In late August, I’ll be doing a presentation on productivity and time management for Gayle’s current student cohort. Most of you who are reading this know Gayle already, but for those who don’t, she’s my bestie and has been a steadying force in my life for more years than either of us will admit to.
Some of that presentation is just standard stuff I always talk to students about. Use a calendar, keep a list of projects and tasks, schedule what’s important. Usual productivity and time management stuff. But, I’ve been thinking that I need to add a talk about self-care to my normal spiel.
This morning, I got to take my four-legged friend Hugo for a walk. Hugo belongs to friends but he is staying with me while they are enjoying some time away. The photo is from his last visit with me. Since my Peloton buds have talked me into doing not one, but two different and very complicated challenges to end the summer, every mile counts right now. So, while Hugo and I were walking I put a 20 minute fun walk by Robin Arzon on. The title of today’s article, came from Robin in that walk. She always has great lines that I love to incorporate into my arsenal of great phrases.
After hearing Robin say this, I decided this is the central theme I want to share with Gayle’s students. I thought I’d test the bullets around the theme with all of you.
What would you add to the message for new traditional age college students? What did I get wrong?
Self care isn’t what advertisers would have you believe
Manicures, spa treatments, and expensive gym/fitness memberships are all well and good. I spend money on and enjoy all of them. However, these things are not necessarily self care. They are excellent treats and rewards. They may be a part of a broad system of self care. But self care is really about caring for your body, mind, and soul in ways that are consistently nourishing.
So much of what the media tries to tell us about self-care is really about keeping up with some false version of what you “should” or “need” to be like. Instead of aspiring to someone else’s ideal, you need to do what’s best for your body, mind, and soul. I don’t need a manicure just because everyone else gets one. Getting a manicure because it feels good to me is fine, but because someone else is pressuring you to keep up - not fine. Focus on what you want, who you authentically want to be. Build a self care practice that fits your definition of you and the current season of your life. And, know that as the seasons of your life change, this self care practice will need to change too.
Let’s take a look at each of these areas.
Your Body
Your body needs three things on a regular basis: fuel, movement, and rest.
Fuel takes the form of a healthy diet. I’m a proponent of a mostly low carb diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables. Some weeks, I do awesome. Other weeks, I have popcorn and ice cream for dinner.
What has worked for me in the past food wise is meal planning and use of a food tracking app like MyFitnessPal. Meal planning has the added benefit of being good for my budget. I’ve fallen off the MyFitnessPal wagon and need to get back on.
Our bodies also need movement. Movement can take many forms. Right now, I like walking, pedaling, and swimming. I’m also a lover of stretching, but not so much of yoga. I have an on again, off again relationship with strength training. Find what works for you and for your life, but move. Thirty minutes a day, five days a week on average. This isn’t about comparing yourself to someone else. This is about doing what works for you.
You can fuel up with good food and move to enhance your energy but it all falls apart if you don’t give your body good rest. I am incredibly lucky in that I sleep well nearly any time I try to sleep - and even sometimes when I am not even trying to sleep. Hello, Saturday and Sunday naps. You can tell yourself you only need six hours or less of sleep. I think you’re probably lying if you tell yourself that. I think seven hours is the minimum and eight to nine hours is a far better choice regularly.
Your mind
I have a few big fears. Scary killer viruses happen to be one of them, so 2020 has been great. Losing my freedom to a disease/major health issue is another one - and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases top that list. My mom has Parkinson’s so that one comes naturally. The fear of Alzheimer’s just comes from the fact it attacks your brain and I like my brain. I like using it. So, I have invested some time trying to figure out how to care for it properly.
I’ve learned the most about caring for my brain from Dr. John Medina, author of several books including two of my favorites - Brain Rules and Brain Rules for Aging Well. If you’re a parent, Medina also has books for raising little ones (Brain Rules for Baby) and dealing with the craziness that is the teenage brain (Attack of the Teenage Brain).
I listened to both of these on audio the first time I encountered them. Medina reads his own books. As an actual neuroscientist, he doesn’t stumble over phrases like mitochondrial theory or allostatic load. Don’t let these phrases scare you though. Medina’s writing is incredibly approachable and even if you read the technical phrases as blah-blah and la-la, you’ll still get the gist. I’ve since invested in the Kindle versions and enjoy perusing these often to keep the ideas fresh. I’ll share the 12 original principles from Brain Rules, but personally, I love his approach in Brain Rules for Aging Well even better.
The Brain Rules
Exercise: Exercise boosts brain power.
Survival: The human brain evolved, too.
Wiring: Every brain is wired differently.
Attention: We don't pay attention to boring things
Short-Term Memory: Repeat to remember
Long-Term Memory: Remember to repeat
Sleep: Sleep well, think well.
Stress: Stressed brains don't learn the same way.
Sensory Integration: Stimulate more of the senses
Vision: Vision trumps all other senses.
Gender: Male and female brains are different
Exploration: We are powerful and natural explorerers
As a bonus for my educator friends, there is a lot to think about how we design classes from Medina’s work so his books are a twofer - you’re reading for you and you can apply it to the work you do.
There is a LOT in there about how we need to take care of our bodies and how caring for your body helps to care for your mind. There are some other pieces though about how we manage attention, help our memory, and try to find a sense of calm so we can stress less to learn more. I can’t recommend his books highly enough.
Your Soul
I have a personal value that I call “Believe in something bigger”. For me, caring for your soul is about looking to how you impact the world and how you want to leave the world. While our soul is who we are, how we care for our soul is much more about how we interact with the world.
There are three practices I find really valuable for taking care of my soul right now.
Quiet and Solitude - I’m an introvert. My battery is recharged through being alone. And, by alone, I mean ALONE. As I type this right now, Hugo is asleep on the couch beside me, the tv is off, and my house is silent other than a ceiling fan and the clicking of the keyboard. I need that kind of alone in regular doses to care for my soul. I love people. People also drain me. And Zoom meetings are the WORST kind of draining so in pandemic land, I’m particularly zombie-esque at the end of the work week.
Meditation - I’m an on again, off again meditator. Right now, meditation is working for me again. I enjoy the meditations available through Peloton but also still love the free app Insight Timer which offers a simple meditation timer along with an enormous library of free guided meditations and music for quiet. I especially love this Yoga Nidra sleep meditation by Diana Warlick. I’ve never heard the end of it, so I’d say it works well.
Gratitude and forgiveness - Two practices that help me keep focused are gratitude and forgiveness. Every day, I need to practice one or the other, if not both. And, quite often, the person I’m forgiving is myself. Do not underestimate the power of forgiving yourself for the mistakes you’ve made. Changing the recording in your head from negative to positive is one of the most important ways you can care for your soul.
There are so many other ways you can feed your soul. This article has some more great ideas in it. I also love the Tree of Contemplative Practices image as a good reminder of different ways to care for yourself - mind, body, and soul. For me, it is also a good reminder that these various types of practices have to be in balance. If you’re only doing activist practices, the tree (i.e. you) will topple over. If you’re only doing creation and relational practices, the tree’s growth is stunted. You’ve got to pick and choose a few off of each area to stay balanced.
Make time for you
So, back to our title - being the CEO of your own body. Just like a CEO has to make time for their work in order to keep their company successful, you have to make time for you and your body so you can be successful. As you read through all of this, you may think - that stuff takes a lot of time. Yes, it does. But, shouldn’t you take time for yourself? Aren’t you worth that? As an obliger, I often have to remember the airplane oxygen mask rule - “Put on your mask, before helping others with their mask.” If I don’t make time to take care of myself, I may not be able to take care of others. You can get by with putting yourself on the back burner for a while, but you will eventually run out of air - in the form of strength and energy - if you don’t take care of yourself.
And, while taking care of yourself - really, truly taking care of yourself - takes time, you might be spending time on things that don’t nourish you. For instance, I don’t watch a ton of television. I love movies and I love a good show, but I typically reserve television either as a social activity with Gayle or a movie with friends - or I’ll turn television on when I’m doing boring routine stuff like cleaning. If watching television mindlessly in the evening has become your default, maybe it’s time to reset that default. In the book Make Time, Knapp and Zeratsky talk about making TV a sometimes treat. And while I hadn’t really thought of it in that way until reading their book, that is how I treat television now. I’ll still escape into a good binge of a show from time to time, but mostly it’s a sometimes treat and that works for me. What could work for you to allow you to make more time for yourself?
A quote and a note
I’ve always been a collector of quotes. I want to share them. I’ll add a brief note to each one.
"So I would start with self-knowledge, by identifying how my nature affects my habits. Figuring that out, however, isn’t easy. As novelist John Updike observed, “Surprisingly few clues are ever offered us as to what kind of people we are.” " - Gretchen Rubin in Better than Before
I’m obviously a big fan of Gretchen Rubin. Better than Before is her book on habit change. Developing positive, healthy habits - or as Knapp and Zeratsky might say from Make Time, resetting your defaults to positive, healthy defaults is an enormous part of self care. Whether you prefer thinking of them as habits or as defaults, they all begin with knowing yourself better. Are you a morning lark or a night owl? Are you an abstainer or a moderator? Are you a dog person or a cat person? There are not right answers to these questions - there is you. And being you, authentically, is what I’m all about here.
A tool and a tip
I love technology. Lately though I’ve been thinking about how I need to make sure that my technology defaults are things that actually make my life better and easier. I’ll use this section to share a tool and a tip with you.
Tool: Youper
Living through Coronavirus hasn’t been all terrible. For one thing, I was introduced to Youper - the artificial intelligence therapy app. Introducing you to Youper seems appropriate for a newsletter devoted to self-care.
First, let me be clear, Youper does not replace a traditional human therapist in any way. Youper also does not substitute for any medications you may be on to help with mental health.
What I love about Youper is the ability to easily track emotions - and then to learn from that data. You can see from the image above, I’ve had a pretty good week. Youper calls that learning “Insights”. I’ve tried Headspace and Calm and liked both, but they didn’t really let me track my own emotional state. I could track how much I liked the app and get a little bit of data based on how much I used the app. Youper, so far, seems to allow me to get to know what works for me better. Also, while I still think a human therapist is valuable, I’ve wasted a lot of money trying to find a way to make Talkspace and other similar virtual therapy session apps fit well in my life and I’ve just not found that balance right. I may be relegated to sitting across from a therapist on a couch for the rest of my life to actually find the right balance here.
Cost-wise, Youper is also far more cost-friendly than any of these other tools too and you can try it for free.
Tip: Schedule Text Messages
I got this one from something my sister in law said a few months ago. You can schedule a text message to be sent later on both Android phones and iPhones. The specific steps will differ on each messaging app so if these don’t help, you might want to do a little googling for your specific messaging app.
Scheduling texts for iPhone - I’m not an apple/mac user so I can’t actually test these steps. If you are and you’ve got an easier way, drop it in the comments.
Scheduling Texts for Android - I’m a Samsung user, so this is super easy for me. Using IFTTT as described in this link might also work for iPhone users. I’m a big lover of IFTTT too.
And, if you read anything about how scheduling makes messages less personal, may I please remind you that you are going to take time to send a message whether you schedule it or send it in the moment. It doesn’t make the effort less personal. It simply means you did something in a way that works for you.
What bugs you that you’d like a tech tip on? I love making technology work better for people.
What I’m reading and learning
Recently Finished - So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
Oluo offers an honest and practical assessment of how we can move from being scared of talking about race to talking about it honestly and openly - with a focus on dismantling the system of racism and oppression that currently supports the world around us. We’re reading this as a group for the podcast I produce and host at work. I’m looking forward to the conversation and, most importantly, more learning and action to make the world better for everyone.
What are you reading at the moment? Share in the comments.
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Thanks for the tips!