- Y'all ready to take some notes?
(hip hop music)
I've been seeing a few of
you take notes to my videos
which is awesome, but I really
hope you're sticking around
for the whole video 'cause
I think it hits different.
Anyways, in this day and age
of excessive consumption,
and the recent wave of
self-care and self-development
I feel like there's a common misconception
that self-care starts with a
face mask, with a jade roller,
but I'm here to remind you that
self-care can be and is free
because it first starts
with, guess what, the self.
So today we're gonna talk
about five self-care habits
that cost you nothing.
Five free self-care habits
that you can implement today.
So number one, saying no.
This is something that
I feel like the airlines
were really on something when they said
in an event of an accident or a crash,
when the face masks or the
breathing masks come down,
please put on your face mask
first before helping others.
This is the idea that you
cannot pour from an empty cup.
You cannot pour other people's cup first
before serving yourself.
Saying no is one of these biggest,
most revolutionary acts of self-care.
We often say yes to pretty
much everything and anyone
because we have the fear of missing out,
we are people-pleasers in some way
because we think that I
overextended our time and our energy
we might feel better by giving back
but in the end, we're
honestly just drained
and left to be with
ourselves, feeling empty,
and not having enough energy
to put in the efforts and time
to taking care of ourselves.
Some examples of these could be at work
and answering emails
when it's totally not necessary to do so,
hanging out with people to
the point of exhaustion,
not knowing your own limits,
and a lot of this when we say
yes to everything and everyone
we are actually saying no to ourselves.
It is one of the biggest
active self-betrayal
because we are not honoring
our own time and our own energy
and when you take care of yourself,
you in effect take care
of your community already.
It is actually, in fact, an
act of self-preservation.
Saying no, especially if you're someone
who loves to take care of
people and love to help,
this is something I really,
really struggle with at well.
It can be thought of as
building stronger boundaries.
Now building boundaries is something
that's both beneficial for you
and the party that's
having to live within them
or respect them, I suppose,
because boundary building
is the quickest way
to helping preserve your
relationship with yourself
and also with others.
Everybody has needs,
everybody has desires,
and it's important to
respect and honor your own
before you can even give to others.
One strategy that helps you
build stronger boundaries
is one proposed by the British
economist, Tim Harford,
and he says one trick is to ask yourself
if I had to do it today,
would I agreed to it?
So often, I think that I will
probably want to do this task
or get this dinner or
hanging out with this friend
two weeks from now, a month from now,
but honestly, if I don't
want to do it today,
I probably won't even
want to do it next month
and that's just the reality of things
and that's just being
honest with yourself.
I think that a lot of
us, including myself,
are afraid to say no
or are afraid to set bigger
and stronger boundaries
because we're afraid of offending people,
of them getting upset,
but the truth is the only
people that get upset
about you building boundaries,
are those that benefited
from you not having any.
Also, if someone takes
setting a boundary with you personally,
this is an even bigger sign to
set an even stronger boundary
because people who love
you and respect you
will understand your
needs and your desires
and will want to respect them.
Number two, practicing self-compassion.
Words have weight, words
create your reality.
Many of us, if not all of us,
are our own biggest critics.
I think it's interesting
because many of us
think that we operate or perform best
when treating ourselves with
such unkindness or harshness,
you know, telling
ourselves you're a loser,
you're worthless, you are stupid,
you can't get it together.
But the reality of it is that
this hasn't working for many
of us, if not all of us.
Practicing self-compassion
means talking to ourselves
in a gentle, non-judgmental way.
It's about talking to ourselves
almost the way we would a best friend.
In this book that I recently read
called The Art & Power of Acceptance,
it says Your Guide to Inner Peace
by a licensed psychotherapist.
I actually want to do
a whole video on this,
but she proposes a strategy called ACT
for practicing self-compassion,
and it's something that
I've been truly benefiting
and implementing into my life,
and it's really, really simple.
So A stands for acknowledge,
and this is simply just
acknowledging your feelings,
so you're just gonna say you're feeling X
because a lot of the times
we don't even know what we're feeling,
and it's really important
to acknowledge them.
So then you do C.
C is connect with humanity.
A lot of our problems and a lot our our
despair and hopelessness
kind of stems from the idea
that we're experiencing this alone,
but the truth is so many people
are going through what
we're going through as well.
And then lastly, it is T,
talk kindly to yourself.
So for example, let's
talk about me feeling bad
about eating some really
unhealthy food after the holidays.
I would say Amy, you're
feeling really guilty
and shameful right now.
That's A, acknowledge.
Then we would do C, connect with humanity.
You and a bunch of other people
during the holidays do this,
and a lot of people allow
themselves to have fun,
and eat whatever they
want after the holidays.
Then T is don't worry,
you're going to get back on
track next week or even tomorrow
and it's not that big of a deal.
You have every right to
indulge and have fun,
and don't worry, like everybody
else can relate to this.
So it's essentially just
always following this model,
and honestly it will feel awkward
and uncomfortable at first
to talk so kindly to yourself,
but honestly, I genuinely
feel a lot better
after I do these things.
So I want to do a whole video on this,
but just remember ACT.
and I could give you another example,
so Jamie, you're feeling sad
because your mom said
something mean to you.
C, connect with humanity.
Don't worry,
I'm sure that there are
so many people out there
who are experiencing the
same mom/daughter issues,
and you're not alone in this.
C is the most important
to acknowledge that you
are not alone in this.
And then T, talk kindly.
Don't worry you've been through
so much more in the past,
you're gonna get through this,
you thought you couldn't get
through your heart break,
but you're gonna get through this one time
where you feel sad.
So it's just being
really kind to yourself,
and she even offers to
give yourself a nice hug
or pat on your back after that,
and it's gonna feel weird at first,
but trust me, it does help,
and I think that is something
that I really, really need to focus on
because before I would say
you're worthless for eating so much.
And I don't know, that's
not how my best friend
would talk to me.
It truly might feel a
little weird and awkward
to talk so kindly to yourself
because you're not used to it,
but neurons that fire
together wire together
meaning that if you just
consistently do this,
the habit will be ingrained in your mind
and eventually it will feel authentic.
Kind of like when you smile,
even if you don't mean it,
you start to do actually feel more joyful.
Number three, honoring your feelings.
This is something that
I've really had to learn
throughout the years
because I would often say
I'm too busy to be sad, I don't feel sad
or I would just internalized everything
saying oh, I know that this person
is going through a lot, that
they're having a bad day,
which all very could be true
and so that's why they
speak so unkindly to me.
But something that I'm
truly learning to realize
is that just because you understand
and can empathize with
someone and their trauma,
and their background
doesn't mean that you have to allow
and accept their behavior to you.
And a lot of times, we don't
even know how to process this
because we're not even
processing our own feelings.
Again, this is one of my favorite sayings
that a spiritual thought
leader on YouTube says,
get real about how you
feel so that you can heal.
Candace Van Dell.
I think that so many of us
escaped from our feelings
that we dive ourselves into work
or displace it with a new person,
a new boyfriend, a new
partner, a new friend,
and we're just constantly
running away from our feelings,
but we have to face it head-on,
and we have to honor how we're feeling.
It's not saying I'm overly
sensitive, I'm overly this,
it's just owning up to it, and
owning that you have feelings
and you're human, and that's okay.
Another thing was honoring your feelings
is also speaking up about
how you feel to others.
I think that for me, I
internalize a lot of my feelings
because I understand that a lot of people
are going through things,
and that they might not
mean what they say to me,
but at the end of the day,
it's still not something
that I should allow
because you either say something
and potentially mess up the relationship
or you either say nothing
and potentially mess
up your entire insides.
It's not yours to carry
the way that you feel
or the hurt or the pain,
it's for you to release and talk about it.
Honoring your feelings has to do
with saying how your
feelings have been hurt
openly, honestly and kindly
because people are gonna
respond to you more
when you're coming from
an place of vulnerability
rather than anger or resentment.
This is honoring your feelings
in the best way possible
because truly, a safe
person is confrontable
and you should be confrontable as well.
You should be a safe person to tell.
It's not about being defensive,
it's not about retorting back
with another time that someone hurt you,
it's honestly just being
really, really vulnerable,
and saying this hurt my feelings.
I think that's so many of us
in kind of like alert mode
respond with another nasty remark
or with the other type of sassiness
and that's not honoring your feelings,
it's actually being quite
disingenuous with how you feel
because hurt people
just hurt other people,
so remember to honor your feelings
by talking openly and honestly
and very kindly and gently about them
because at the end of the day,
it's not about having someone hurt you
in return for how much you hurt them,
it's about just acknowledging
that I'm feeling bad
about what someone said to me.
Honoring your feelings is really important
because you can go to the gym,
you can take your vitamins,
you can meditate, you can journal,
but if you don't handle what's going on
in your head and in your heart,
you're still going to be unhealthy.
Number four, doing less.
Currently we live in a do-it-all cultural
where the more you check
off on a to-do list,
the more valuable you are as a person
which seems a little off to me,
and where we also
glamorized over-exhaustion,
being burnt out,
but the truth of the
matter is when you do less,
you can accomplish more,
when you do less,
we focus and prioritize
on what actually matters.
Life is a marathon, it's not a sprint,
it's not how fast we can get there,
it's how long we can last.
Life is about longevity,
it's about sustainability,
and the more that we focus
on doing a bunch of things,
the less we actually accomplish
in that amount of time.
We often think that by doing more
we find ourselves to be more productive,
but being busy does not
equal being productive.
You only need to accomplish
five things or less in a day
because it's not about
how much you can do,
it's the quality and the
investment on how you do things
that matters more.
For a long time I was very
focused on creating a video
each and every week on Mondays,
and I'm still focused on that,
but I'm less harsh on myself,
and less unkind to myself when
I don't meet that deadline.
Because sometimes, I do
need to take a break,
and I remind myself that
it's about a journey,
it's about a marathon, it's not a sprint.
I don't want to have to consistently
make videos every week
and not be able to do it
for the rest of my life
or not be able to show up for
the next you know 20 decades,
whoa, that was really long,
more like 20 years is
what I'm trying to say.
I also think with do-it-all culture
it insinuates that you have to add more
activities into your life to be productive
but sometimes instead
of doing more budgeting,
it's about to spending less money,
it's about spending less
time on consumption.
It's not working out more,
it's just eating less unhealthy foods.
It's not about having to rest more,
it can essentially just
be doing less work,
doing less things that make you tired.
Number five, logging off
and unfollowing people
off social media.
In a world full of choices, I choose me.
Social media has been awesome
because it has created such a huge sense
of community online,
and no doubt, has saved
do many people's lives,
has saved my own life
in finding my own
community on the internet,
but the same time there are so many
negative effects and cons to the internet,
and I will be the first to admit
that I've spent way too much
time scrolling on my phone
and just looking at pictures
and feeling like I need to compare myself,
and comparison breeds discontent.
We often forget that social media
is just a fabricated highlight reel,
it's someone's best moments,
and even at that, maybe
disingenuous or inauthentic.
It might be them at
Disneyland or Coachella,
but it might even be a
really contrived moment,
a fake kiss, a fake laugh,
it's not even something that could be real
even as a highlight moment.
The phone used to be a
break from real life,
but now real life is a
break from the phone,
and I won't go into how
many statistics there are
on how social media is
linked with depression,
anxiety, low self-esteem.
It's something you've already heard,
but I think that a lot of us live
in this victimhood mentality
or this disempowerment
that says that we don't have any power
about what's going on on social media,
but when in fact, we totally do.
As soon as you feel bad about
about scrolling too much,
about watching another video,
about liking another Instagram post,
you have the ability and the free will
to log off, to delete the
app, to get out of that space.
Your digital space is still your space,
and just like a home, you
can uninvite and invite
as many people as you see fit.
It's about curating your
own space on the internet.
If there's content or if
there's someone you don't like,
unfollow them, there's no reason
and no need to have to
keep following people
or have your feed clogged up.
Every time I see an ad,
I tell Instagram it's not
relevant, it's not relevant.
My feed has no ads
because I refuse to be
programmed by advertising,
and even if you don't feel
like that's necessary,
unfollowing someone,
you can mute them, you
can get off your phone,
you can go out, take a
walk, get some fresh air.
The world will move on without you,
without having to see what
everyone else is up to.
More importantly, your value
is not dependent on your likes,
the quality of your photos,
you retweets, your reblogs,
your value is based on your integrity,
your character, and your actions,
and how you show up in this world,
and social media is
just one factor to that.
So log off, unfollow people,
and remember, you have the
power to shut that off.
If it's making you unhappy,
you have every right
to put your phone down
and just go breathe.
All right, those were my
five free self-care habits
or self-care habits that cost you nothing.
Please, don't ever think that
you have to purchase something
to start taking care of yourself
because self-care starts
with you, starts right now,
and please share this video
with anyone you think it might help out,
it would really, really mean a lot to me,
and I will see you guys in my next one.
Bye.
