Hi everybody, this is Cheryl Richardson.
Thanks so much for watching this video.
I'm here with my friend Bob who's
recording the video. Say hi Bob.
Ah, there you go. I wanted to tell you a
little bit about the online web course
that I'm doing with Hay House starting
on February 12th based on my book The
Art of Extreme Self-Care. This past
week I went to my Facebook community and
I asked people to tell me some of the
challenges they're faced with when they
attempt to practice good self-care. So I
also want to answer some of the
questions as a way to kind of give you
more information about the course, too. So
on February 12th I will be launching
this year-long program and we're going
to talk about one very specific act of
self-care you can practice every single
month for 12 months. It's part of the
reason I wrote the book that way. I broke
it up into twelve chapters because it's
so easy to get overwhelmed with all the
things we can do to take care of
ourselves. And I want to
set you up for success and that means
giving you just one simple thing every
single month to do. So that's going to
start on February 12th. I'll be taking
your calls then we'll be talking about
some of the challenges you're faced with.
and then I'm going to prepare you for,
I'm going to prepare you for
spending a year with me. That's what we're
going to do. We're going to spend a year
together taking really good care of you.
So I'm going to go right to the
questions because it's going to help me
to give you more information. Gina on
Facebook said, When I really get honest I
find what stumps me most is being
overwhelmed with all of the self-care I
need to do. And she capitalizes all:
meditate, exercise, prepare healthy foods,
read nourishing books, pampering. Okay
Gina, I'm exhausted just thinking about
that. I find I can pick one and commit to
it but then everything else falls away.
Again, that's one of the reasons we're
taking a whole year and dedicating it to
your self-care. Because really Gina, what
you need to do is just pick one, just one
of them: exercise or meditate or eat well.
And here's the funny thing, when you pick
one, you do two things. Number one: you set
yourself up to succeed because chances
are you'll be consistent with just one
thing. But the other cool thing that happens is
when you pick one act of self-care it
often takes care of all the other stuff.
So for example, if you were to just pick
exercise you'd probably find that you'd
be eating better, your mind would be
calmer, you'd probably
be reading novels because you'd be just
more relaxed and more into enjoying
yourself instead of trying to fix
everything. We get so caught up and
trying to fix everything.
So you need to just go, you need
to focus on one small step at a time and
when you do that there's a really good
chance that you'll begin to make
your self-care a priority. It's really,
really important. As a matter of fact, let
me just say that last April I did
the same thing. I made a decision to pick
one thing that would improve my health
and I chose walking. And I started
walking every day. i scoped out a four-mile
loop in my neighborhood and every
single day I'd go out and I'd walk. And
that one act of self-care did a whole
bunch of things. Yeah, it helped me to
lose weight, it helped me to get in shape,
it made me eat better, it cleared my mind,
it strengthened my relationship with
myself. But it was amazing that one, only
one commitment, it was amazing what it
did in terms of improving the quality of
my life. So I really, I strongly recommend
that you do that. Terry writes: I've spent
most of my life taking care of other
people and I've been a full-time mom for
32 years. Bless you Terry. I don't think about
myself until late on the list. I'm
working at it, but whenever something
comes up my automatic response is to
give up or to help somebody else. I don't
know what to do. Well you know just the other day I was
on my way to a meeting. I had a really
busy day, Terry. And as I was driving in
the car ,my husband Michael called and he
said to me, Hey honey, can you do me a
favor? On your way home from your meeting, could you stop at the pharmacy and pick
up a prescription I have there. And I
went, Oh yeah sure and then I stopped and
I went, you know what? Actually I can't do
that. I've got a really busy day, I have a
lot of things scheduled. And while I
could squeeze it in it would really
stress me out. So can you do me a favor
and pick it up yourself? And he said, Yeah
sure that's fine. He sounded a
little disappointed, I'll be honest with
you. But he said, No, no, no, don't worry
about it. I hung up the phone and I
instantly felt guilty. And I felt guilty
because it's a normal response of
someone who's been trained to be a
caregiver all their life to naturally
want to take care of somebody else. And
when you don't do it, it's just
so easy to feel like, Oh my gosh, I'm
letting this person down. But you know in
that moment I realized what was more
important than Michael's prescription or
doing this errand for my husband, what was more important was me breaking
this habit of making everybody else's
needs a priority over my own. And that's
just a simple little way that we do that.
I'm sure, Terry, you have plenty of
examples like that in your own life and
I just really want to encourage you to
be conscious, at least become aware, self-aware of this habit that you
have to take care of others. You're
already on the right track. I mean you
you already see what's going on here.
It's just a habit and it can be broken,
and it can be broken with grace and love
in a way that really supports your
relationships and most importantly
supports your relationship with yourself.
Okay next question. This is from
Christina:
My biggest obstacle to self-care is
guilt. Welcome aboard Christina. I feel
guilty when I'm taking care of myself
and not my kids or my husband or the
house. Guilt sucks. Okay Christina, this
was probably the most common theme out
of all of the challenges that came
through on Facebook. Lots of people
talked about guilt, so here's your
homework, Christina. I want you to start
doing one thing every day that makes you
feel guilty. I'll say that again. I want
you to practice doing one thing every
single day that makes you feel guilty
and here's why. Guilt, you're never going
to reach a point in your life where you
don't feel guilty and then you can take
care of yourself. Like I said, it's a
normal response to feel guilty when you
start making your needs a priority. What
we want to do is start to desensitize
you to feeling guilty, so here's the goal.
This is so important for everybody to
know. It's not that guilt goes away.
Remember the story I just told you? The
goal is to
shorten the amount of time that you
suffer with guilt. So that with Michael
when he asked me to run that errand, I
felt guilty for like maybe 30 seconds
then I knew what was going on and I let
it go. But there were times in my life
where I would have felt guilty all day. I
would have gone and picked up the
prescription, I would have felt guilty
for a week. I would have felt like I had
to do 10 things to make up for it. Not
anymore.
The goal is to practice doing those
things that evoke that feeling of guilt
so that you can just get used to feeling
it, experiencing it and letting it go. So
you've got your homework, Christina. Okay
next question from Teresa:
Boundaries, my challenge is setting
boundaries with other people. I do very
well alone but my life becomes chaotic
when I get into relationships. I don't
know how to ask for what I need or I
don't know how to tell people when they
say or do something that's inappropriate
especially when it's happening. I wait
and it builds up and then I destroy
relationships. You know I picked
this challenge because that's exactly
what happens to all of us when we don't
speak up for ourselves,
when we don't ask for what we need, when
we don't set limits or boundaries with
somebody who's being inappropriate we
wind up feeling resentful. And most of
the women I have dealt with over the
years live in a state of chronic
resentment. It's not good for your health,
your emotional or physical health. It's
not good for your spiritual health and
it's absolutely not good for your
relationships because most people can
feel a resentful woman or man a mile
away.
It's not pretty and it doesn't evoke, it doesn't encourage intimacy. So
Teresa, there's a whole class that we're
doing in the middle of this
year-long program. There's a whole class
called: Let Me Disappoint You, which
happens to be the most popular chapter
in The Arrt of Extreme Self-Care. And in
that class, I'm going to talk about the
importance of setting boundaries and how
to set boundaries with grace and love. Do
you know that probably the reason you
can't set boundaries is twofold. Number
one, you don't have the language to set
boundaries in a way that leaves you
feeling good about yourself. You haven't
thought about it and planned for it. And
number two,
sometimes we have people in our life who
blindside us, who act in an inappropriate
way. We expect ourselves to be able to
handle it on the spot and when we don't
we beat ourselves up afterwards. I do the
same thing. Listen, I'm a really good
boundary setter and when somebody steps
over my boundaries or criticizes me or
says something inappropriate, especially
in front of other people, I get
completely tongue-tied. But I know how to
walk away, take a deep breath, process
what happened, get clear about what I
need to say and then pick up the phone
or get in front of that person and set
the boundary afterwards. So during the
course we're going to talk about,
boundaries is a big conversation. I'm
very fond of saying that if you were to
dedicate the year just to setting
boundaries, you would not be the same
human being at the end of 12 months
without a doubt. So Teresa, listen. One
little step at a time. Learn, get
comfortable with the word "no." Get
comfortable with the word "stop." Get
comfortable with, You know it's not okay
with me. I love you but that's not okay
with me. Okay Joanne writes: One of my
biggest challenges is going to bed when
I should, instead of fighting it. I picked
this one also because sleep was another
common challenge that people are faced
with. If I don't get a good night's sleep,
I am a bitch, quite frankly. Michael knows
it
to the point where he'll now say to me,
Did you get enough sleep last night
because you're kind of grouchy. Sleep is
a really powerful way of taking good
care of ourselves. And another class that
we'll be talking about is called, The
Power of Rhythm and Routine. One of the
most important routines that we can
practice is going to bed at the same
time and waking up at the same time. Now
not in a neurotic sort of "every single
day" way. But the idea is to,
generally speaking, begin to build this
rhythm so that your body can get
used to going to sleep at the same time
and waking up at the same time. It is my
secret weapon, Joanne, and this is a great
example. If you were to just focus on
this one change and for the next 30 days
decide that I'm going to test it. I'm
going to see how I feel, how my mood
changes, how my physical health changes,
how my eating habits change, how my
relationships change. For every night
for 30 days just decide that you're
going to do your best to go to bed
around the same time and wake up at the
same time. And I'm telling you, you
probably will, you'll just become a
different woman,
you really will. You'll like yourself a
whole lot more. These are some examples
of what we're going to be dealing with
during the year-long course. It's one of
my favorite courses. I think it's one of
my most important courses because it
really does change people's lives. The
first time I ran this course we had over
a thousand people take it. And I still
till this day get email from people
saying, You know what? I am NOT the same
human being ever since I dedicated a
year to my extreme self-care. And that's
what I want for you. I want for you to
commit. It's a small commitment, one class
a month. You practice one way of
taking good care of yourself every day
for 30 days, that's pretty simple in this
day and age. You make that consistent and
I'm telling you you'll feel relief
pretty quickly and you will absolutely
give yourself the gift of living a life
that reflects who you really are. And
you're going to stop, you're going to
stop saying things like, You know at the
end of the day I'm always the one left over without any energy
feeling like everybody else has been
taken care of but me. You deserve to be
taken care of first and that's what I
want for you. So please go to Hay House.com,
look up The Art of Extreme
Self-Care. You can also go to Cheryl
Richardson.com, go to my schedule page,
you'll see a link there and I look
forward to seeing you on February 12th.
Thanks so much for watching the video
and take good care of yourself.
