EP 180: Nurturing Self-Worth and Wellness in a Fast-Paced World

This solo episode welcomes you into a conversation about giving yourself the gift of presence, connecting mind, body, and spirit, and the transformative power of stepping away from life's chaos. With our world often mired in consumerism, especially during the holidays, we delve into the necessity of self-reflection and understanding our individual processes.

Does the rush of the holidays leave you feeling pressured and overwhelmed? We tackle this subject head-on, offering strategies for slowing down, finding clarity, and placing importance on your needs. I'll share my own experience of living with ADHD, and how I've learned to manage procrastination and improve completion by reconnecting with my body. This episode aims to remind you of your value and urge you to prioritize yourself amidst the noise.

We discuss how being truly present can enhance our connections with both ourselves and those around us.  I share useful tips, some of my personal stories and give you resources to help you prioritize self-care, slow down, and truly connect with yourself. This is not just a conversation, but an invitation to evolve and thrive. You don't want to miss this.

Check out my episode with The Deep Life Podcast here:
https://youtu.be/TMvGMdM2D3s?si=9iLpWiomVUaPw-Al

Pick up a copy of my book Finally Thriving or purchase my audiobook here:
https://geni.us/FinallyThriving

Join my Finally Thriving Group Program waitlist here:
https://www.finallythrivingprogram.com/waitlist

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Chapters

• 0:00 Prioritizing Self-Care and Wellness
• 5:37 The Importance of Self-Care and Balance
• 25:55 The Gift of Presence
• 34:59 Tapping Into Childlike Innocence

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to Integrate Yourself. I'm your host, alison Polo, and you can find me at FinallyThrivingProgramcom. And if you want to find my book Finally Thriving, go to Amazon or anywhere you can find books and you can purchase my book there. It's a great gift to give people this time of year if you want to help friends and family members or yourself, which is even better with your own self mastery, mastering your energy, mastering your body and mastering your mind, and what I do is take you through that process of integrating mind, body and spirit so that you can have a sustainable wellness practice that will lead you back home to yourself. And this is going to be so important as we get into the new year. After this time of appreciation and the holidays and the giving and the receiving, it's going to be really important to step into the time of resolution, to be able to give to yourself too. And if you feel like this would be a good gift for friends and family, I would love it if you'd share it with them too.

Speaker 1: 1:16

My group coaching program is called Finally Thriving, the Finally Thriving program. That's the link I gave you at the beginning of the show Finallythrivingprogramcom. You can go there and get on my wait list If you're interested in participating in the next round. We're going to be starting that in January. You will get the registration dates. If you sign up for my wait list as well, you'll get a free Align your Mind mini course. It'll get you started on your path to thriving. It's a lot of the foundational work that we do in the very beginning of the class together. So you'll be one step ahead if you go ahead and sign up for that and as well, you're going to get your free connect with your body, meditation, which I think is so important. Our body is our first level of awareness, our first level of consciousness. It's really the densest part of our soul, in a way. And when we can connect with our body and we can begin to listen to our bodies and messages what it's telling us, we're making space for a self or prioritizing time with our self. This is where the magic happens. So if you can start practicing that with a small meditation every day, that's a big, big deal. Many people don't even get that far. So this is what the practice of prioritizing time with yourself starts with. It's really what you enjoy doing. So if you enjoy meditating, if you enjoy just laying on the floor and doing nothing for 10 minutes. That's fine too. Go get out in nature, take a walk.

Speaker 1: 2:51

These are all the things we talk about in the class, as well as how you can connect with your body to create a sustainable wellness practice, something that you find joy in, that you'll never get tired of, that you don't have to motivate yourself to do something. That's very joyful and it fulfills you. It has purpose in your life to take care of yourself. You understand the value of that and that's what we move toward in that finally thriving program together, and it's a 12 week course and coaching program. It's going to help you tap into your intuition. It's going to help you create a very sustainable wellness practice. That's just right for you and it's something that will always bring you back to you, and so that's where we're heading. That's the theme of this month is really making space for yourself. It's always a theme for the things I teach. I always teach people how to do that in various ways, and our wellness practice can be one of those things. So if you'd like to be a part of that, head over to the link for the wait list and you can join. You'll get the registration dates and you'll be on my list to know what to do next and to get all the freebies to, which is very exciting, and so I hope you enjoy that, as always.

Speaker 1: 4:11

Thanks so much for tuning in everybody. I really appreciate you so much. I don't know if I say that enough. You guys are amazing. I really love my listeners and you know I just want to be here for you as much as I possibly can because you know, as we move into more craziness in the outside world, we just really need something to speak to us, to go and remind us really to go within, like this is the topic of today's show is, um, you know, giving yourself the gift of presence, and we're going to get into that a little bit today in various, various perspectives here, and I've shared on a few shows, a few other podcasts lately. If you check out the deep life podcast, I've just done an episode with them. That was really really fun. They're just such a good group of Lisa and Dan. They just I just love them so much. They're wonderful people and I got to share some things that I've been going through this summer, this past summer and fall. I just really had to take a break because, uh, you know, you go, go, go and then eventually you've got to just say wait a minute, what, what do you know? Where am I in all of this? And this is really what I was doing Another round of that.

Speaker 1: 5:37

I think we just go through layers of that. I don't think it ever stops. I think we have to continue to come back to ourselves and take that space and really reevaluate our lives, and that's what a lot of times this time of year is all about. We get to that resolution and we're like oh, I haven't even thought about that, I haven't even spent enough time or given myself enough space to even consider how I want to do this, how I want to do my life. So what I invite you to do this month is to start making space for yourself, to get to know yourself better, to get to feel your own energy, to understand your own perspective, your own process, because when we're caught up in the holidays and which is a beautiful time we're giving, we're receiving. You know, a lot of times we are pretty caught up in what people's judgments are of us, like how we show up or what kind of gifts we're gonna be giving and how that's gonna be received and the judgment around all of that, and it's like really a lot of pressure around showing up a certain way for other people. And so what I would consider is just to see okay, maybe I could do it a little differently this year. How can I do this? And I've talked to a few people few clients about this and for many people it really stresses them out.

Speaker 1: 7:17

I mean, we can all relate to this, the running around. Initially it feels really good, it's like exciting, it's like, oh my God, the holidays, this is great. But we get really caught up in consumerism. We get caught up in the idea of consuming, even more so during this time of year than any other time. We're kind of always caught up in consumerism to some extent because we've been trained that way, but this time of year even more so than ever.

Speaker 1: 7:44

But what I've talked to a few of my clients about is they're saying this just doesn't feel right anymore, like I really don't want to go through this again this year. I wanna try something different. I wanna see what it feels like to maybe just get one gift for each person. That might be right for them, not like 10 for each person, or we're just gonna spend time together. This year we're gonna do something different. We're gonna sing together, we're gonna gather and eat together, instead of making it all about the presence and I love presents and I love receiving gifts and if it's creating stress, if you're feeling like it's an obligation to step into that consumer mode, then this is where I'm saying, like, think about that, consider and feel into it. Even, what does that feel like for you? Do you feel like doing that again? So, with that, it's important for us to make space for ourselves within all of this, so that we can step into the month and enjoy it while we're here, because that's the point right. We wanna enjoy our family, we wanna enjoy our friends, we wanna enjoy this downtime, because it is, in a way, a downtime, but we get really busy and then it doesn't become downtime anymore. So, within that, how can you just slow down a bit and take time for yourself? So I'm gonna give you some tips today. I'm gonna give you some of my recommendations and what I've done, because I've had to do this.

Speaker 1: 9:37

Over the years, I've struggled with ADHD, which is, of course, a diagnosis. It's not an identity. I have not identified with it. I just know that it exists within me, because and that's really important to differentiate, because if we identify with something, then we kind of in my experience, I become a victim to it. So, yes, I've experienced my brain functioning that way. But is that who I am? Do I make excuses or blame something else for that being the case? No, what I do is I work with that, I work with it. So I do that. I realize that I have a different process in life. I honor that process, which is a way of honoring myself and then move forward with the action that it takes to do that. And sometimes it's not always great, you know. Sometimes it doesn't work out great, sometimes it works out great. So it's going through those stages of finding out what your process is in life and doing that. So that's what I've been doing.

Speaker 1: 10:49

And I bring up ADHD because, in a way, as an example of what I've had to do, getting back into my body has helped me so much with that, like learning my own process. It grounds me, gets me out of my head, my thinking mind, because my thinking brain can just go all over the place with so many ideas. You know, I'm really good at picking up ideas from other people, but then eventually, I have to come back around and see okay, where am I in all this? And many of us are experiencing that. Many of us struggle with that because now we have social media, we have all kinds of media outlets that we're influenced by. We're influenced by friends sending you posts and all these kinds of things, and your own perception is interrupted many times during the day. So that's why it's even more important to make the time for yourself to get clear on where you are, and so, with ADHD, I've had to.

Speaker 1: 11:56

You know, as being an entrepreneur, a coach, a mother over the years, a podcaster, a content creator, an author. You know I've done a lot of projects. I've now gotten into music, and the biggest thing for me is or the two biggest challenges, I would say, would be completion and procrastination. Right, so I do a lot of procrastination, and I would do that with myself. I would abandon myself, I would procrastinate, I would put off the time that I needed to be with myself and I would put other people in front of me, and that would include family, that would include clients, because I was putting the importance on others before myself and so, therefore, I wasn't taking care of myself in the way I needed to. I was depleting myself, depleting my energy, depleting my resources and, in that too, not giving myself the interest, the time and attention that I needed to grow as well. So I wasn't filling my cup, I was filling other people's cups until I was completely empty.

Speaker 1: 13:18

And I say this to just give you some perspective here. I'm not saying that being of service to other people and only serving the self is the way to go either. I truly believe in the act of service. I have always been about helping other people. That has been my main objective and my purpose throughout most of my adult life. I've always wanted to help people, and that's been the driving force and the motivation for me to do what I do. It's not even about making tons of money. It's more about being of service to people and being here to help, and I tried my best over the years to be able to step up to that, to plate with whatever people needed, whatever I thought was the most important, and so that's what I've done throughout the years. So that's a beautiful thing, right?

Speaker 1: 14:29

But even when you're doing that, you still have to honor yourself, because if you're not doing that, then you're not actually creating a good service for other people. You're also not the best role model for that for both your kids, for your students, for your clients, those kinds of things. When we put ourselves first in that way, then we're better able to take responsibility on all levels of our life, and that means that you are responsible for you and no one else takes that burden right, so you're not projecting that burden onto other people. And so victim mentality is talked about a lot right now, and this is a way that it also presents itself. But also we can be the saviors. We can try to save everybody. We can even be the perpetrators, the person who's the narcissist, or the person who creates the chaos or the problem, and we've all been all of those things. You know, and that's okay.

Speaker 1: 15:45

But all I'm saying is like look and see where you need more balance in your life. Where does it need to be harmonized? Are you giving yourself enough, or are you just showing up for other people and then abandoning yourself? So if your cup is overflowing, you're gonna be able to give more than enough to other people, but if it's not, then you're gonna be giving people what you don't have, and that's actually not serving anybody. So now, with that point going, I wanted to just so we could also add people pleasing into the mix. Fitting in getting people's approval, all these things are needs that you can meet yourself and then from there you get the support that you need from others because you've met those basic needs for yourself.

Speaker 1: 16:49

But again, until you start diving into this and really taking the space for yourself, you're not gonna ever really know what's there. And it's okay if you don't know what's there. That's part of the process. But we gotta start somewhere, and where we start is looking at our calendar. My first tip is look at your calendar and see how much space you have for yourself. On that calendar you have space for you. Do you have time where you can just be by yourself? That's the first thing to look at. I don't know about you, but I definitely will not do something if it's not on my calendar, mainly because I just forget about it.

Speaker 1: 17:35

So if we wanna schedule time for ourselves whether it's a wellness practice, whether it's just meditation, whether it's a walk in nature schedule that for yourself, put it on your schedule. I highly recommend. I know it sounds silly, I know it sounds so practical, but it really does work and then take off anything on your schedule that you don't need. Is it something that you're putting on? Because, from my experience, I put a lot of things on because I wanted to connect with people. I would over connect, do so much where I was connecting with everybody else and not really taking the time to connect with myself or giving myself that space, even throughout the day, to just process. Right, because we do so much through the day, we come across so many people, we take on other people's thoughts, a lot gets projected on us. We don't give ourselves enough time to process that. So this is the time to do it, and so, with that, the next tip would be to start taking action. So once you've scheduled that time for yourself, you're showing you that you matter to you and you've made that a priority.

Speaker 1: 19:07

Go ahead and do something that you really feel like is nourishing for you. You know, put in the, put a stretching session in there and stretch your body. See how it feels, see if you can be totally present for that. If you have a hard time meditating, go take a walk out in nature. Listen to the sounds around you, you know. So these are some things. It's just basic things we can do.

Speaker 1: 21:57

It doesn't have to be a big spiritual practice, it doesn't have to be anything that is, you know, planned so much. You just can use that time to do with whatever you'd like to. It could just be Folding clothes, washing dishes. You're just by yourself, you are processing, could be making an art project, it could be doing a weightlifting workout, it could be sitting down Having a nice meal and just being present with it. It's really the point here is for us to be able to feel. Feel what we're not feeling, feel your own energy.

Speaker 1: 22:51

One thing I love to do is I'm sure you guys know I've talked about this a bunch of times is the voice work. I Love to do a vocal toning session. I love to hear my own voice and really get familiar with that sound, because that is what really crowns me, to know that, wow, okay, this is me, this is what I sound like. There's something deeply healing about that. So I Will say also, one other thing to think about is one thing that's been coming to mind a bunch lately is Shoes.

Speaker 1: 23:35

You know, think about your feet, or your feet Feeling good. Are they able, just practically speaking, or your toes able, to spread, or are they crunched up in a shoe most of the time? Do you feel like your feet hurt or are you allowing them to move over the ground? Are you taking your shoes off? Do you have shoes that will let your toes spread out? How big is the soul of your, of your shoe? Is it really far from the ground? Are you closer to the ground? We do Ground ourselves by electromagnetic, magnetically connecting to the earth. So the further away our foot is from the earth on a regular basis, the less grounding we have. So it's important to be able to ground yourself through your feet, feel the ground on your feet, feel your feet move. The bones in your feet should move pretty well, and you can do an ankle stretch as well for the feet to help them move better. And this is this is really a foundational, no pun intended, way to connect with yourself.

Speaker 1: 24:53

So I want to get into connection now and why we could be so anxious, especially this time of year, right, because we're just Most of us and I know, I've talked to people and I have experienced this myself many times, I still experience it we're constantly trying to find that connection right that we deeply, deeply desire and we're fine. We're looking for it outside of ourselves. We're looking for it through other people, we're looking for it through other experiences, but we haven't really taken the time, the interests or the attention to go within ourselves. So this is where the problem lies when the anxiety comes up, when you haven't actually given yourself that pure presence, it's going to be very hard for you to do that for other people If you can't do it for yourself first.

Speaker 1: 25:55

Now, I definitely felt challenged by this when I was a young mother, because my parents really had a hard time being able to be present with me. So therefore, I was a really challenged, a challenged parent to be present with my own kids when they were little, even though I wasn't working. I took off three years of work and and just decided Excuse me, just decided to be a stay-at-home mom and it was the best thing. I really loved it. It was like the really the best job I've ever had. In some ways. I enjoyed it so much and I'm very grateful that I got to do that. And I do remember having a hard time just doing nothing and just sitting on the floor with them and not Not doing anything, just being present with them. That was my biggest challenge, and now I know why because I wasn't getting comfortable With being alone with myself and it and you know that's a whole other topic, right?

Speaker 1: 27:08

Are they being alone? We get scared to be alone because we think, oh my god, that's a fear. That was a fear for me, but what I realized Was that I actually do enjoy being alone and I enjoy connecting with other people too. So if these two things can be true at once, then where's the fear there? So when you start to experience yourself and spend time what I call a wellness state with yourself, that's preparing you to get more comfortable being alone, being with your own energy, which we're never really alone, cause if you think about the law of one and how we're connected to everything and everybody, we're just under the impression that we're not, and that's a whole, nother topic in itself.

Speaker 1: 28:15

But that all leads back to the connection aspect that I've been talking about is we have been severed from our connection with source, with God, whatever you want to call it, it's all the same the universe, and that is really the connection to abundance, that's connection to unlimited potential and energy. But in this realm of reality that we're in, we have been taught that. Nope, there's a finite amount of energy. There's a finite amount of love, even within religion like no offense to any of my listeners that are religious, there's nothing wrong with that but even in religion, there is something that I call the divinity scarcity, where you are led to believe that you are not the source. You don't have that connection to God within you. It's outside of you. You're supposed to seek it outside of you and, as I talked to one of my guests, jason Picard, the last episode if you listen to that, we did get into how religion is a good stepping stone for spirituality, like for people.

Speaker 1: 29:34

I need that, many of us need that, to be able to begin to connect that way with our own soul, and that's okay. So I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. I'm just saying that this is something to like start to recognize, to become aware of, because this will be leading up to, ultimately, what your true connection is, and that is with yourself, because you're powerful, you have a lot of potential and it's infinite, and when you can make yourself the practice, you start to learn this. You're not only learn it, you experience it, and that is what's most important is that we begin to feel that, and I have this topic today about giving yourself the gift of presence and what that leads to is connection, and we can talk about this all day, but really the magic is when you experience it. So it's something that you have to follow through with to be able to really know what that's like.

Speaker 1: 30:58

And we're not attaining some goal. It's not a goal-oriented thing. It's just you giving yourself that time, attention and love that you so crave from everybody else. And what will happen as a result of that is you're gonna see that unfold in your life more and more. Now you may see some challenges come up within that too. As you open up, you may see more of that. Those denser, older emotions come through, and that may feel not great, but there's a reason you're feeling it. There's a reason it's coming through is because you are needing to feel it so that that dissipates the hold it has on you, and this is how it works.

Speaker 1: 31:50

So giving yourself the gift of presence is the best gift that you could give anybody, including yourself. So what that does is it makes you the light, the role model for everybody else. They see you doing that. They're like, wow. They don't even maybe have to see it. They just feel it, they know it because your energy has changed and it's all about energy mastery Mastering your own energy before you try to control other people, or don't control other people, because we all know that doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 32:37

So there's many ways that you can spend time with yourself, and I have a lot of those techniques and practices that are joyful and fun in my program, the Finally Thriving program. You can check out my book if you wanna dive deeper into that or understand the things that I teach my clients and my students, and just carve out time for yourself this season and see how it feels. If anything, just try something different. Right, you can't go wrong there. Yeah, so I mean we're heading into a different time. We're heading into 2024 is gonna be, I think, pretty amazing, but we have to slow down so that we can enjoy that. And slowing down doesn't mean you're giving up. It just means that you are choosing you, maybe for the first time.

Speaker 1: 33:38

So congratulations and thank you so much for listening. I love you guys so much and I hope you got so much out of today's show. I really felt like I needed to share that from my heart today. That's something that I've been going through and we're all struggling. We're all seeing these challenges that are in our outside world, but really the most powerful thing you can do is come back home to yourself. So if you wanna learn more about how to do that, I can definitely help you. Check out my book. I've also got some audio books, both on Audible if you're a member of that, and Spotify if you have that premium account, and you can find my book on Amazon. So thank you all so much, sending you all so much love, and I'm looking forward to talking to you again soon. Take care and I'll see you guys again tomorrow through Audible.

Speaker 1: 35:00

Yes, that's fairly new to many of us. We have to connect with our childlike innocence and curiosity to tap into our true essence. This innocence is in each and every one of us. We all have the ability to tap into this pure innocence anytime we'd like. It's our natural state and this is ultimately the game to play. If you can see this in yourself, you can begin to see it in others. It brings an entirely new level of compassion to the mix and a way to bridge the gap between what's blocking us from loving each other, experiencing the beauty of our lives, knowing true bliss and, ultimately, loving ourselves, regaining the innocence within ourselves, freeze us from suffering. We are perfect, just the way we are.