How to love your body: Corinne's Version

[Intro] Hello, and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm your host, Corinne Powell.

I help people pleasers find happiness, embrace courage, and experience peace of mind through inner child healing. If you're desperate for change and not sure how to make it happen, I'm here to guide you along the way. In this space, you'll find motivation to live a life full of joy and resilience.

We will talk all things inner wellness with spirituality interwoven at times. Being a mom to three, parenting will be a topic of conversation for sure. So happy to have you. Enjoy today's episode. 

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So how do we practically speaking love our bodies? As you heard me share last week, I live with a chronic fatigue. And it is something that I am seeing a naturopath and I am taking supplements and looking to help my body out.

But in the interim, before my body is where it needs to be, I have to be more gentle with myself and I have to be really aware and compassionate. And if this sounds strange to you, it would have sounded strange to me in the past too. It's something that I've learned and developed within myself and I've worked on.

So let me share what I mean. This last week, I was running strong for a few weeks doing way more than I should have been doing. But you know how life goes.

Sometimes more is happening and you got to keep up with it. So I was keeping up with it. But I was starting to feel really run down and so much so that I said at the beginning of this week, I have to slow my pace down because I'm going to burn out.

And in the past, I would have just kept going strong and would have gotten to that point where I was burned out. So I've learned and I've tried to change my patterns. And so what that looked like was me needing to change up my schedule, try to plan less in the week, eliminate what I could eliminate and try not to add in things that didn't need to be added in.

It meant trying to plan my mornings out a little differently. So if I could get a little bit of extra sleep, then I would. It's meant working a different sort of schedule, not because I want to, but because I need to for the sake of my body.

It's been trying to create strategy. It's just creativity and strategy in the course of my day to say, what doesn't have to happen today and what does need to happen. And for the things that do need to happen, how can I do them in any sort of way that's going to create some relief and make it a little bit easier on me? And it's not because I can't do the hard things.

That's what's more of my natural response to just push through it, do the hard things, grin and bear it. And that's not what I need to do in this particular season. And really, it's not what I should have been doing for a long time, but I just didn't know.

So as I've learned how to take care of myself, how to be compassionate for myself, not saying, come on, Corinne, if you could only do more, it would be so much better. But recognizing, Corinne, you've done a lot in your lifetime and your body knows it. And it needs you to be more gentle towards it. It needs you to be a little bit kinder. 

So I work out right now. And sometimes that means changing up what my workouts are.

Not because I couldn't push myself. Do you ever have that feeling where your whole body, it's hurting? Every jump you take, your legs feel like, oh, they're tired, they're achy. Climbing the stairs, your legs ache to climb the stairs.

That's a lot of times what I experience. So I can push myself through it. But that doesn't always mean it's going to be better the next day.

Sometimes it means that I'm going to be much worse off the next day. It's not like that natural burn when you're strengthening your muscles. It's like a strong feeling of fatigue in the body.

And we have to, what I'm suggesting is that we should be more gentle and compassionate towards ourselves and recognize the season we're in. So if you're in a season where you have little kids and you're in a season where you're stuck at home working or your kids are virtually learning and so they're home a lot, that's a different season than other seasons. And you have to be able to take and choose compassion for yourself in this particular season.

Not because you can't do the hard things, but because you're deserving of the love and care for yourself. And some other people might not give it to you, but you can give it to your own self. So I just wanted to start this conversation to let you think about how can you do this for yourself? Even if you don't struggle with a chronic fatigue or a chronic illness, this is for all of us to hear.

We all have a body to take care of. We all have our own selves that we need to remember to take care of. Now, some of you may do really well at that, but then there's others of us, myself included, who easily put ourselves aside and focus on everyone else.

We take care of everyone else's needs before our own. And that only works for so long. And I don't think it works well for very long at all.

At some point, the patterns have to change, or there will be parts of your mind, your body, your spirit that start screaming out and breaking down. And actually, that is either a cue for you, or a moment that is going to open up something and help you, because that's a way out. When things start breaking down, when there's parts of you that aren't functioning the way they should, it's your chance to change your way of living to a better way.

The way I'm living now is so much better for me. It feels healthier. It's more satisfying.

I'm actually taking better care of myself. And to some people, it may look like I'm not doing enough or I've become selfish, but really I needed to become selfish because I was being so overly selfless that I had crossed a line and it had become toxic. And I didn't take care of myself and I didn't love the person I am.

I didn't embrace her and I didn't accept her. So we're talking about a whole body transformation from the mind, the spirit, the whole body. So I hope that's something that I said you're able to take it and just implement one change even within your life this next week.

One change is better than no change. So take a listen again, if you need to, and pull something out of this that you can implement into your life. Because this is not meant just for me. It's meant for you too. 

[Ending] I want to close out today's episode by thanking you for being here with me. We've made it to the end, and I hope what I shared has been helpful. 

If there is anything I've mentioned that you want to talk about in more depth, I would be so glad to connect with you. You can always find me on Instagram ⁠@corinne_changeradically⁠, or go directly to my website changeradically.com⁠.  Of course, within the show notes, there's other ways that you can connect with me. And if there is someone that you think would benefit from this podcast, please share it with them.

To help my podcast get more growth and reach more people, please subscribe, review, and rate it. And until next week, I'm wishing you the very best.