all of the things we appreciate in our life for about three minutes.
And those are great ways to engage in some self-care because you share with a person that you care about, some excellent things that are happening in your world and let them reciprocate. So that is a fantastic way to engage in some self-care or reminder that self-care, doesn't have to cost anything.
You don't have to do the spa-mani-pedi-hooky day, where you spend the entire day at the movies. Although those things are great. There are low-cost free things that you can do to engage in self-care. So don't get caught up in the fact that I can't afford self-care because frankly, you can't afford to have self-care.
And the other thing that's important to remember about self-care is engaging in self-care. Is not selfish. It is not selfish to take care of yourself. It is not selfish to admit that you're pooped and you need a little bit of a break and you're going to indulge yourself. There's nothing at all.
Selfish about that. Going back to my original quote from the start of this episode, you cannot serve from an empty vessel. And that means we have to do. Time for self-care and we have to let ourselves feel good about that. Not feel guilty about it, and we need to let ourselves feel free to engage in self-care when we need it.
And for that, my friends, I'm going to send you off into your Wednesday, reminding you that having a side hustle does not necessarily mean you are hustling all the time. A side hustle is something you do on the side. It should be bringing you joy. It should be making your heart sing and it should be something that's fun.