Stillness and Self Care

In this episode of “Just Call Jenna,” host Jenna Williams explores the transformative power of stillness and self-care as essential tools for growth, clarity, and sustainable wellbeing.

She reframes peace as the true currency of a fulfilling life, emphasizing that growth is not only about visible progress but also about the unseen rooting that prepares us to expand. Through reflections on nervous system regulation, forgiveness, and the brain’s adaptability, Jenna highlights how honoring personal energy creates space for creativity, compassion, and clearer decision-making.

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Jenna also challenges the cultural glorification of busyness, explaining the neurological costs of multitasking and constant digital stimulation. She encourages listeners to embrace single-task focus, intentional rest, and practical boundaries—such as reducing notifications—to retrain the brain toward deeper concentration and reduced stress. By connecting scientific insights with everyday habits, she illustrates how small, consistent acts of self-care can reshape neural pathways and support long-term resilience.

Ultimately, Jenna positions self-care not as indulgence but as a biological and emotional necessity that enables responsibility, habit change, and a more peaceful life trajectory. She invites listeners to build mindful routines, practice gratitude in daily obligations, and gradually expand moments of stillness—reminding them that every intentional breath, boundary, and pause is a message to the brain to prioritize wellbeing.

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Welcome back. Today I'm going to be talking about stillness and self-care. I'm going to start with self-care is not a luxury. It's regulating your nervous system. It's lowering chronic stress. Hormones, regulations, creating predictable patterns of rest and recovery. It's strengthening neural pathways to support your well-being rather than living in survival mode. I want you to hear that.

Self-care is not a luxury. It's not just massages and bubble baths, which by the way I like both of those, and I am known to get a massage and take a bubble bath. But that is not self-care. Self-care is stillness. It's pause. Growth is going to require both movement and pause.

One of the hardest ones for me recovering from the stroke was realizing that I had to become more physical, but it was different. I can't get on a treadmill and run for 30 minutes. That's physically not allowed for me. So pause is great, but I also need movement. Movement for me became a Pilates class that I take once a month, or once a week, sorry, uh, every Monday I go. It's not about one class that I'm gonna suddenly do some kind of magic movement. But that consistent movement has made my body stronger.

When I started, my left hand was so damaged from the stroke. I could barely hold my iPhone. Now I can pull my whole body up with just my left hand on a bar. That came from Pilates. It wasn't one class. It was overall showing up weekly that within six months I started to see market improvement. And now that it's been almost a year I can do things that a year ago my body was like, uh-uh, we ain't doing that at all. But now I can do them and they kind of get done with ease.

So self-care is movement and pause. I'm gonna talk about one of my favorite stories when you think about growth and stillness, and that's the story of the Chinese tree, uh the Chinese bamboo tree. So when you get a bamboo tree seed, it gets planted in the ground. Five years, nothing. You water it, you nurture it, the end of year one, nothing, nothing you can see above ground. Year two nothing. Year three, where is it? Year four, still nothing. Year five, it suddenly breaks the ground.

You get this little plant that breaks the ground and starts, and then within six weeks, ninety feet tall. So the question always becomes, was it the five years, was it the six weeks? Well, it's actually both. Sometimes you're rooting and sometimes you're growing, but without the root structure that took five years to grow, there's no way that 90-foot-tall bamboo could actually stand up and not fall over. It wouldn't have the foundation it needed.

So that's what I mean by growth requiring movement and pause.

I'm a total plant person. If you come to my house, it's sort of a mini jungle. I always like to joke and say, I tell my plants I love them and they're always rooting for me. But that's it. They need rooting. You need that foundation. That pause, that stillness. Sometimes in the seasons of your life, you're rooting and growing a foundation. Other times, you're growing.

So back to me and my Pilates, right? Pilates is like rooting for me. Every time I show up, I'm watering and nurturing the vessel that is me so that I can move, in ways that I'm allowed to do after I physically almost died. There are just some things I can't do. I've zip-lined in eleven countries. Guess what? I'm not zip-lining any more in my life. The adrenaline shock to my heart, not allowed. I never got to jump out of a plane. It was somewhere on the bucket list, but I'm not going skydiving.

I don't even ride roller coasters anymore. I'm not allowed to spike the blood pressure to that level. It's just not worth my life. So things will look different. Some seasons you're blooming, some seasons you're rooting. If you believe ninety feet tall is the growth, if you believe it's the five years of rooting, it's a kind of a combination of all of them. So I want you to think about stillness as giving yourself that pause to root yourself to grow.

And you know, things might look different. You might need the movement to look different than what you thought it would. Some people are gonna be great salsa dancers and drink go dancing all night long. Great, please feel free. Some athletes can run a, you know, marathons. Fabulous, please do it. By all means, enjoy the physicality that your body allows you. But push yourself a little.

Think about pushing yourself that one degree and maybe set your sights on things that are slightly realistic for you, which might sound opposite of what I talk about as always being a little delusional and letting your containers grow. There is also certain things that are realistic. Like I might do physical things, but I'm not gonna go rock climbing. I'm not gonna go jump out of a plane. You know, maybe I go to one of those indoor skydiving places and I can put on the little suit and do that.

It's gonna look a little different, but my heart doesn't need the adrenaline spike. I mean, I'm gonna go get my exercise the way I need to, but I'm not gonna run on a treadmill. I'm not at a place where I can go bench pressing and do weight training. Those are not things that physically my body can do yet. No, they might be part for future me, but they're not me today. So when I think about like Pilates or yoga, which by the way, in yoga I can't do some of the crazy positions, but I go with what can I do and where's pushing myself just a little bit?

If you've heard me tell my story about when I was learning how to walk, it was trying to walk each day one more driveway. So when I would first start walking, let's say today I got three driveways. Well, I got three driveways in back today and tomorrow I might try to get to the fourth driveway. So tomorrow I'm going to try to go four driveways. End of the block was damn near impossible. Why would I push myself to do something that seemed impossible? I went for what is the one degree I can do to get myself a little better. That's movement.

Now we gotta think about pause. Stillness is required. Stillness is self-care. Rest is recovery. You need to reframe wealth. Peace is your currency. Peace is what you exchange with people. The richest life is a peaceful one. There are many religions out there that like, peace be with you and also with you. May you have a peaceful life. Peace is actually the best currency in the world.

So growing peace, we live in a measured world. We compare. The greatest wealth is just accepting peace in the mind. So when I talk about comparing, how many times do you see someone that you might see it on social media, you might see it in your normal life. Oh, they're driving the car I want, that's my dream car. Oh they're wearing the clothes I want. Oh they're living this life. Oh they're in this job. The brain compares.

We all do it, but we live in this measured world. So creating stillness and self-care is is this piece. It's going, okay. Do I really need that? Like for me, understanding acceptance was, okay, zip lining is over. I'm glad I got the experience in my life, but I will not go zip lining again. It's not worth the risk to me physically. As much as I enjoy it, which if you've ever been zip-lining, it's amazing. It's so much fun to just soar over the treetops. The things you see in different countries, it's amazing.

But those days of my life are over. My vacations are now. I can sit on a boat. I can stay in the room and order room service, but the idea of getting physical and running all over town. That is just not what my life is anymore. Now, that doesn't mean that when I went on vacation last that I didn't walk up and down the hill in the resort that I was at. It was tough. It took me a lot. There were a lot of winds and turns.

Now, I didn't do it ten times a day. I didn't go for a mile. But for example, the little room we were in, there was a little store, maybe, let's say, a hundred yards from my room, where I could go pick up a Coke or sunblock, you know, the little corner store that the resorts have. Well, I would force myself to walk there if I needed something. Sure, they have little golf carts that would take me around the around the resort, but you know, choosing that movement of walking that little bit, it created peace. It created breath. It created that pushing myself.

So remember I talk about movement and pause. Right? Just like the Chinese bamboo. You might be rooting, you might be growing, but you do have to nurture yourself. You have to water yourself. You have to give yourself a chance to grow that little bit. Push yourself a little bit. Peace changes your frequency. We're gonna reframe wealth again. Peace is your currency. It's what you're going to exchange with people. It's going to change how you flow through life.

It's going to give you clarity in your decisions. It's going to give you compassion for yourself and others. It's going to make space in your container. Peace is the pause. Remember in another episode I talk about.

Just take a breath and reframe. Take that pause. Your breath, that's where your power is. That little space between what happened and your reaction. That's where your power is. That's where your peace is.

So as you're thinking about that, remember self-care is not a luxury. It's regulating your nervous system. It's the pause. Lower your chronic stress. Take a pause. Regulate your hormones, eat the right foods, create predictable patterns of rest and recovery. I go to bed at this time. I recover. I had a very busy day yesterday. I'm gonna allow myself to do nothing tonight but read a book, whatever that is. You have to create those patterns.

It's neural pathways to support your well-being rather than survival mode. One of my therapists told me, you will make time for your wellness. Or you will be forced to make time for your illness. Well, I didn't make time for my wellness before having a stroke, and I got forced to make time for my illness. So this is what I want you guys all to get the the chance to live a life that doesn't make you that. I want you to honor yourself. Energy, clarity, and creativity. Give yourself the space to expand. Give yourself peace.

Your brain has a primary goal, and that is to keep you alive. It also has a superpower, and that is adaptation, resiliency. Growth. Energy is contagious. The universe speaks frequency. It does not call something good or bad. That's a human morality thing. The universe doesn't know. It just says, oh, you think that you're gonna bang your head on the wall? Cool, here's a lot more walls you can bang your head on. Oh, you want to rock around the wall? Let me give you a lot more space.

Remember the RAS filter in your brain is going to work with what the universe speaks frequency. So I think about that a lot. Forgiveness is the desire to not see someone punished. That's peace. Maybe just wishing someone peace, wishing them the best. Tear up that karmic contract. You don't need to make a karmic invoice to somebody that says, hey we have this connection and I created a karmic debt. It's not good or bad. Give up the idea that karma is what goes around, comes around.

In a way it does, but it's not justice and punishment. Just don't wish harm on anybody and then harm will not come back to you. Remember, the universe speaks frequency. If you're wishing harm and pain on somebody, it's gonna go ahead and give that back to you. It's only going to resonate what you put out there. It's simple. Forgiveness is self-care. I forgive those who have wronged me not because they deserve forgiveness, but because people don't deserve punishment.

Punishment is cruel. I don't wish things on people. I don't wish harm to people. I don't want that karmic debt. So I forgive others just simply I don't wish them to be punished. Likewise, I turn that to myself. Self-care is myself. I don't want myself to be punished. This is hard. This is harming me. What can I do to let myself out of that karmic debt? I don't need to keep paying. I don't have to make it harder on myself.

Life is hard enough. It just is. Life is gonna keep coming no matter what you do. But you can give yourself some space. You can forgive yourself and say, I no longer want myself to be punished. That's peace. That's self-care. Remember, it's not just a bubble bath and a massage, which, by the way, highly recommend those. Think you should do it often. But I think it's about self-forgiveness and peace.

I forgive myself for everything that doesn't create peace. Maybe I've done something stupid. I'm human. I've done a lot of stupid things. Ask my mother. She'll tell you I did a lot of stupid things. But I think that peace is self-care. It's self-forgiveness. It's just wishing for yourself not to be punished anymore. And movement and pause will do that. You need to create that space in your body. That's self-care. Creating peace. Movement and pause.

You are like a Chinese bamboo. Some seasons you're rooting and some seasons you're growing 90 feet tall. Allow yourself the time to move that one degree and let your roots form when you can't see them. That's all happening beneath the surface. It's not visible. It's not quick. It takes its time. So I think we're going to talk about some really important practices of stillness and self-care. Some of these might sting a little bit, but this is what we have to do.

Number one, stop multitasking. Neuroscientists are going to call it task switching. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for decision making and focus. When it has to switch back and forth, it actually takes a neurological toll in your brain. that brain fog overwhelm sleeping and waking up exhausted that multitasking is actually doing you in more than you believe it is. Yes, there are probably some people out there that it doesn't affect. Most of us that's not the case.

Jumping between tasks activates a stress response. The amygdala becomes alert. It releases micro bursts of cortisol and adrenaline. Actually, that was a lot of what did me in for the stroke was all that jumping between tasks constantly living in survival mode and being completely unaware that I was living that way. I thought I was fine. Everything looked fine. I thought I was fine. until my heart and my brain were like, girl, it's time to stop.

If you're dealing with threats, that's what the amygdala feels like. It doesn't know the difference between I was working on email and now my phone rang. It doesn't know the difference between that and being in a full-on fight with your family members. It doesn't know the difference. It just thinks you're dealing with a threat. It's causing mental fatigue. It's blocking your deep focus or what might be the flow in life. It's totally blocking you. Stop multitasking.

Your brain is a masterpiece, but it is not built like a computer to run multiple browser tabs at the same time. You are not that. You are not a computer. That's why you feel scatterbrained. Honestly, it's because you're human. Congratulations, you're human and not a computer. So stop multitasking. That's one of the big ones to stillness and self-care. Research has shown that switching can drain up to 40% of your productive time.

Your basal ganglia way back in the brainstem back there, it helps automate habits. But when it requires too much thought, it's really forcing your brain into overdrive. Stop multitasking. We all think, oh, it's efficient, it's productive. Please stop. Just stop. Stop. Let other people multitask. Stop giving yourself brain fog. Stop taking away your productive time. And stop taking away your peace and the flow that makes you who you are.

We live in a society where that's rewarded. You go to work and they're like, here's 50,000 things you can do. You scroll social media and there's everybody living in these beautiful houses and thinking this is what it is. Well, that might be false. But all these constant ads that are coming in, floods of information. Siri, this, Amazon notifications, by the way, I get them all. Stop multitasking. Your brain actually thrives on a singular focus.

It lights up the anterior cingulate cortex, which improves your accuracy. It helps form memories and creativity. If you're multitasking, you're automatically taking 40% of that away. Think about that. Almost half of your creativity, forming memories and accuracy in your brain. 40% of it is being stripped away just from multitasking. Stop multitasking. You don't need to work harder. You just need to work with your brain.

Give yourself permission to single task. Close your laptop when you're working on phone calls. Turn your phone over when you're working on emails. Yes, we live in a hustle and bustle society where everybody is running nonstop. How many of you go to dinner with your friends and they're on their phones. Because we don't know how to let our brain settle down. We just don't. Refrain from the multitasking habit. For your own sake, just stop.

There are some simple things you can do. It's gonna be really hard at first. You're gonna need to sort of detox from all that constant flow, but it'll get easier. So one of the things you can do, turn your notifications off. You do not need your ring doorbell to tell you every time Amazon drops off a package. If you need the package that bad, you can watch that particular delivery. You do not need Amazon to tell you every time there's a weather notification.

Oh, they will gladly do it. But you can turn those notifications off. I don't have everything alert me constantly anymore. I have a fancy oven that will tell me when it's preheated. It used to tell me when my kids were at home using the oven. Guess what? I didn't need to know. Stop multitasking. Turn your notifications off. Silence your phone. Don't leave it in remote. Put it on silent. Not silent and vibrate. Just silent.

You will see the missed call. You will see the message. You do not need to be that available and force your brain into constant switch mode. You need to give it some stillness and space. So, choose your times to scroll. Listen, I'm not gonna lie, I love a good TikTok reel. I love to do scroll. I have a certain point of the day where I allow myself the space to do that. It's not constant, but I do have my 30 minutes at night where I do it.

And yes, I want to see every video telling me how to make that one recipe that I'm never gonna make. Yes, I want to hear all about the coolest stuff going on. Yes, I want to know what lipstick is the best. Yes, I want to hear about what leggings I can wear to lose weight. Absolutely I do. But I have a specific time of day for that. It is not available all day long. I am not switching between tasks.

I read in the morning. I don't read all day long. I don't carry a book around with me. I don't have my nose in a book all day. I have a specific area where that is my task. Allow yourself permission to singular task. If you have to schedule time for yourself to do it, go ahead. Here's another one you can do that actually sounds weird but will really make a difference over three to six months.

Every day you check your email. Just click on one email and unsubscribe. One a day. Unsubscribe to one email a day. Turn off one notification a day. Within three to six months, you will find all this peace and space that you didn't know existed. And when you get there, please look back and go, how much was I wasting my own energy?

So I think about this from a perspective of the way the world used to be. I'm Gen X. I grew up before computers were in every household. I know what it was like to have life before Google. I did not have a smartphone when I was a kid. So there's a story, and I think I'm gonna get this right, but let's try. Rockefeller actually decided that he wanted more workers.

So he influenced the educational system to train people to follow the line and basically make a widget. Schooling did not prepare us for the digital era. It prepared us how to make a widget. Get up, go to work, 9 to 5, do your task, come home. That was how life was. But it did not prepare for the digital era. No amount of schooling told me that nonstop everything was gonna come in.

Everything was gonna be like a traffic jam and twenty browser tabs all at the same time. These marketing people are amazing. They know how to hit those little emotional centers of us all as humans. Right? Look at this. Buy this. No, no, no, no, no. It used to be single tasking. That was what schooling was designed to do. That was the way it was back in the Industrial Revolution. It was not what it is now.

In this digital era, none of us, or I shouldn't say none of us, maybe most of us don't have stillness or space. You need to singular task it and actually schedule your tasks. Yes, it's going to feel uncomfortable. Yes, your boss will probably want you to work harder. Yes, your family will demand more. Yes, we all want to be everywhere and omnipotent at every time, but that's not reality.

Give yourself the space to do what you can. Self-care is movement and pause. Schedule the times of your movement. Schedule the time of your pause until it becomes that habit loop that you can repeat. But please, please, please stop multitasking. your brain is working overtime and you don't even know it. I certainly didn't, but I learned a lot about how bad all this multitasking is.

It's not just the digital stuff. I mean again, I'm an Amazon click-click deliverer. It'll be here maybe today, but for sure tomorrow, right? Let's go that easy button. I door dash my food. I mean, I live in a digital era. I just told you I'll doom scroll at night. I'll watch TikTok reels. Yes, I have social media. But that doesn't mean that it needs to control my life. I can put it in the right container to give it that space, but I don't multitask. Yes, sometimes people look at me when I'm weird and I'm like, okay, I can't do that. Or I used to be the kind of person that would answer my phone nonstop. Now I have certain times when I will go back and look and respond. Yes, it's weird. Yes, I have people that laugh at me when I tell them how I do it. Sure, but you know what? I am peaceful.

I am caring for myself. I am taking really good care of my human. And society will take from me as long as I have something to give. So why don't I sit back and figure out what I can do? Stopping multitasking is literally one of the biggest ones that there is. There are books that are written on how to work, how to be efficient, doing deep work. Great book is Ten times is is it two times is easier than ten times?

Something like that. But you just let a lot of stuff go so you can focus on what you need to do. Like the four-hour workweek was a whole big book, right? Because it was. It was about putting things in their right compartments. Yes, I agree that you have to work hard. Yes, you have to go out there and take action to achieve your dreams. Wishing it and wanting it are not going to make it come true.

You gotta take action in that. But that doesn't mean that action means you need to give yourself completely away. A well-rested, peaceful, cared-for you can act more efficiently, do things better. Again, multitasking was one of the hardest ones for me. It really was. But I worked with neurologists after I had a stroke, which is brain damage, right? I worked with them and to get better.

Multitasking was actually holding me back when I got into these little compartments of I can do these things, but I don't do them all day. It was really weird at first. It was really hard at first. Some days it still is. It's so much easier to say yes to people, but not at the expense of myself anymore. But I didn't get that space until I stopped multitasking.

Again, I think you have to give yourself permission. Give yourself permission to single task, regardless of what anybody else thinks of it. Allow yourself to be misunderstood. Allow everybody else to multitask and run on autopilot and be giving their lives away in complete brain fog and exhaustion. Go ahead and let them lose all their productive time. You don't have to do that.

You can create compartments for yourself. I'll give you some examples like in my life in a normal workday. I wake up, I don't think I've woke up to alarm in over a year now. I usually wake up between 5.30 and 6 every morning on my own. I wake up, I let my dog out, I have a cup of coffee and I read a little bit. I get in the shower somewhere around 6 30, 7 o'clock.

And, you know, then I go about my work day. But when I drive to work, I don't have my Apple CarPlay on anymore. I know how to get there without letting a GPS tell me how to go on autopilot. I know how to get from my house to the office. I don't use a GPS to tell me turn right where I need to turn right. I actually use my brain and don't go completely on autopilot and I drive.

I don't talk on the phone or, you know, use the little Siri to text button. I don't do any of that. I just drive to work. I listen to music. I have that space. When I get to work, I open my computer and the first thing I do is emails. I do that for about maybe 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Then I go into a little, we have these little focus rooms.

I go into a focus room and I make my calls. And then I go back and do my emails or whatever projects I have to do. But my hours are blocked out in certain time. And then generally, if I need to drive to meet with someone I block out the meeting plus the drive time, and I do nothing but that during that time. Yes, it's weird. People want to fill my calendar with endless things. I don't let them.

When it's time to leave the office, I get in my car and I go. Again, no GPS, no phones, none of that just the music that I wanna listen to and I enjoy a peaceful ride home. I do happen to be one of those people that I mean I have a little bit of road rage. I don't like anybody in my way. I live in a very high traffic area, so listening to music and breathing through traffic helps me a lot.

I still want to yell at people. I've been known to flip somebody the bird when they cut me off. Sure I have. But I think by living in those compartments, it gets easier. Again, it doesn't mean that I'm perfect. I give myself permission to be human. but I also give myself permission to singular task at a time. Now it's much easier now than it was before.

It was really hard to do, but please start figuring out how to do this before you have a stroke or a heart attack and the stress just eats you alive. Show up for your family. Show up for yourself. Show up in ways that you know you can be. Do that by giving yourself some stillness. Allow yourself some space to become who you need to be. Start by turning off your notifications.

Stop being alerted every second to have your brain constantly switching on and off. That's not healthy. So as you've given yourself this space, I want you to think about self-care is physical, emotional, and spiritual. I want to show you how the simplest acts of self-care can have the power to shift your brain chemistry, reshape your habit loops. and change the trajectory of your life.

That's kind of the point of all this, right? To get yourself to a place where you can become the best you possible. Self-care is not an escape from responsibility. It's not. It's not a luxury. It's what enables your responsibility. You don't find time for self-care. You make it. You breathe, you hydrate, you move intentionally. Stillness spaces are created.

Like one of my mantras daily is I tell myself, girl, today we will not raise our blood pressure and stay hydrated. If I start from there, the rest of it actually becomes easier. So I used to be the kind of girl that would run around with a big gulp and drink two to three of those big fountain drinks a day. Well, I found that I like drinking out of a straw.

So I now carry around those plastic water cups with straws, sometimes a yeti with a straw, but if I have a straw and I just carry around the water, that habit loop in my brain that tells me I want to drink by replacing it with a drink that has water, I've made it easier to stay hydrated. This is what it means to do self-care. I like something to drink, but i i it's water. It's ice water.

Now, I expanded that lately and yes, I'm a woman who's almost fifty years old. My drinks now have collagen powder and things in them. But I found a way to replace drinking sodas daily with water staying hydrated. And now I'm putting good things in my body. Yes, this is what it means. It's not necessarily like the multitasking I told you to stop.

It's about paying it forward to yourself, becoming the you you want to be. And you're not gonna jump a hundred degrees. You're not gonna do a 180. Please don't go have a stroke and have to build yourself back. Start with those one degrees and start paying future you. You didn't get here by doing things easily, right? It's habits.

So your bad habits started with little by little by little, and now those bad habits are there. Just like you have some good habits that you've built over time, right? The brain is neutral. It does not know what's good or bad. It's based on what you tell us. So make time for your self-care. Make time for your wellness so you're not being forced to make time for your illness.

I wish that I had of gotten there an easier way. I wish it wasn't about the illness that I had that forced me to become this way. But as I did, I want to help everybody. That's the point of this. I think we live in a culture that celebrates overextension, it glorifies exhaustion, and treats self care as a luxury.

It's not a lifestyle trend. It's about leveraging biology. We live longer than our grandparents did. We have better resources available. I find the internet actually amazing. I grew up with the Dewey Decimal system and microficias and libraries. So the fact that I can get information at my fingertips is fascinating. Having access to the information is one thing. Letting it control my life is another.

I think we celebrate people for overextending themselves. I think we live in a very external world. We're so busy taking care of others and giving ourselves away and worried about what everybody else thinks that we forgot to take care of the human that we were given. Take care of yourself. Self-care is huge. Chronic stress will actually shrink the neurons in the prefrontal cortex.

That's the place where you process logic. It aggravates the fear circuits in your amygdala. Okay, what does that really mean? Self-care activates the parasympathetic nerve system. It's your body's built-in recovery system. So that's a lot of fancy words to basically say that self-care gives your brain the ability to make better decisions and create positive new habits.

If you live externally, those chronic stress and the multitasking, which is the worst for it, it's not your escape from responsibility to take care of yourself. You need to do that. The habit loops come from, remember, Q routine reward. Your energy affects every part of that loop.

You cannot build new habits when your brain is stuck in survival mode. It's almost impossible.

Self-care can actually become automatic. In fact, I think it can. I have done it. I am someone who takes care of myself. I am someone who exhales. I protect my energy. Give yourself permission. These are all self-care things. You don't have to say, I'm perfect. I grew up thinking I had to be perfect just to be accepted.

I had to realize that it's okay to not be perfect. That was actually a really hard mental lesson for me. So self-care for myself really became permission to not be perfect, permission to be misunderstood. If I sat with, I am someone who exhales. That's it. I am someone who excels. I am someone who protects my energy. I am someone who takes care of myself.

You've heard me say I take care of my human. My soul was given a human to take care of. I take care of my human. I am someone who does that. I gave myself permission to be those things. I gave myself permission to not be perfect at it. If I did it more often than not, I gave myself a little grace.

Every sip of water, every breath, every boundary I set, every moment of still over-multitasking. Every time you put your well-being first, you are telling your brain more of this. Now let's back that up for a second. Think about that. That's really important. Every sip of water, every time you breathe, every time you create that stillness space, every time you give yourself permission to multitask.

Every time you are telling your brain more of this. If you heard me say a few sentences ago, it was if your brain is in survival mode, it cannot process the habit loop. Q routine reward. You can't do it when you're in survival mode. Every sip of water, every breath, every time you create stillness, every time you give yourself permission to just be human.

You are telling your brain more of this. You are literally creating new habit loops. Self-care can be automatic. It is for me now. It certainly was not before. I used to think that I could live hard all the time. I could just keep going until my candle burned out at both ends. I never thought it would happen. I thought I was invincible.

I was human. Still am. But I had to learn into that. So I would say that it's really important you start the practice of the things that you don't prefer. But need to do, becoming less negative. What do I mean by that? I don't like paying bills. When I pay bills to thank you for the mortgage that keeps the roof over my head.

You have to start to reframe these things. That is self-care. Thank you for my beautiful home. Not, oh, I have to pay rent. Okay. Thank you for my beautiful home. Thank you for the roof over my head. Groceries are expensive. Sure they are. Thank you for the food that I get to eat. Thank you for the connection to all my friends and family instead of, oh, I gotta call so and so.

Right? There's things you can do. Many of us live on auto pay and ACH. So when you're paying bills, it's not the same as like a lot of those books tell you. When you write a check, be grateful. Yeah, but when you look at your bank statement and you see that mortgage come out, you can say thank you. Thank you for the roof over my head.

Thank you for the food that feeds my family. Thank you. It's a different practice of saying instead of I have to, I get to. I remember once I had a really big build of the IRS. Didn't like it. But I had to reframe it and it took a minute to sit with my body and resonate. But at first it was I have to, I have to I have to pay them what?

I have to pay them what? How much do they want? And when it turned to, I get to. I'm at a place in my life where I get to. Right? At some point I was a broke single mom. And here I was at a place where I got to pay this big bill. So it turned. But that's one of the first practices of the things that you don't prefer, reframing them, stillness, that's self-care.

I am someone who pays my bills. I am someone who breathes. I am someone who is grateful for the roof over my head. I am someone who is grateful for my family. Check in with yourself. When is the last time you made this a habit? When was the last time you checked in with yourself? How do I feel about that? What do I think about that?

What are the things that I'm saying out there? Remember, words are alchemy. If you're saying I have to and framing it in a negative way your brain is gonna find all the ways that that's negative if you shift it to, I'm grateful for this beautiful home that houses my family, I'm grateful for the food, I'm grateful for the phone that left me a connection to my friend that lives across the United States.

Instead of oh they're calling again check in with yourself when's the last time you did that it's really important that you do that. Remember I've asked you to find one time a day for yourself? In those five minutes that you're finding those times that I've asked you about find that time. Just observe. Check in with yourself. Let's try to expand that five minutes to ten minutes now.

We've successfully done five minutes for herself about ten weeks in a row. Congratulations on all the times you succeeded with that. I'm sure there's a few days it got missed, and that's cool. You're human. But I think if you expand that five minutes to ten minutes, check in with yourself for half of that time. How do you feel? What are you thinking about that?

What are you grateful for? Are you someone who exhales? Are you someone that takes a sip of water? Are you like the guy who put on his shoes and drove to the gym every day for 30 days? What habits are you creating? Are you someone who can stop multitasking? So daily we're gonna go from five minutes to ten minutes now and in that extra five minutes.

It's going to be about checking in with ourselves. What is holding me back? How do I feel about that? We're just going to observe it. That's it. Check in with yourself. That's what's important. We're creating all this stillness space. Let's find five minutes just to check in with ourselves.

Thank you for joining us again. Remember, karma is real, energy is contagious. Check your vibes.