How do you take time for yourself without feeling guilty?

[Intro] Hello, welcome to Empowered to Thrive. Thank you for taking time out to listen to today's episode. I'm happy to have you here with me and excited for these next 15 minutes we'll have together.

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Let's take a deep breath. We all carry our own stressors and it is worth pausing for a moment to remember we deserve that. We deserve rest. We deserve to do nothing. We deserve to take breaks. So how are you doing today? How's your week been going? A lot can happen in a week, can't it? When you think about resting, is that something that's easy for you? Or do you feel that you have to check off a certain number of items on your to-do list before you can take a break? 

What about if somebody comes through the door and you're sitting on the couch not doing anything? Do you automatically feel like you need to get up and start to get busy? Do you worry that they're going to reprimand you or that you have to defend yourself and say, I've been so busy all day. This is the first time I had a chance to sit down. I’m exhausted. What was it like for you being a kid growing up, taking a break, being found doing nothing? How did your caregivers respond? What did you see from them? Did they take breaks? How did they use their time? 

Asking yourself these questions and taking some time to reflect and notice what comes up might be very insightful as you're going about figuring out more of yourself, changing patterns. Maybe you want to get better at being able to take breaks and not have so much going on in your schedule. That's where I'm at. I know I'm not alone in this. I used to be extremely busy. I would have no break in my day. If I ran late for one appointment, I was late for the rest of it because everything was stacked so closely together.

I've gotten so good over the years at keeping my schedule sparse and not doing that much. Compared to how many things other people do. I don't do much at all. Busy I am, my days are full. But my kids, they're like in one extracurricular activity purposely because we don't want to be running them around every night of the week as it is. Three nights of the week, my children have something going and we have other things going other nights of the week. Now we aren't required to be at those other things, but they're optional. So we always know there's something we could do. It kind of looms over you. And even if you enjoy these things, they're still taking your time. Of course, we have work. The kids have school. We have the chores. We have appointments. We have relationships we want to keep up. So getting together with friends and family, birthdays, holidays, there's a lot that happens in life. 

If you take inventory of it, I'm sure your time is really packed as well. Are you happy with how it is? Do you like the schedule you're keeping? Because if you want it to change, you can change it. It doesn't have to be this way. Yeah, it'll take some effort. You'll have to be intentional. You'll probably have to get some outside support, but you can do it. For myself, I'm being drawn into a season where I'm really needing to put the brakes on some things that I've been going strong in for a while, but it feels right. I can't say I understand it all, but it feels like the exact thing I'm supposed to do right now.

So what is it for you? Where are you feeling pulled? Now I understand there might be a conflict, an inner conflict that you might feel like, but I should say yes to these things. Sometimes we're drawn or pulled to the busier lifestyle because of our own trauma. When you slow down, you actually have to confront more of your inner world. Sometimes people have a hard time falling asleep at night because we've been so busy throughout the day.  We've been so preoccupied, so disconnected from ourselves that all of a sudden we lay in bed and everything floods our mind. Everything floods our body. We don't know what to do with it. 

Really it's time to check in and to say, what can I do throughout the day to support myself so it doesn't all need to flood me when I lay down at night? And if you're afraid of slowing down because you're not sure what's going to show up, what's going to come up, if you're afraid of looking at your past because you don't know what that's going to mean and how difficult it's going to be to emotionally handle what you have to face, consider how your present life is. 

Because friend, you're already facing a lot. You're putting a lot of energy into suppressing and repressing and keeping everything down and at bay. When it bubbles to the surface and then we process through it, it actually gets easier on the other side. So often we don't know the challenge of the life we're presently living because it's always been that way. It's what we've ever known. We just think to deal with things might be worse when really to deal with things brings resolution, brings peace, brings healing and hope. 

My life is not without challenges, not without stressors. It's difficult, but it's so much better. So much lighter, so much easier than it used to be because of all the inner work I've done. We go through seasons. There are times where we will be reminded of how our life used to be. We'll feel it afresh. And when that happens, it's I feel like it's usually because another layer of healing is happening because we're being enlightened and woke up to something else.

And then we process through that and we come out even more refreshed on the other side. But in the middle of that, when I realized, oh my goodness, I'm touching in with how my reality used to be 24-7 and this is now just me touching in with it for a short time and it feels hard and I feel such gratitude at that moment because I realize how difficult it used to be and I'm grateful that it's not difficult all the time to that severity. There's a lot of gifts in life, but it's up to us to see them, to look for them. Sometimes we can't see them yet because we're in too much pain. There's too much grief and heartache. That's okay.

But will you stay in that place or will you allow yourself when it's time to move through it and to come out of it? You don't have to rush the process, but is there a willingness within you? Here's my challenge to you. Start noticing how often you allow yourself to rest. How often you plug in times for relaxation and self-care.

How often you leave space in your schedule for nothing. And what do you do with that nothing? Start to notice if you are sitting down on the couch and somebody comes in the door, what do you feel in your body? How do you immediately respond? Do you start in other times to justify when you are going to rest or take a break? Do you have to justify when you say no to something and you turn down plans? Just take notice of these things, kind of gathering that data, discovering more about yourself. And then through that, you can create change. You can start to create some space in your calendar for nothing.  

You can start when someone comes in the door and you're sitting on the couch to resist the urge to get up, to let your body know it's safe, it's okay. I'm an adult. I'm allowed to relax. If anyone says anything, I'm here to support myself. I don't have to defend myself. And just allow your body to relax back into itself instead of that immediate response to get out of it, to get away from it, to disconnect from it. Ever so gradually, gently and lovingly, with so much compassion.  

There's a good reason you have the response you do. You needed it at some point in your life. You learned that it was the way to respond. But now it's different. Now you're a grown-up and you get to choose the lifestyle you're going to keep, the people you're going to spend time around. You get to decide how much is going to be on your calendar and how you're going to raise your children. Yes, they might want to do four things during the week. But you know what? It doesn't mean that you have to say yes to that. It doesn't mean that's the lifestyle you have to keep. 

So what is the one thing you can pull from today's conversation and do something with it? Small and gradual is the way to sustainable change. I'm right there in it with you, friend. I am doing it alongside you. I am coming out of the old patterns, creating new ones, creating a lifestyle that is best for me, aligns with my values and supports the dreams that I have. And doing it with my family in consideration, but also myself. Because if you're like me, we don't consider ourselves enough. We think about everybody else, what they're going to need, how we can support and help them, what we can say yes or no to in order to make it easier, better for them. And we must start to consider ourselves as well. 

[Outro] So cheers to radical change and to coming alongside ourself as the best friend we've always needed, the kind, loving parental voice that we might not have had. The one who comes alongside and says, how are you doing? I want to know. I'm not afraid of whatever you say. And I sincerely care. They don't have to have the answers. Just knowing someone's there, knowing someone cares, knowing we can say whatever it is that we need to without repercussion makes all the difference. 

So much love to you. And I hope to see you back here next week.