How can I be self-supporting?

[Intro] Hello and welcome to Empowered to Thrive. I'm your host Corinne Powell. I'm so glad you're here.

No matter what type of day you're having, you're always welcome. I like having you around. This space is especially designed for the person who goes about life focused on everyone else while neglecting their own needs.

The person who says yes when inwardly they want to say no. The person who is frustrated at all they do because they don't receive much in return. If that's you, I'm going to put out some great ideas on how you can change those patterns and get unstuck.

Life isn't meant to be tolerated. It should be enjoyed. So let's get to it.

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I'm excited to share today's episode with you. Like last week, it's an excerpt taken from one of my digital products, specifically Grieving Seasons. We're talking about ways you can support yourself because that is important when grieving.

Here's the thing, even if you haven't experienced a large loss in your life, you've experienced smaller losses. Consider the relationships that haven't improved, the hopes and dreams that haven't come to be, the transitions of a move from one place to another, the loss of a friendship, even the idea that children grow up and we age and that puts a sense of grief on us. And so if you're interested to delve deeper into the topics you hear in today's episode or just into this idea of grieving losses, head over to the show notes and click the link to check out my course, Grieving Seasons.

Corinne Powell: How can we practice self-care? Oh, our body. Our body gets blamed for so much. How we think and what we do affects our bodies. What's happened to us is affecting our body. And some of this may feel so out of our control because it was.

But there is so much that goes into why our bodies respond the way they do. I'd like to pose the question, what's one or two things in your life that you want to change? I'm all about change, right? But we have to figure out first, what is it that we even want to change? And then start to focus on that because what we put our energy into will expand. I say one or two things because you might have a list of 20 things you wanna change, but it's not gonna be sustainable to try to change all 20 of those.

So what can we start by doing? The goal isn't to feel too stretched or overwhelmed by all the change we're trying to bring about because that's not gonna land us anywhere successful. One practical way to create change is through cultivating self-compassion. Practically speaking, this is gonna look like speaking up for ourselves in moments where we usually just allow people to put us down or speak to us rudely.

If you're a people-pleaser, it's gonna be really hard to start asking for what you need because you're so used to focusing on what everyone else needs and meeting their needs, but it's so important to be able to start to meet your own needs and that's by asking, asking for help, actually doing the things we need to do for ourselves, taking the nap, not when everything is settled and when everyone has everything they need, but when you need to take the nap. Because again, it's so lopsided already. You've been doing for other people way more than you've been doing for yourself.

So now it might feel like you've gone to the other extreme, but you won't always stay there. You just have to focus on taking care of yourself really well because you have a deficit in that area. And as you grow in that, as you're able to embody that care for yourself, then in the end, it'll all work out where you're able to take care of the needs of others and the needs of yourself.

We have to start by even noticing, noticing what does our body need? And then we can try to meet those needs. So because I personally know what it's like to disconnect from the body and not even know when you are tired until you're exhausted, there are times when we have to challenge ourselves and consider our thinking and recognize, oh my goodness, that inner critic is getting really loud. And I think I need to come in with a voice of kindness and befriend myself.

And there's other times where we have to actually start getting curious about like, why is that inner critic even saying what it's saying? Like, wow, that's so mean. And I'm believing those words. And just start to get curious, start to ask, start to sit in stillness and see what comes to you. So all of this is necessary. Empowering yourself, pausing, stepping back, reflecting, some moments pushing yourself to go further and other moments slowing down and stepping back. All of this is important.

So learning how to love and accept yourself is a big part of supporting ourselves. And like I said, every thought should not get your attention like basically every thought is not what we should believe. We don't have to make sense of all of our thoughts. We don't have to create a story around all of our thoughts. We don't have to make judgments about ourself or other people because of the thoughts we have. Sometimes thoughts are helpful to give us a window in to our subconscious beliefs, what we really believe below the surface. Other times they're not. We are affected by the thoughts that we sit with, that we allow to become our mindset, our way of thinking. 

For example, if I believe that I'll never have enough, that everybody has more than me and I barely get by. First off, that belief is rooted in experiences I've had, maybe what was modeled to me by my parental figures, maybe by what society says is enough, but it's all impacting the way I view life, the way I view money, the way that I think of myself. I get to choose whether I'm going to carry that thought or I'm going to reconceptualize it or actually directly, abruptly come in and say, no, that's not how I want to think. And I actually am gonna say, I have more than enough. I always have more than enough. As I say that over time, and it might be a while, but we believe the thoughts we have. All the thoughts that we believe are because we've heard them long enough usually. We may not have believed them the first time we heard them. So if I actually start to say, I have more than enough, we always have more than enough. That's a whole different perspective than the first one I was saying, like “I'm barely making it by, I always struggle, everybody else always has more than me”.

And I get to choose what perspective I'm gonna have in life. So even though I think there's a reason why we have the perspective we have, I don't think we need to shame ourselves because of our perspectives. I don't think we need to eradicate every thought that is like, “oh no, that's not a helpful thought”. We can let them be. It's like, it's okay to sit in the discomfort, right? It's okay to sit in the negativity, but will we stay there? How long will we stay there?

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Corinne Powell: So sometimes I do say, that's not how I wanna think, and I redirect it. Take what I'm saying here and just consider it for yourself. What are some of the subconscious beliefs you have, the way that you view life and yourself and others, and just start to list some of that. 

Use your workbook, list some of that. You can share your thoughts with me via email. We can go back and forth and do a little bit of that. You can schedule a little more of the work processing, or you can schedule a one-on-one session with me to process more together. 

So my body love journey has been a wonderful, beautiful, difficult journey. I mean, at the moment, it feels wonderful, but I remember it wasn't always so easy. I used to hate the image that I saw in the mirror for as long as I can remember. I would look at my body and there was always things I disliked about it. I was very mean to it. I now recall there were other people growing up who name-called, who shamed my body, who joked about my body at my expense. There were ways my body was treated and sexually mistreated that impacted it.

There were societal norms, the mindset that my parental figures carried about their body or the female body, or what was, you know, their ideal, their ideal weight, their ideal look. All of this impacted my view of myself and my body. When I wanted to change my relationship with my body, yes, I was already on the healing journey. Yes, I was doing the introspective work. Yes, I was recognizing, hey, my past is impacting my present. Let me consider my inner child. This was all a part of it. But I actually started to say the things that felt opposite to what I believed in that moment. So I started to say, body, you're beautiful, before I believed it. I like my body before I felt it. My body is good. I am happy with the weight I'm at, even before that felt true. All of these things. All right, so I was doing this, right? Regularly in front of a mirror, maybe just out loud when I was driving by myself in the car, at times when I felt the internal conflict. I stopped saying negative things about myself around other people. You know how sometimes we just say the thing that puts ourself down. And sometimes I just wouldn't let myself do that. I had the thought and I just wouldn't say it out loud because I was trying to practice self-kindness. 

This is about shifting a mindset, but it's shifting so much else within the body. And I'm not suggesting that when we talk about just accepting ourselves and loving ourselves, and when we say these things that aren't even true to our body, which you can say it in a way that feels more doable for you. When I talked about, “body, I like you”. If you're like, I don't believe that. I know, like I said, I didn't believe that either. But if you're like, I don't wanna say that because it feels like a true lie, you could say, body, I'm learning to like you. Because you are. You're sitting here literally trying to learn to like yourself. I'm talking about this internal place. I'm not at all trying to go into the nutritional part of this. I'm just saying that I am coming from this within some sort of framework. Sometimes we hear the things like I'm saying, and we're just like, “oh my goodness”. And we throw it out because it almost sounds so unrelatable. Maybe you're someone who's like, “I wanna be strong. I wanna be fit”. That's fine. But even when we're the fittest and the strongest, sometimes we still don't like ourselves. I remember getting to the lower point on the scale that I'd ever been, and I still didn't like what I saw in the mirror. It was not about the scale. 

When did you begin to treat yourself in this unkind, belittling way? Or if that's not the case for you, just let it go in whatever direction you need. What would happen if you start to practice self-kindness? That could be scary. Some of us would say, oh my goodness, if I actually am kind to myself, and I tell myself it doesn't matter, doesn't matter what I eat. I'm gonna just eat myself out of house and home, and then I will become the larger version of myself that I don't want. Like it can be very, very, very scary to think we're gonna let go of the control that we've been putting on ourself. We're gonna let go of the pressure we've been putting on ourself. I get it, I get that it is scary. 

What is one lifestyle change I need to make to pivot the direction that I’m going? Remember? Self-supportive living. Your whole life aligns with the way you’re gonna support yourself. So if you’re like, “I’m too busy right now”. Then you’re start to slow down the pace of your life You can start to take care of yourself in that way. As you know, there are more videos available for you if you wanna take advantage of them. And I'm here for you if you wanna schedule a session, or you just wanna email me and share your thoughts. I'd love to hear. 

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[Outro] We've come to the end of another episode. I'm so glad you stuck around. As you consider what you've heard, what's the one thing that especially resonated with you? What's one way you can start to implement change into your life? Too much too soon isn't sustainable.

Start small and go slow. Consistency is key. If you appreciate what you're hearing on Empower to Thrive, would you kindly leave me a review and rate my podcast? It helps a lot.

I hope you'll share the episode with a friend and come back next week. And don't forget, I'm so glad you're alive.