Episode 138: Realigning Your Commitment to You

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Dr. Melissa Smith 0:00
It’s the end of another year, how are you holding up? Is it time to realign your commitment to yourself? So join me today for three simple ways to do just that.

Dr. Melissa Smith 0:32
Hi, I’m Dr. Melissa Smith, welcome to the Pursue What Matters podcast where we focus on what it takes to thrive in love and work. So the end of the year marks a very good time to review how you’re doing, how have you done this year? And to orient you for the year ahead. So what do you need to pay attention to? Where did you get stuck this past year? What lessons can you carry with you, so I’m big into transitions, right. And the transition of a year is a really good time to reflect and review. And to plan and to realign moving forward. So taking time to reflect on the year that’s just passed, can make a really big difference in the success you will have in the year ahead. So there’s a real power to reflection, to review to realignment. And so today, my invitation to you is to take a little bit of time for yourself to review the past year. And some of the things that you could ask yourself about include what successes did you have? What failures did you have? What were your stuck points? Where did you get stuck? What surprised you this year? Share? What were some big victories, right? And they might be very personal to you, maybe no one else knows about your victory? And then where were you vulnerable? What are your vulnerabilities?

Dr. Melissa Smith 1:58
Where did you recognize like, Oh, this is a hard one for me. And I hope that you will first of all, take the time to do that. And that you will use that insight and awareness to really help you realign for the upcoming year. There’s real power in that. And of course every week with the podcast, my goal is to help you pursue what matters. By strengthening your confidence to lead. I try to do that by helping you lead with clarity, which is all about connection to purpose, leading with curiosity, which is all about self awareness, self care and self leadership, and leading and building a community. So I’m going to keep today’s episode pretty short and sweet. We’ve got a holiday edition here because I want to certainly support you spending time with those you love the most. But today, we’re really going to help you lead with curiosity. So curiosity is what’s required to help us build awareness and insight into ourselves into how we show up in a world, how we relate to others. And not really, that self awareness is the foundation for self leadership, and self care. And so we’re really going to help you lead with curiosity today. So if you joined me last week, we talked all about the two traps that keep you stuck in stress and overwhelm. So if you want to go back to that podcast, I will include the link in the show notes. But as part of that podcast, I shared four skills to help you get unstuck, because I don’t know about you, but when I’m overwhelmed by stress, I feel like I can’t I don’t know where to start, I don’t know what to do. And so I tried to give you four skills last week to really help you get practical. And so today I’m focusing on that fourth skill that I introduced last week, which is you’ve got to prioritize self care. So that’s one of the skills that really helps us to to get unstuck from stress and overwhelm. And so we’re gonna focus on that. So, of course, if you want to check out the other three skills, I will link to that episode in the show notes. But for today, we’re really going to focus on how you can prioritize self care. And this is one of the biggest vulnerabilities that I see with those I work with. And, you know, I know it’s the single most important thing you can do to help yourself cope more effectively contribute contribute at your highest level and to pursue what matters. It’s really that important. Okay.

Dr. Melissa Smith 4:39
So let’s jump into this at the end of the year is such a good time to reflect and realign high hope that you have some time this holiday season to do that, to realign yourself as you reflect on the year that has just passed and as you prepare for the year ahead. I hope that You have a bit more time during the holidays to slow yourself down, and to truly reflect on how you’re doing. And then to specifically, think about what you could do to help yourself with self care. So a question I would give to you and you know, you can answer this question after you’ve taken time, but just generally, what grade would you give yourself? When it comes to self care for the past year? And you’ve been pretty consistent? Have we been pretty proactive? Right? Are you up there in a range where you, you’re really dialed in and have a strong commitment to self care? Or are you a C student? Are you constantly sacrificing your needs? For others? Are you depleted of energy? Are you fatigued? Are you saying yes, when you should say, No, you wouldn’t recognize your gym shoes if they if you tripped over them, right? So what grade would you give yourself when it comes to how you did with taking care of yourself this past year.

Dr. Melissa Smith 6:06
So I’m going to keep it simple and straightforward for you today, with a focus on practical practical ways that you can help yourself okay. We don’t need to overcomplicate this. And I think when it comes to self care, sometimes we overcomplicate it, and it keeps us from starting. So I’m also really excited to let you know that I have more resources for you. So if as you take some time to review how you’re doing, you recognize that you could use a bit more support a bit more structure. And I, I’ve got something for you. So I just opened the waitlist for my new course, which is stress is not the problem. And I’m so excited, I’m so thrilled about this course, because first of all, most of us have our idea that stress is totally wrong. And we fall for stress nets. And that gets us in trouble. Because we actually end up more stressed and overwhelmed. So our thoughts and our beliefs about stress can actually impact the effect of stress on our bodies. And so it’s really important to have a clear understanding of what stress is how it works and the function of it. Second, I’m really excited about this course. Because when we understand the truth about stress, we know it doesn’t have to keep us stuck. We recognize that stress isn’t the problem. And we recognize that we’re not the problem. And we can actually start to gather and garner the benefits of stress. And believe me, there are many benefits of stress. And third, I’m really passionate about bringing this course to you and providing practical, simple stress coping skills to help you pursue what matters. And, you know, that’s exactly what I have tried to do with this course. So it will overwhelm you. But it will help you have more confidence to tackle life’s challenges. While thriving, not just surviving, we’re done with surviving, we want to help you thrive. So I hope you will consider joining the waitlist, and that you’ll take a look at the course and see if it can be helpful for you. So at the end of the podcast, I will share the link so that you know how you can find that waitlist. And I’d love to have you join the waitlist and learn a little bit more about that course. And if it could be part of your realignment plan for the upcoming year.

Dr. Melissa Smith 8:33
Okay, so as I mentioned in the podcast last week, I shared four skills to help you get unstuck from stress and overwhelm. And today we’re going to focus on the fourth skill, which is prioritize self care, you’ve got to do this. So I feel like I talk about this issue all the time. And sometimes I wonder if anyone who’s listening, right, I talked about this with clients. I talked about this during facilitations. I talked about this during keynote addresses. And everyone nods their head, right, like everyone appreciates that this is important. And yet, there is a gap between knowing and doing. So sometimes we fail to appreciate the power of prioritizing self care, we get it for others, but we don’t prioritize it for ourselves. And this is what I want you to hear. Consistent. Proactive self care is your secret weapon. I promise you it is. So we’ve all been taught to be too self sacrificing. But we fail to realize that we add those we care about both at work and at home. All of us suffer when we don’t prioritize self care. Right. So we think we’re helping others by sacrificing and ultimately we’re not helping them. We’re making things harder. So I really want to encourage your review and reflection on how you’re doing with prioritizing self care, and then of course, the invitation today is to realign yourself. And really make self care a priority, make your commitment to yourself real and true so that when people look at the details of their life, they see that you care about yourself, they see that you respect yourself, that you’re willing to do what you need to do, to thrive and to, you know, increase your well being it is that important. And so I have three R’s to help you do just that. So we’re going to realign with three hours. Okay, so let’s jump into those. So of course, in order in order to realign and stay on course, towards purpose, you’ve got to make time for the three R’s regularly, not just occasionally, okay. And so this is one of the ways that we get stuck. When it comes to self care.

Dr. Melissa Smith 10:58
We are not consistent with it. So we might do it occasionally. But then, right, stressors increase and what falls apart. The first thing that falls apart for most of us, when we get stressed are our coping skills, which, right I mean, think about how incredibly ineffective that is, because when stressors increase, we really need to increase our stress coping, that is the counterbalance. And yet for most of us, when we get stressed, the first thing that goes our coping skills, our sleep gets worse, right? Right, we’re getting less sleep, we’re seeing friends less often, we’re not exercising regularly, we’re, you know, we’re disconnected and just stuck in front of Netflix, instead of actually doing things that fill us up. And so we really need to be very proactive, and consistent with these three R’s. Not perfect, right? That’s, that’s, that is not what I’m saying that we need to be consistent and proactive.

Dr. Melissa Smith 12:02
Okay, so what’s the first R Okay, the first R is rest. Now, I am a zealot when it comes to rest, so you need to be getting enough sleep. For most adults, it’s seven to nine hours pay attention to, to the amount of time that leaves you feeling rested. We need to rest after long days, if you’ve just done a big project. So you know, I facilitate a lot of leadership trainings. And let me tell you, those full day trainings, take it out of me, they are exhausting, I love it. And I bring so much energy to those days, and I love being with the folks. But I am spent at the end of those days. And so I know, when I have one of those long days, I’ve got to plan for that in the rest of my week, right, the next day needs to be pretty low key, I certainly still have things on the calendar. But I’ve got to respect that those long training days require a lot. And so you know, we also want to think about rest days from exercise, right? So that’s really important, and nap. So if you’ve, if you’ve listened to me for any amount of time, you know, I am the nap queen, I take a nap every single day. Those can be very helpful if you keep them to no longer than 20 to 30 minutes. If you go longer than that, of course, it can start to disrupt your sleep cycle. And we don’t want to do that. But naps can be very, very helpful. Also, I have a podcast on now. So if you want to get real geeky about knacks, you can learn more with that podcast. So the second R is renewal. So we want you to review your why. So you’ve got to be connected to purpose because when we’re not, when we’re disconnected from purpose, we become a passenger in our own lives. And so having clarity about what you care about why you do what you do, why you don’t do certain things, right, can be really a powerful motivator, it can deepen our commitment to our big goals and our choices in our life. And so this is also a really good time to review and revise your goals as needed. Right. So lots of people set new goals for themselves at the beginning of each year. I have a three part podcast on goal setting from last year and so if you want some help with that, you can check out those podcasts. But it’s this is a good time to take a look at how did you do with your goals this year? Where were you maybe overly ambitious or fell to plan or you know didn’t actually push yourself enough it can be so helpful and that review of your of your goals from this year is so important for planning for the next year. There’s there’s a lot to learn from that process, and then you know, part of renewal is refreshing with mindfulness practices.

Dr. Melissa Smith 15:08
So mindfulness is one of those, those key skills cut that can make a difference in so many areas, right for physical and mental health and well being. So what does your mindfulness practice look like? Is it meditation? So 10 minutes of meditation every day is great to start garnering benefits. Do you have a spiritual practice, we know spirituality paves the way for resilience? Are you taking time in nature? Right, so around here is pretty wintery. But I love getting outside, even in the dead of winter. Because the mountains are so beautiful, they’re quiet. Time and nature refreshes us in very important ways. And then, you know, thinking, thinking about having quiet time, and whitespace, where you’re not fully booked, you’re not fully obligated, these are those those really precious moments where we can renew and we can consider how we’re doing and and really look at that, that bigger picture. So that’s the second R is to is renewal. So first, the first stars rest, the second, R is renewal. And now the third one is recreation. Hate, we need time to play play, there’s so much evidence about the value of play, it’s not frivolous, it’s not a waste of time, it’s actually incredibly functional. As humans were wired for play, we need to have a physical and mental separation. From work, we got to we got to have a break, you got to take a break. So think about the boundaries that you have between work and home, between work and leisure. Think about how you spend your time, when you’re away from work, are you still engaged in work because you’re checking emails because you’re responding to text, because you’re listening or reading books, totally focused on work, create some mental and physical separation for yourself from work. We think about hobbies as absolutely a form of recreation, learning something new and skill development is a big is a big buffer against stress, overwhelm. So we think about hobbies that give you right it’s an opportunity to be a beginner to be playful to learn something. And to be a novice. We think about skill development, right? Where that focused attention. And the pursuit of skill development is really exciting, right? As humans, we like challenge. So skill development is, is a wonderful way to take a break and to realign yourself. And then you know, when we think about recreation, we also just want to think about leisure time. Do you have downtime? Do you have time to go to the movies? Do you have time to hang out with your kiddos? Do you have time to play games, and really making time for that? It can make such a big difference in wellbeing and really thriving.

Dr. Melissa Smith 18:25
Okay, so there you go. There are three R’s. So we’re going to help you realign with the three R’s. The first one is rest. The second one is renewal. And the third one is recreation. So I’m giving you permission to play I hope, hopefully, you didn’t need that permission. But if you did, there you go. Okay. And then the last thing that I have for you today is I’d like you to commit to one thing you will do for yourself based on what you heard today. So maybe it will be you know, I’m gonna go to bed 20 minutes earlier, or you know what I’m gonna, I’m going to walk, I’m going to start walking and you know, get some balanced movement going. So, just commit to one thing that you will do to help yourself, don’t overcomplicate it, don’t make it harder than it needs to be. But if you know you heard something today, you’re like, Yeah, I could probably use some attention there. Just commit to one thing that you’ll do, and I really hope that you will take the time and, you know, review the year, reflect on it, learn from it, and then let that be the information to help you realign as you move forward. And I really hope that you know, prioritizing self care will be a big part of your realignment life is hard and we need it.

Dr. Melissa Smith 19:50
We need some skills to help us with that. And, you know, the last thing is I just wish everyone a very happy holiday season. I hope he get to spend time with those you love the most and that it’s precious time for you. So thank you so much for spending some time with me this week, and you can head over to my website to you know, find the show notes, some of the links to the other episodes and of course, we’ve got the we’ve got the waitlist open for the new course stress is not the problem. I’m so excited about that. You can find all of that by heading to my website www.drmelissasmith.com/138-realignment/. Okay, one more time. That’s www.drmelissasmith.com/138-realignment/. I hope you have a lovely holiday season. I’m Dr. Melissa Smith. Remember love and work, work and love. That’s all there is. Until next time, take good care

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