Self Supportive Living

[Intro] Hello, and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm your host, Corinne Powell, and I'm the owner of Change Radically. 

In this space, we'll talk all things inner wellness, and parenting will certainly come up too, because I'm a mom to four kids, so parenting is a huge part of my life. This space is designed for safety. Your inner child is welcome. Your past self is invited to listen as well. 

And no matter what type of day you're having, I want you to know I'm glad to be with you. I live out of vulnerability and transparency, so come and be. Be yourself. Be messy. Invite a friend, and please stay a while. Keep coming back. I want you around. Now, let's jump into today's episode. 

Hello there. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm so excited to be back with you, season seven of Empowered to Thrive! And it's been a long time since I've been sitting here chatting with you and not conversing with a guest. And I'm so excited for season seven. I do have some guests lined up, and they're phenomenal individuals. They're going to all be speaking about topics that are relevant to the healing journey. 

I know this last season, we varied some of the topics, and I hope that you found it helpful, that you were able to consider some of the things that were talked about, that were slightly different than what we normally talk about here. 

I'm really grateful to all the guests who were willing to come on and share their knowledge and their insights with us. And I am ready to delve into more of the healing journey with you. So let's jump into it. 

We're here at a new year, and any time is a wonderful time to start supporting ourselves more, but sometimes there's an extra sense of motivation at the beginning of a new year. And we're going to use that. We're just going to utilize any extra that might be there for you, and we'll take it and run with it. 

But as you know, I'm here for much longer than the start of the new year. And I can be the person you fall back on when you're like, “Oh, man, I was cultivating change, and something happened, and I fell off the bandwagon, but I want to get back on”.

Hey, I'm here for you without shame, ready to support you. So let's talk about self-supportive living. I am just wrapping up an event that was going on, and you may have seen the promotions about it. You may have even considered coming. Maybe you did join. We're talking all about how we can support ourselves in life and how that's different than self-sufficient living.

Self-sufficient living has that vibe of, I don't need anybody else. Maybe we've been burned a few too many times. Maybe there have been people that have hurt us, and we faced rejection. And the pain of it has made us turn inward and figure out, “how can I just manage without other people?” I fully understand that. 

I used to be that person and sometimes I still gravitate towards that, figuring out how I can do it myself. Not wanting to ask other people. And sometimes it's because I don't want to hear them say they're not going to be there for me because the pain of that hurts. Sometimes it's because I don't think I deserve to have their help. I figure if I can manage it on my own, it's probably better for them.

There are so many things that could play into why we might be living self-sufficiently. But that's different. So let's talk about: what can we do to support ourselves? What can you and I do to actually invite other people to come alongside us and help us out? 

Self-supportive living is living connected to ourselves. It's living connected to others. There are a lot of components to it. I have a workbook that I've designed for you that touches on this topic and gives you a place for journaling and offers you journal prompts and questions to consider. It's an easy $10, so if you want to pick that up, you can go to changeradically.com/shop, and you can find that in several other workbooks there as well. 

But basically, some of the main themes in that workbook are what we're going to talk about today because it's so important to practice self-care and self-compassion. And I'm not talking about the self-care of going and getting a pedicure, getting your haircut. Those are fine things. But I'm talking about learning how to actually challenge the voice in our head, the stories we're telling ourself. To be willing to consider, am I loving myself well? Do I think kindly of myself? Do I speak kindly of myself? Do I actually seek out the help that's available to me? Or am I just trying to figure out how to do it on my own? 

Self-compassion is making a mistake and recognizing, “I don't need to bully or beat myself up”. Everybody makes mistakes. We're allowed to make mistakes. We're trying to learn as we go. And it's okay to make a mistake.

Are there certain situations that are life or death, and we don't want to make the mistake because someone's life is in our hands? Of course. But I'm not talking about those situations. There are many situations that are not at all that. And we bully ourselves. And we beat ourselves up when we make the slightest mistake or when somebody criticizes us and says, you could have done that better.

Well, the point isn't to do it perfectly. Give yourself permission to make mistakes. Because if you've been conditioned to think doing life perfectly is the goal, then I want to invite you to this restful place that actually changes that scenario and says, what if it's not? What if perfection isn't the goal?

I'm not saying you shouldn't try your best or that you shouldn't be a responsible hard worker. It's a lot more than that. It's a lot deeper than that when we say we have to be perfect. Oftentimes, it's because we don't want to feel the criticism, the judgment, the disappointment of someone looking on.

It might be because you had a parental figure or other grown-up in your life when you were a child who really set the bar high and didn't accept anything other than perfection. If that's the case, of course, you're going to be conditioned to think there's no other way.

You're either going to say, screw it, or you're going to work really hard and strive really hard to meet that bar, to measure up. So what can we do to start supporting ourselves better? A part of it is really just making sure we're meeting our practical needs. Self-care sometimes looks like hydrating enough, getting enough water, making sure you fed yourself throughout the day, making sure you're getting the rest you need. 

There are a lot of people who are not sleeping enough, who are not resting enough, who are either tuning out and disconnecting, like vegging out in front of a TV or on social media, or sometimes we're just not even aware of what we do need, what our body should be getting. 

You might be feeling like, I need to work hard. I need to make enough money to live a comfortable life. I need to get the next promotion. And all of that could be well and fine, but if it's at the expense of your health if it's at the expense of your physical, your mental, your emotional wellbeing, then I pose the question, is it worth it?

When all is said and done, what will matter? I know personally, I want to have a body that feels well. I want to be regulated emotionally. I want to be able to show up as a mom to my children who's able to interact with them in a loving, kind way. Not frazzled, not short-tempered, not on edge, irritable, nitpicky. I can be that person, and a lot of times it's easy to be that person if I'm tired, if I'm hungry, if I haven't hydrated enough. 

So I bring up these really simple, basic needs because we need to consider, are we doing that enough for ourselves? And if you've got that under wraps, kudos, I'm so glad. So what else is it that you need? Do you need to create more space and time for play and fun? I know we're adults talking to each other here, but that's the thing. Play and fun shouldn't be left behind when we're no longer what is considered a child. We still need those elements in our life and I'm talking about good, clean fun, not just being able to go to the bar and get drunk enough that you feel loose and you forget about your worries and your cares, or other recreational activities that we think of as the adult type of fun.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the good, clean fun of playing, of moving your body in a way that's actually rejuvenating and energizing. For you, that might be riding a bike. That might be skateboarding. That might be roller skating. It might be running. It might be hiking.

Let's consider what is it that we need to do? What is our body asking of us? How can we support it? And how can we do the things that perhaps we used to do or we never did because we never actually created a space to discover? Like some of us never figured out what we even enjoy.

If you were a parentified child and you grew up in a home where your parental figures depended on you and needed you, then you may not have even found what you'd enjoy doing as a child or as a teenager, let alone now as an adult. So go ahead and start to get curious and discover what lights you up, what brings you pleasure. And it might not initially. So give it time and try out different activities, and see what's fun for you. 

Also, something that you've heard me talk about before that we're always going to go back to is giving attention to our inner child. Because that little kid we used to be still lives on in us today. And that little kid has needs, needs that weren't met at some point in their developmental years and you'll be feeling the effect of that until you give yourself the attention that you deserve. 

So I'm going to leave the depth of that topic for another episode. Because I do want to touch on how we can recognize if our inner child is actually needing attention. And then what are ways, practical ways, we can go about meeting that younger part of ourselves. 

So let's circle back real quick and I didn’t say it from the beginning, but the foundational element for all of this is this piece of conscious living, becoming mindful and aware. And we've alluded to it by saying like, get curious, discover what do you need? What do you need for your daily practices? What do you need for your life at large? What do you need to start doing? Or what do you need to stop doing? And how can you support yourself? 

But that's a part of conscious living. That's actually recognizing, like getting curious and recognizing what's going on in the subconscious level. What's playing in into the decisions you're making or the decisions you aren't making that you wish you were? And what are you going to do about it? It's necessary to take action if you want to create change. If you want to live a self-supportive life. You're going to have to create change. And change is something that sometimes we gravitate away from. And if that's the case for you, then again, sit in some stillness and just contemplate why that might be. 

You don't have to figure it out, but it's worth asking the question. It's worth getting curious. And then if you're like myself and you run after change and you say, I want that life. I will go after that life. Somebody said it's possible and I believe it. Then hey, let's do it. Let's get curious. Let's start noticing and let's start meeting ourselves in these places that we need it. 

There's a lot more to talk about as far as how can we grow in self-compassion, how can we grow? How can we grow in self-care? And that comes down to how we view ourselves and if we actually even have a base of self-love. Some of us have learned to be the critic and the bully towards ourself, and we haven't learned how to love ourselves well.

So again, we're going to talk more about that in a separate episode, but I hope you have a little bit of food for thought here. And I especially hope that you do something with what you're hearing.

You know that's what I'm all about. So we'll be back next week to continue this conversation. And between now and then, if you want to join a group coaching session that I'm offering, it'll be coming up this Tuesday evening at 7h15 Eastern time on the 16th of January. And we usually run about 75 minutes till 8.30 PM.

It's held over Zoom so that we have a private way to interact with each other. And you can come with your camera on or your camera off. You can ask questions or share feedback, or you can just stay quietly and listen. 

I'll be teaching some, and then there's always space for the participants to speak up and share or ask their questions. Sometimes I'm even able to do a little bit of one-on-one coaching, work with whoever it is that's interested in that, and then we all sit and observe that because we're always able to learn from someone else's experiences.

Like a lot of times we actually have experienced similar things and we felt common emotions. And so when we talk about it in a group setting, we actually identify with each other a lot more than we realize. So what I might say to one person may well feel relevant to you as well. But say you're interested in this.

And you can't show up, or you don't feel comfortable showing up to the live event on the 16th. If you've registered, you'll get a copy of the replay. So you can go back and watch that at your convenience. All of this is available to you for only $25. So just go to changeradically.com and you can sign yourself up right there and there's also a link in the show notes for you. 

I'm glad to be with you. So excited for what's coming. And excited to be with you. And excited for what we've talked about today. So if you want to connect with me between now and then, shoot me an email, otherwise I'll see you here next week. 

[Ending] Here we are. We've come to the end of another episode. Sit back and reflect on what you heard. What's the one thing that resonates with you that you can take away and do something with? Let's not just listen. Let's listen and take action. Now action may look very different for us. But it's not. But it's doing something with what we hear. 

I hope that you'll share today's episode with a friend that you think would also enjoy it. And please come back next week. I hope that you have a fabulous week and that you remember when you pillow your head at night, when you're going through your days, that who you are is good. And I'm glad that you're alive.