Care: The radical love of self care and how to make it a daily practice

Megan helps listeners understand that prioritizing our own mental health is important if we want to be able to show up for others. She emphasizes that self-care is not self-ish, and gives practical advice on incorporating self care into a daily routine. Megan gives examples of how she does this in her own life and gives suggestions for listeners as well. 

Mentioned Resources: 

LMNT Electrolyte solutions: https://drinklmnt.com/

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About the Host: 

Megan Conner is the mother of 6 spectacular humans and a breaker of generational trauma cycles. She has spent the last 10 years overcoming the effects of child SA and other abusive relationships and cycles. She is the author of I Walked Through Fire to Get Here, which was written to give support and hope to other survivors. Megan is passionate about helping people make small changes that make their lives better every day.  

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Megan: I was raised in a high demand. Religion, one of the core tenets of the religion was service to others, and that meant putting everyone else's needs before my own. When I was younger, that meant pleasing my parents and pleasing God.

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Megan: As I got older I was expected to fill my free time with service projects and visits to the sick and needy.

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Megan: When I became a mother I sacrificed everything for my children, hoping to be the kind of mom who is everything to everyone, and who would always be there, no matter what.

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Megan: Lo and behold! I reached the ripe old age of 40, knowing how to care for others, but having no idea how to take care of myself.

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Megan: In a world where expectations are placed on us from every direction. Self care is a radical act of love.

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Megan: If you've never practiced self care, this episode is definitely for you. It's also for anyone who needs help with a variety of ideas for mindful self care and for anyone who occasionally treats themselves, but needs help making self care a priority as part of it.

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Megan: Welcome to another episode of the midlife revolution. I'm Megan Connor, your host. And today we're going to talk about one of my very favorite topics in the entire world.

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Megan: Self care.

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Megan: I figure, if we want to be healthy human beings, we definitely need to make self care a priority.

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Megan: We cannot help others until we help ourselves. And if we can get ourselves into a space of mindfulness where we're thinking about the things that we're gonna do throughout the day. And we're prioritizing our emotional needs and our mental space needs. Then we're gonna be better able to show up for the people that we love in our lives. So I think self care starts with mindfulness.

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Megan: and the act of being mindful is just accessing our ability to be aware of what we're directly experiencing through all of our senses and to focus our thoughts and emotions

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Megan: as they're happening rather than dismissing our thoughts and emotions and then trying to figure out later why we feel so stressed. So when we're in a constant state of stress, or if we're stuck in survival mode, it's almost impossible to be mindful, because we start to ignore our deeper thoughts, and even what's happening in our body, we start shutting down the parts of our brain, that process emotions, and we disconnect from that inner voice that tells us what we need in real time.

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Megan: It's possible for us to stay trapped in that mode for months or even years. So practicing mindfulness on a daily basis, and actually several times throughout the day is incredibly important to our mental and emotional health.

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Megan: And you don't need a special time or place to practice mindfulness, and that can be where it starts if you haven't practiced mindfulness before. But it's important to get adept at being mindful in all kinds of situations, even when there's chaos going on, or even when there's lots of people around, it's as simple as making the conscious choice to be mindful, no matter where you are or what situation you're in.

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Megan: I just tell myself, or remind myself that I want to be mindful, and then I go through each of my 5 senses and notice what I'm experiencing. I notice where I'm holding tension in my body. I notice the depth and the rate of my breathing, breathing. I notice the sounds and the smells around me, and I just look around and take a minute to observe what I see.

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Megan: I really love the simple act of just stopping what I'm doing and taking a deep breath and taking a few moments for myself.

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Megan: If I'm in a social situation for example, at a big table with people who are having dinner. I can just excuse myself to the restroom and close the stall door, and just close my eyes and and breathe, and hopefully it doesn't smell too bad in there, but just it can give me just a little bit of space to be mindful if especially if there's a conversation that comes up around the dinner table. That's stressful for me, or that I need to be intentional about the way that I respond for things.

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Megan: It helps me to just create a space for an important memory, or to practice gratitude for where I am and what I'm experiencing, or to give myself some words and phrases that I need in somewhat of a stressful situation.

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Megan: Practicing mindfulness also helps me to remember to connect with my emotions and take the time to observe them and name them.

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Megan: So I try to approach my emotions with a sense of curiosity when I'm experiencing and experiencing a negative emotion. I try to understand where it's coming from, and why.

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Megan: if I'm experiencing positive emotions, I take a moment to be grateful for the peace that I feel or for the emotion that I'm feeling.

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Megan: Mindfulness also helps me to remember that I am not my thoughts. In other words, when I have a thought or an emotion it doesn't define who I am.

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Megan: and it also reminds me that no feeling lasts forever. So if I'm feeling particularly stressed or sad. If I have a lot of grief come up. One of the first things that I do is say, Okay, I don't like the way this feels, but I know it's not going to last forever. So let me figure out what it is and where it's coming from.

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Megan: In that way I can choose to observe my thoughts and emotions without immediately reacting or acting on them.

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Megan: and I make sure that I'm in control of my emotions, and that my thoughts don't control me.

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Megan: So here are a few ideas of ways that you can be mindful, and if you've never practiced mindfulness before, it's sort of the same thing as meditation. In a way, meditation really just means to take a moment to stop and think. It doesn't have to be an hour-long meditation. A lot of people say, Oh, I'm so bad at meditation. But

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Megan: it's really just because our thoughts tend to wander. And that's okay. If we can focus on one thought and then move on to something else. That's totally fine. We don't need to be focused on gratitude for an hour at a time until we get really practiced and adept at it. And then I think that's an awesome thing to be able to do so. Mindfulness can be as simple as starting with just again scanning your body for tension, so closing your eyes, taking a deep breath.

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Megan: and scanning all the way from your head, through your neck and shoulders, through your arms, through your abdomen, through your pelvis, through your legs, through your toes, and just seeing, noticing where there's tension and tightness, and then you can go through again with the cleansing breath, and just release the tension and the tightness that you feel

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Megan: anywhere in your body. For me, personally, I tend to clench my jaw. I tend to stick my tongue to the roof of my mouth, and I tend to hold tension in my shoulders, especially my my right shoulder. For some reason.

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Megan: if I'm playing the piano or typing, I unconsciously raise this shoulder as I'm going, and then, before I know it, I've got a not in my back, so I try to take some time every few minutes to just see if I'm holding tension or tightness somewhere. It's especially important for me to do this. If I'm on a stressful phone call, or if I'm having a really important conversation, I try to take some time to breathe and release tension.

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Megan: Just closing your eyes and breathing deeply, is a great way to be mindful. You don't even have to do anything else but focus on your breath if you can clear your mind of all of the things that are kind of spinning around in there and just focus on breathing for even a minute. It has huge health benefits, and it can also just help you sort of reset everything and then go on with your day. And so it's really important to just

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Megan: take the time to breathe a few times a day.

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Megan: Another way to practice mindfulness is to observe your surroundings from a point of view that you don't normally take. So most of us, when we go into a room we tend to take the same position every time. So if we're walking into our office, we tend to go immediately, sit at our chair for walking into the kitchen, we might go immediately to the sink, or immediately to the refrigerator. And it's just mindfulness about your location in the room

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Megan: is a good way to just see things from a different perspective, you know. Maybe you bring a stool over to the kitchen sink and sit down while you're doing the dishes. Or maybe you decide to stand while you're taking a phone call rather than sitting at your desk. Maybe you decide to shift your focus out the window while you're on a phone call. Instead of staring at your computer screen.

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Megan: So just noticing how things look different from a new perspective, you could walk someplace that you normally would drive to, and that gives you a whole new perspective. You can take a different route to work, even if it's a little bit longer. Sometimes I like to take the long way, just because

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Megan: the trees are prettier than the freeway, and it only costs me an extra 5 min. But it makes a big difference in how I feel about approaching my day sometimes changing a habit like turning off the radio while you're driving in the car can give you a chance to be thinking a little bit deeper than just distracting yourself from your thoughts. So just being observant, and noticing how things look different from a new perspective, is a great way to be mindful.

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Megan: One of my favorites is practicing patience by noticing small details of the situation. Instead of fixating on what's not happening fast enough. For example, if I'm standing at a checkout counter.

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Megan: and the cashier is moving particularly slow, and I don't need to do anything until they're finished, and but just put my card in, so sometimes I'll just take a minute to scan around and look at the different people who are in the store, and just look out the window and observe what's happening in the parking lot. And sometimes, if I am just waiting impatiently for something to load on my computer.

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Megan: I'll take a break and pick up a photo book or something else. Instead of just being impatient and sitting there tapping my fingers, I can

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Megan: find something else to focus on that changes where my mind is going.

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Megan: One of my favorite ways to reset to my emotional state is to close my eyes and imagine the face of someone that I love.

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Megan: and then focus on the feelings that appear when I see that person's face. One of my favorites, people to do this with is my grandson. He is 4 years old, and he is a bundle of joy. I really love him so if I'm having a particularly stressful time at work. Sometimes I'll just pull up a picture of him or a video of him or us together, and I'll scan through those pictures, or

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Megan: if I don't have my phone handy, I'll just close my eyes and think about the last time that we were together, and the smile on his face, and it instantly changes my mood and brightens everything up. That only takes a few seconds to do.

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Megan: Turning off your phone is another really excellent way to practice mindfulness, and I know that can feel scary to us sometimes because we have so much going on on our phone. We've got all of our apps there, and we've got all of our communication there, and it's the way people get in touch with us, but sometimes just completely turning it off and saying, You know what I'm gonna take 15 min for myself.

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Megan: and then I'll get back to whatever it is everybody else wants to do. So if you're meditating, or if you're trying to take some time to be mindful.

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Megan: challenge you to turn off your phone and just see how that feels to not have to worry about what notifications might come up.

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Megan: One of the small ways that I created a revolution around. How I relate with my phone is that I turned off push notifications on everything that wasn't absolutely essential. So I have a push notification for my text messages and for my work messages and my work email and everything else is kind of superfluous. I don't have to be notified right away.

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Megan: And I really like the idea of having to intentionally open my Instagram or my Facebook or my Youtube app in order to pick it up instead of having my phone tell me when I should open those apps, and I started doing this because I was in a conversation with my partner, and he was telling me, you know, that it frustrated him when he was trying to have a consequential conversation with me.

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Megan: and I would constantly look at my phone so a notification would come up and I would check it and go. Don't need to worry about that. I check it. Don't need to worry about that check. It need to worry about that.

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Megan: And he was getting frustrated because he felt like that was me interrupting him, and he's absolutely right. And so that was when I made the decision to turn off my push notifications, and only pick up my phone with intention when I really wanted to. So that way, when we're in a conversation, I'm not constantly checking to see if the notification is important or not, because I've turned off everything that's not important.

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Megan: and if we're having dinner together, and I know that my children are in a safe place, and I'm not worried about them contacting me within the next 30 min or so

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Megan: I'll usually just put my phone face down and out of my reach, and that way I'm not distracted when a notification comes up, and I'll just check in with it every 15 or 20 min if I know that they're away, or if I'm gonna have to pick them up soon.

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Megan: and that's, I think, a super great way to be a little bit more mindful and have a better relationship with your phone.

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Megan: So

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Megan: mindfulness is kind of the gateway to the the deeper practice of meditation.

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Megan: and so learning to be mindful is that first step towards successfully incorporating meditation into your daily routine.

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Megan: and in our fast paced digital world many people find it difficult to slow down and focus long enough to meditate successfully. But I would like to pause it that even just a 1 min

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Megan: meditation is a successful meditation, especially if you're just starting out. So be kind to yourself as you learn this new skill, and it's like anything worth doing. It takes an investment of time and patience to become proficient at it. It takes a practice, and it takes a lot of intention. And so what I say to myself, usually, when I'm trying to start a new habit or an intention

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Megan: is that I'm going to spend the first week just focusing on trying to incorporate it into my routine, and I know that I'm not going to get to it every single day. My intention is to do it every day, but if I don't mess, if I don't get there every day. I'm not going to shame myself for that. I'm going to give myself grace and say, if I do it, 50% of the time the first week.

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Megan: Then I consider that a victory. So 7 days in the week, if I make it at least 4 out of those days, I'm gonna consider it a victory, and if I only make it 3, I'm gonna say, you know what I almost got there, and I'm gonna try again next week next week. I'm just gonna say, Hey, last week I did 3 days this week. It's my intention to do at least 4,

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Megan: and I sort of give myself a little bit of leeway and leg room, and just not expect myself to do all 7 days right out of the gate.

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Megan: So one of the important things about meditation is to schedule a specific time. If you're just starting out with this practice, it's

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Megan: kind of hard to just try and fit it in somewhere.

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Megan: It's a lot easier, I find, if I make a specific time to do it, and it doesn't have to be first thing in the morning, and it doesn't have to be the last thing at night. You could just set your watch for 3 Pm. And say, at 3 Pm. I'm going to leave my office, or I'm going to leave my house, and I'm going to take a break and go meditate, or I'm going to go into another room and close the door and meditate and set a specific time length of time for yourself.

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Megan: You can write. Set a reminder on your phone, set a timer on your watch, set an alarm, write it on your planner in your calendar, and then show up for yourself by keeping the appointment with yourself.

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Megan: That's one of the ways. To build a better relationship with yourself is to keep those little promises to yourself.

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Megan: Now, the first time that you meditate, the most important thing is to just do it.

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Megan: and it's not going to be super successful. The first time.

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Megan: as you start to incorporate meditation into your routine.

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Megan: You'll want to set aside a specific amount of time every day and start small and get

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Megan: longer as you go.

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Megan: And if

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Megan: for you, you need meditation prior to an important phone call, or before engaging in a difficult conversation or before taking on a task that you're not, is not your favorite task. Go ahead and set a few minutes beforehand

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Megan: to to go ahead and meditate. Be mindful, do some breath work, just think of a calm and relaxing place, and that's and skill. We'll get to a little bit later as well. But if I'm going to make a phone call, and I know that there might be some difficult things that come up.

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Megan: I try to take some time before I pick up the phone to just reset.

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Megan: Set some intentions for what I want to have happen during the call.

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Megan: Give myself a little bit of a cue of the type of interaction that I want to have. And do I want to be particularly strong on this phone call. Do I want to be particularly compassionate? Do I want to listen more than I talk? Or do? I want to be very concise in my message, so just taking a few minutes to decide how you want the outcome. To go is a great way to be mindful.

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Megan: So if you struggle with meditation.

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Megan: that small timeframe can be like a goal to see if you can make it through the whole time. So if you start with 1 min and say I'm just going to concentrate for 1 min on everything I'm graded I'm grateful for, and then you can work your way up and add time each session, and if you enjoy meditation already, and you're already proficient at it, the timer can be a way to make sure that you don't neglect other responsibilities and just get lost in your meditation, or miss something that's really important.

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Megan: So

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Megan: before you meditate.

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Megan: be mindful of your intended outcome. Do you just want to focus on breathing? Do you have a specific goal? If you're meditating on a particular topic, it might be helpful to state your intention to yourself. For example, I want to notice all the ways that I kept promises to myself today. Then, when your mind wanders during meditation, because it inevitably will, because we're human beings, then you can thank the errant thought for appearing and ask it to move aside and allow the thoughts on topic to be the most present thoughts.

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Megan: When I first began meditating, it was easy for my mind to water wander, especially since I struggle with Adhd, and it depends on where I am. In my vindication that time of day there were lots of interruptions to my thought focus. I'd have a trouble concentrating for more than just a couple of minutes. And I would just say to myself, I'm grateful to notice the thought that I forgot to take the trash out. But right now I want to focus on things I was successful at today, and so I'll just get my thoughts back on track.

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Megan: Once I learned to greet those errant thoughts and then dismiss them kindly. My meditation practice became a lot more effective.

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Megan: Another thing I think that's really important is to get into a comfortable space and make sure that you can stay there for the allotted time that you've set for yourself. So it's best if you can turn off your phone, close your door, remove distractions. When I was a young mom. If I wanted time to myself, I literally had to put a sign on my door, or I had to lock my door. When my kids were too young to to read

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Megan: I would go into my closet very often, and just spend some time in there alone. And sometimes I could hear my kids going. Where's Mom? Have you seen Mom? You know, and I would never be in there for more than just a few minutes, but sometimes I just needed that time to reset, and I think that's important for all of us, especially if you're a young mom, and you're serving the needs of your young kids all day long. It's so important to take a couple of minutes to yourself every once in a while.

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Megan: and just reset and remind yourself why you love being a mom, and also think of some things that you're going to do later, when the kids go to bed.

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Megan: When I meditate, I kind of go through a little bit of a process and a pattern, and I say I usually set an intention, and then I spend the first minute or so just scanning my body for that tightness that I sometimes feel I take some time to notice my breathing. I want to breathe normally, but if I come to the meditation already kind of breathing shallow, then I want to make an adjustment for what feels comfortable.

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Megan: breathe deeper a few times, take slower breaths a few times, and then just allow my breathing to go on as normal, unless my entire meditation is on breathing, and then that's a different thing.

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Megan: So I want to give you a few ideas for topics that you can meditate on

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Megan: one of my favorites is practicing gratitude, just going through a list of everything that I was grateful for during the day or everything I was grateful for during the previous day, or everything that I'm grateful for, that's gonna come up during my day.

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Megan: Another really good one is naming emotions. If you recall a time during the day that you felt a strong emotion, or if you did have some kind of event, like a panic attack or a wave of grief came over. Explore where you felt that emotion in your body, and describe the sensation to yourself, and then see if you can identify a specific name for that emotion.

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Megan: and sometimes we need a little help with this, and I'll put a link in the show notes to an emotion wheel that I use sometimes, because on the outside we have these big emotions like sadness and fear. And what you can do is you can go to the sadness Tab, and you can dig one down. It'll say, Are you sad because you're experiencing grief? Are you sad because you're lonely? It'll help you dig down to find what the core emotion is.

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Megan: and then you can take it a step further if you want to, and see if you can identify what caused it or what circumstances led to it.

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Megan: Therapists, of course, can be particularly helpful in working through this with you and trying to get to the core of what your emotion is, and why it came up from you.

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Megan: Another thing is affirmations.

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Megan: You can speak to yourself the way that you would speak to a child or a good friend, express compassion for yourself, point out your good qualities and all the things you love about yourself. I was talking to someone about this the other day, and they made the suggestion that you talk to yourself like you would talk to your pet.

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Megan: So we all have these little terms of endearment that we use for our pets. We tell them how beautiful they are. We tell them what a good dog they are, what a good kitty they are!

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Megan: Imagine if we spoke to ourselves that way. I know it seems kind of silly, but it really does lighten your mood and help you feel better if you can point out your good qualities and talk to yourself in a loving way.

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Megan: Another example of something you can do in meditation is what we call manifestation, just visualizing a positive outcome for each scenario that you're gonna go throughout your day or before a meeting or before a phone call or before an interaction with a family member or a loved one.

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Megan: I don't believe in the kind of manifestation that I believe if I think hard enough about a Ferrari that one is going to drive into my driveway. But I do believe in the kind of manifestation of

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Megan: reminding myself that I'm a capable human being that I'm capable of being successful and compassionate, and that in this specific interaction this is how I want it to go, and I'm going to set that intention for myself, and know that I'm capable of accomplishing that intention. So that kind of manifestation of visual visualizing

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Megan: positive outcomes for scenarios. So it would be great if you wanna pause and take a minute to write down some of your own ideas that you can meditate on, and some of your own ideas of how to be more mindful, and some of the things that you want to meditate

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Megan: over, or if you want to take a second, to set an intention for creating a meditation routine, set an a time of day, set an amount of time and say how many times that you're going to do it this next week so that you can practice it.

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Megan: And just remember that making time for yourself, prioritizing yourself and your own needs. These are radical acts of love for yourself, and you don't need to feel guilty about setting aside that time, because when you do this you're gonna have more energy for all of the people in your life. So even if it means that you have to delay someone else's interaction with you, or you have to tell your kids. They need to wait 5 min before you start dinner or an activity.

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Megan: Taking those few moments for yourself is going to make a big difference in the outcome of your interactions with other people.

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Megan: So that's self care on mindfulness and meditation. And I wanna move now to a different kind of self care which involves physical activity or movement. Now, I don't want anybody to get upset and think. Oh, no! I have to start a huge exercise routine right now. This can be as simple as just taking a walk or getting outside

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Megan: and walking around your yard. You don't even have to go for a walk or have a specific distance in mind just getting outside and breathing in that good fresh air is going to be really good for you

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Megan: for a long time. The only form of exercise that I did was walking. In fact, it was almost an entire year.

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Megan: This came after spending 4 years of pushing my body to its extreme limits in crossfit 5 days a week.

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Megan: and I decided at 1 point that I was not being kind to my body, and I was generating a lot of cortisol, and that was making it hard for me to sleep at night. I was getting prickly sensations in my arms and legs in the middle of the night it was waking me up. And so I decided I wanted to reduce the stress, reduce the cortisol. And so I just, I said, I'm just gonna take some time off and walk. And I didn't know that that was gonna turn into a year. But I enjoyed walking so much that it just became a way to start my

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Megan: day and energize, and sometimes I would get up early and go on a super long walk, and sometimes I would just take a short walk

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Megan: a couple blocks down and back, just to sort of reset and start my day better. Sometimes I would take a walk after dinner, especially if it was really nice outside, and that was a great way to just decompress. After dinner, as opposed to doing some of the numbing behaviors. We sometimes do like watching TV or scrolling through our phone or things like that.

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Megan: So walking can be a really great way to take care of yourself

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Megan: would put on a podcast of something that that made me feel peaceful. And I would just go and breathe the air.

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Megan: Now, speaking of outside, I did some research a while back about this, and there was an article in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics that said that the healthiest air is clean air from outdoors, which is made of negatively charged Ion.

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Megan: And the reason why is because the Ionic structure of the air we breathe inside is gets destroyed by air circulation and air conditioning and heating units. So the more time that we spend indoors, the less we get exposed to negatively charged ions. So

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Megan: conversely, the types of air that contain the most negatively charged ions are found around evergreen trees, and anywhere water is moving, such as around thunderstorms, beach surf, and my very, very favorite is waterfalls. I love a good waterfall hike. If I can get to a waterfall I will do it, and apparently there are really great benefits of that negatively charged air.

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Megan: So in this article researchers found that negative ions help regulate sleep patterns and mood. They can reduce your stress. They can boost your immune system functioning. They can increase your metabolism of carbs and fats, and they can even kill or inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria if you do it often enough. So even if all you're doing is taking a walk, and you're getting into nature, that's better than being inside.

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Megan: And again, if you're walking around evergreen trees or water that's moving, that's gonna be the highest and best form of getting all of that good air into your system. If you do this every day, it's really gonna change the way that your body functions, and that's been scientifically proven. And so it's a great way to practice. Self care.

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Megan: stretching yoga and somatic exercises are another great way to just change the way that your body moves.

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Megan: that can help reset your mood. And just simple stretching, accompanied by deep breathing. Even for a few minutes a day, can elevate your energy level, and it can help just help you sort of reset and recalibrate.

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Megan: Simplified way to describe Yoga is stretching. So if you're beginning, you've never taken yoga before, just a good stretching routine can be good for you, and I love the fact that there are so many great resources out there for online Yoga classes that you can do by yourself. So you don't have to have a Gym membership

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Megan: or set aside time for a class. You can do it in your own home, and I did that for a long time, and it was mostly just when I was feeling stressed. I would take some extra time to do some stretching, and that always made me feel a lot better. There's a lot of free guidance videos across social media platforms and online

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Megan: and somatic exercises are getting a lot of attention now because they can actually help you release trauma that gets stored in your body. So if you've been through traumatic experiences, if you're in therapy healing, a great accompaniment to that can be somatic exercises which help release all of the hormones and the stress that gets stored in your body and the tension that gets stored there when you experience things that are traumatic. This has been a tremendous help in my life.

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Megan: my sleeping completely changed when I started doing somatic exercises. And now I feel like I'm so much more aware of where I still store tension in my body that it's helped with my weightlifting and my exercise routines and almost everything. So I really highly recommend exploring somatic exercises. Now, if you've been through traumatic events and you haven't done any type of therapy whatsoever

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Megan: you might want to check in with a therapist before you start somatic exercises, because it can be a really emotional experience, and you might need some guidance through those things to make sure that you stay well and emotionally healthy as you're exploring that new form

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Megan: of releasing trauma from your body.

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Megan: This is one of my favorites. Do you remember when you were a kid and you had recess a couple of times a day?

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Megan: Just we don't do that as adults, you know and play can help to boost our creativity and sharpen our sense of humor and help us cope better with stress. And so, whatever it was that you played when you were a kid, whether it was foursquare or you got on the swings, or you played a sport, or you hung on the monkey bars.

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Megan: It can be a great thing for you to do as an adult, too. And one of the things that I liked is that when I was taking my kids to the park after school, or whatever I would go and get on the swings, or I would go and try the monkey bars again, you know, and I would sort of play with them. And that really helped me to connect with my kids and also to reduce stress as a mom. That was really important. Now don't feel bad if you're 50 or 60 years old, and you don't have any kids to go to the Park with or to the school, play yard with.

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Megan: go by yourself, have a great time, enjoy it, and I have to say there was one time when I was walking past my kids elementary school, and it was probably 5 or 6 o'clock at night, and I saw a lady over there on the swing. She probably was in her mid 30, but she was there by herself, just taking advantage of the swings, and I thought that was awesome. And so I make it a point. Sometimes when I'm passing by a park to stop at the swing, since that was one of my favorite things when I was a kid.

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Megan: I think it's more important to do something that makes you feel like you're doing it for fun and less important. What activity you choose to pursue. So you know, even if you have to do it by yourself, just hitting a ball against the wall with a tennis racket, or tossing a ball or going skating.

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Megan: skateboard bike trails, any of those kinds of things, but just reconnecting with your childhood self and remembering the things that you enjoyed doing, then

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Megan: that can be just a great way to take care of yourself, to boost your mood, and to just do something fun with your day.

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Megan: Another exercise option is body weight only exercises that way. You don't need a whole bunch of equipment. You don't need weights, and these are things again that you can look up online. There's lots of resources that are free for body weight exercises that are really healthy for you. I used to particularly enjoy high intensity

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Megan: interval training, which meant that you would, for example, jog in place as fast as you could for 30 s, and then rest for 30 s, and then do jumping jacks for 30 s and then rest for 30 s, and just a few minutes of that really wears you out and also boosts your energy levels. For later in the day. It's a great way to do a 5 min workout

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Megan: without having to get all gussied up for the gym, and you know, workout clothes and going to a location to get some exercise in.

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Megan: Sorry.

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Megan: Excuse me.

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Megan: one of the other ways that you can do self care is through nutrient rich foods.

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Megan: Now

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Megan: I love to do self care by giving myself a little treat like I love Macros. I love ice cream, and I'll just take a few bites of ice cream as a little bit of self care. But it's important to notice that it tends to be, at least for me, anyway. Default way, to do self care.

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Megan: and you can fall into a routine of grabbing for a snack

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Megan: instead of dealing with your emotions. And at least that was the way it was for me, and sometimes we eat just mindlessly eat. I try to be very mindful when I eat. I try to savor each bite of food that I take, and especially if I'm having

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Megan: calorie, dense food like ice cream or chips or macaroons, or one of my favorite fresh baked cookies.

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Megan: I remind myself that I don't need to eat an entire cookie in order to get the benefits of the boost. The serotonin boost that I'm looking for. If I take one bite of the cookie, and I really savor it if I pick up that cookie, and I notice the texture of the sea salt on the top, and I smell it, and I smell all of the different flavors, like the brown sugar and the chocolate and the salt and the

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Megan: the carameli vanilla kind of flavor, and just take that in and appreciate the cookie before I ever take a bite. I get so much more enjoyment out of it, and then I can take that one bite. I can savor all the flavors and all of the textures, and then I can put the cookie away and save it for later, or one of my favorite things to do since I was raised in a scarcity household is to just throw the cookie away

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Megan: because I don't need the whole thing.

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Megan: It's given me the benefit that I wanted it to. If I save it for later, it's not going to be as good and as fresh. And it's okay for that cookie to have served its purpose with one bite just as much as it would have if I had finished it. It took me a long time to get to that spot.

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Megan: and if you're like me, you might wanna just write that idea down and meditate on it for a little bit, so that you can overcome the mental hurdles that I had to overcome, of scarcity, of saving, of not throwing things away of completely consuming things in order to get the full value out of it. And that's actually one of the things that I learned from Marie Condo. She was talking about a client of hers that she had that bought address.

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Megan: and the person really loved the dress. When they bought it they put in their closet, and then they never found an occasion to wear it. But

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Megan: the person who bought the dress talked about bringing it home, trying it on, feeling beautiful in it, and then putting it away to save it for the proper occasion. Well, it never got worn, and a year passed and the tags were still on it. Marie Kondo reminded her client that the value of that dress was how she felt when she bought it, and how she felt when she tried it on the first time.

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Megan: and that dress had now fulfilled its entire value, and she could feel good about giving it away or donating it, because she wasn't going to be using it. And I've started to try and adopt that concept into lots of different areas of my life, of realizing that I don't have to completely wear something out

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Megan: in its usefulness in order for it to be

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Megan: useful to me. And so I tried to incorporate that into eating as well.

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Megan: Now, when we talk about nutrition.

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Megan: we need to understand that the inflammation that's caused by consuming processed foods and sugars can contribute a lot to our anxiety and depression. And so that's why it's important to choose most of the time to consume nutrient rich foods. And my dad, when he had heart surgery. His heart surgeon told him that he needed to eat the exact diet that the doctor was prescribing for him 80% of the time.

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Megan: and the other 20%. He could eat other things, not whatever you want, but you could incorporate other things into your diet, and that's kind of the way I've tried to approach it too. So if you think of this, 80, 20 approach out of every 10 days, if 8 of them you're eating healthy, and the other 2 days you're allowing yourself to have more more treats, or whatever it is that you wanna incorporate into that. Now, I, personally don't think it's healthy to

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Megan: eat

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Megan: unhealthily for an entire day, because to me that that helps that makes me get into a habit of grabbing for those calorie dense foods. So what I would prefer to do is every 2 or 3 days allow myself a dessert, or a treat, or some kind of other indulgence, and that way. I'm giving my body time to process those processed foods. And I'm not spending an entire day eating things that are going to be really difficult on my system.

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Megan: It can be really tempting to just treat yourself with comfort, food, and desserts when you're feeling sad or stressed. But most of the time the negative consequences of reaching for those high, fat, high calorie foods as a means of soothing.

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Megan: sore emotions far outweigh that temporary satisfaction that you get, and the dopamine high that you get from that

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Megan: occasional adult indulgences are definitely a must for me. I do enjoy a sweet treat or fast food option, especially a good burger from time to time, but when I'm thinking about self care, I try to make it a habit to engage in activities that boost serotonin rather than disrupt my clean eating habits. So that's why I tend to go for meditation

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Megan: or physical exercise first, before I think about getting a sweet treat. So if I prioritize those 2 things in my self care, then sweet treat comes third or fourth or fifth after those things, and it's a lot easier for me to do healthier things

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Megan: so incorporating that mindfulness into eating is really important to me as well. So I take joy, and selecting a menu and shopping for high quality ingredients. I've learned to appreciate the ritual of washing and chopping, a variety of colorful foods and just prepping things. When I get home from the grocery store, and I totally indulge in the sights of sound, sights, and sounds of sauteing my food, boiling, searing, grilling

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Megan: all of those things. I'm just such a sensual person that

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Megan: the feeling of that and the sound of it, and the smell of it is something that I've tried to become more mindful of, and it helps me enjoy the routine of preparing healthy food so much more so remind yourself that feeding your body, nutritional food is a radical act of love.

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Megan: reduce or eliminate your access to those high calorie or calorie dense foods. If you have a tendency to grab for a snack food like a chip

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Megan: instead, replace it with something crunchy, like a carrot in your favorite ranch dip, or something like that.

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Megan: Of course, going overboard with dips and sauces can be problematic as well. So again, just mindfulness is super super important.

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Megan: Educate yourself about super foods that are optimal for brain health and hormone balance, and that goes for men, too. Hormones are important for men, too, and then stock up on those things. So you always have some handy. For example, I've always got some canned salmon on hand. I prefer that way better than the canned tuna, so I'll make myself a little salmon salad

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Megan: instead of tuna salad, and that's really high in Omega. 3, 6, 9. The fatty acids that are really great for your brain. Health. Blueberries are a super food. Chia seeds are a super food. I like to use those as the topping on yogurt and things like that. So just educating yourself about superfoods and finding some that can be your favorites and just keep some around

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Megan: and then another thing I like to do is just make a list of the foods that I really enjoy and then create a menu or a meal plan that revolves around those foods rather than just thinking. What should we have for dinner? I guess we'll have chicken. I've got some in the freezer, you know, making that, taking the time to make yourself a menu that you know you're gonna look forward to eating is one of the best ways to make sure that you're eating healthier foods.

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Megan: planning ahead rather than just grabbing for some fast food is important and having some things on hand for those times when you really are short on time. But you know you can make this meal

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Megan: in a in a quick and healthy way when I was a young mom. That was one of the hardest things for me is that I had to come home from school, get kids ready, take them to sports practice. Come back fixed dinner feet, serve dinner, do laundry all of those things, and I felt like I never had enough time to sit down and plan a meal plan or a menu plan. But when I took the time to do that once a week, say, for example, on a Friday.

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Megan: if I would sit down a meal plan for the next day. Then I could go early Saturday morning to the supermarket, when there was hardly anybody there, I would make sure that I would have plenty of those foods on hand. And then, when I started the week on Monday, I didn't have to start thinking about a menu plan because it already been done the weekend before. So again, taking those times to plan can be super super important. Water. Water is so important.

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Megan: Part of my self-care routine is that I prepare for myself a bottle of water every single day, and I am not sponsored by element. But I highly recommend element packets. I'm going to put a link down in the show notes for how you can get a hold of those. These are electrolyte salts that you put in your water, and it helps your body to recharge electrolytes throughout the day. Now, if you're working out, of course, that's super important. But most of us don't think about the fact that we lose electrolytes throughout the day just by simply existing

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Megan: any time that we are sweating. If we're walking and experiencing changes in temperature, we're going to lose some electrolytes, and that sometimes is the reason why we get so tired by the end of the day is because we're

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Megan: missing electrolytes and water, not really because we're just stressed about the day. So these packets are flavored, and I really enjoy them. I have a water bottle that is about a quart, and I put in one of those salt packets, and then

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Megan: I just keep refilling it throughout the day. I usually only use one salt packet per day, but certainly you could use a couple if you hate the taste of water. This is an excellent solution for you, and it's a good way to get yourself in the habit of drinking water all the time.

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Megan: So it took me a long time to love myself enough to allow myself to feel spoiled when I feed myself very well. And so I just wanna list a few of the meals that I eat that make me feel spoiled. Now all of these foods are super healthy. If you get real organic ingredients, eat closer to the ground. Get meat with no, no hormones.

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Megan: You don't always have to buy organic. In fact, it's worth it to look into which fruits and vegetables. It makes a difference for you to buy organic. There's something called the dirty dozen list, and it's a place where they online where they will list. The fruits and vegetables that are in season that are full of the most pesticides right now, so avoid those during this season.

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Megan: and instead reach for I think they have a another list for clean vegetables, and I'm not sure exactly how many there are on there, because there's nothing catchy that rhymes with clean. So it's just worth looking into. You are worth taking the time to do that kind of research and find out what works best for you.

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Megan: So here are some of my favorite meals.

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Megan: I love to make organic mixed greens that include butter lettuce because they're sort of crunchy, and they have a little hollow tube at the end. I like to drizzle it with truffle oil and balsamic vinaigrette, and toss it with sea salt and fresh cracked pepper that to me is the best salad in the world. I don't need any other kind of dressing whatsoever

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Megan: that is great for me. I also love to do shrimp cocktail or sevice with homemade sauces. I really hate the prepackaged cocktail sauce that comes with shrimp cocktail, and if you've never made your own with fresh ingredients. It will absolutely change your life and change your relationship to shrimp if you love it.

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Megan: Another favorite is coconut chicken, curry over basamati rice. I love the texture and the shape of Basmati rice, and that buttery flavor, and the coconut chicken sauce is one of my favorites. If I'm craving comfort, food instead of biscuits and gravy. I do coconut chicken curry, and it's healthier for you, and it's also just super easy to make.

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Megan: Scallops are one of my favorite meals. I like to make scallops pan seared, and butter, and then serve it over mushroom risotto with steamed snow peas. Now risotto can be a little bit expensive. So you do have to kind of maybe budget that in or whatever. But and it takes a little bit more time to do it right, and to learn how to do it right. There are some pre-packaged brands of risotto out there that are pretty good, but you do also want to be careful about preservatives and additives and things like that. So

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Megan: it took me a long time to learn how to make risotto. Well, but that's one of the ways that I practice self care, was learning how to do it. Well, so I could do it for myself and not pay a million dollars for it in a restaurant.

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Megan: One of my very, very favorite things to eat is a good steak. My favorite cut of steak is Filet Mignon, because I don't have a huge appetite. It's a smaller steak, and it's very buttery and tender when it's cooked well. And again learning how to cook it well, was another one of those ways that I practiced self care.

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Megan: So I like to do my steak with roasted sweet potatoes or roasted baby potatoes, with lots of spices and seasoning on them. I love to do broiled Brussel sprouts. I'll cut them in half, drizzle them with balsamic vinegar and a little bit of olive oil and sea salt, put them in the oven and cook them until they get really crispy.

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Megan: One of my favorite breakfast foods is to do poached eggs over salmon fillet with homemade Hollandaise sauce. Again, learning how to make Hollandaise sauce was one of the ways I practice self care, and if you don't want to do salmon fillet. I've also done over bacon. I've done it over ham. The traditional eggs. Benedict is an English muffin with ham, and then a poached egg, and and

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Megan: Hollandaise sauce, sprinkled with a little bit of paprika or cayenne. If you're feeling spicy, those are some of my favorite things, and I don't just do it for breakfast. In fact, when my kids were little, we had breakfast for dinner at least once a week, because it felt pretty easy to me to just make some scrambled eggs and pancakes, and it felt like a treat for the kids.

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Megan: As a snack. I really love sugar, snap peas dipped in hummus or homemade Tutsiki. If you've never made your own homemade Tutsiki again, gonna change your life.

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Megan: One of my favorite appetizers to do is baked Brie, with sauteed almond slivers and granny snip apple slices. So what I'll do is I'll melt a little butter in a skillet on low heat.

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Megan: I'll put the entire bree wheel in there.

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Megan: and I will sprinkle slivered almonds around the edges of that. Sometimes I'll saute the almonds up a little bit before I put the bree in so that they get a little more toasty, and then I'll put them to the side of the pan.

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Megan: Keep that bree wheel in the center until it starts to get a little squishy. If you feel it on top, the bottom will be squishy, then flip it over, do the same thing for the other side, and then I like to do really thinly sliced. Granny Smith apples a little apple with a little bit of brie on top, and a little almond on top of that is just hmm! So delicious! I love it.

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Megan: Another one of my favorite meals is to do beef fajitas with homemade guacamole and roasted salsa, and all I do for guacamole is, I just do smashed avocado. I do about one small lime for one large avocado, and I juice it. Juice the lime juice, and then I do some sea salt over the top, and it makes to me that is the perfect guacamole. I like to have it with Pita chips or

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Megan: you know I'll do regular tortilla chips every once in a while, but when I do that I tend to count out my chips and say, like, I'm just gonna do this many rather than just mindlessly eating, as many are in the box.

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Megan: And the reason I make guacamole is not just a habit with chips or a snack. I actually put it on top of the beef beef fajita meat in the taco, and then I put a little roasted salsa on top of that a little hot sauce, and that is just perfect where I am. There is a store that sells partially cooked tortillas

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Megan: so you can take them home. Put them on a flat pan, they puff up and then flip them over, and then you've got a nice crispy tortilla

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Megan: for your taco, and that's one of my favorite things in the world. I don't know if they have those where you are, but it might be worth looking into, because it's so much better than just like the store bought old El Paso flower tortillas. So I hope that gives you some ideas of ways that you can practice self care by feeding yourself really nutrient, dense foods and taking the time to prepare them.

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Megan: and using self care to learn how to prepare your favorite foods, to make your own homemade sauces eat closer to the ground, eat the rainbow, and you're going to be amazed at what a difference it makes when you prioritize

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Megan: those types of foods. Now, I know a lot of people. It's really hard to take the time to do that for every single meal, so of course make it one self care. Meal a week where you do something like that. If you don't want to do it all the time, or if it's too time consuming.

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Megan: and then you can gradually build up as you learn how to make more things that you love.

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Megan: One of the last things that we're gonna talk about here is creativity as a form of self care. And I want to just address this kind of head on, because creativity can be a great place for therapeutic relief. But a lot of people are like, Oh, I'm just not creative. Or Oh, I don't wanna make art, because then it's just gonna be terrible. Well, we're gonna address all of those things right now.

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Megan: There's a quote by Renee Brown that I love. She says there's no such thing as creative people and non creative people. There are only people who use their creativity, and people who don't. So, in other words, we're all creative people. Some of us choose not to use our creativity.

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Megan: she goes on to say, unused creativity isn't benign. It lives within us until it's expressed.

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Megan: neglected to death or suffocated by resentment and fear.

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Megan: That is something to think very deeply on. And if you've never been creative, or if you're afraid of being creative, I would encourage you to take that quote to your next meditation, and really think about how that makes you feel

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Megan: and think about the ways in which you might have prevented yourself from being creative, because maybe it felt scary to you.

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Megan: So I know all the excuses about creativity, because I used most of them myself throughout my life at one time or another. But once I started getting real with myself about who I am. Instead of allowing other people's perceptions of me to dictate who I am, I had to admit it. I am creative.

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Megan: I didn't say was great at it, or that all my creations are magnificent. I think the lie that we tell ourselves is that we can't be created because we're not good at it. But the truth is that 99% of us don't pick up something and automatically become good at it. And that's a made up statistic, of course, but everything we do and everything we create is a practice. And so I wanna encourage you to incorporate creativity as part of your practice

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Megan: of self care. Our goal is to care for ourselves by nurturing our own innate sense of self expression, and we need to learn to get over the fact that our creativity may only be valuable to one person, but it's the most important person to care for, and that's ourselves.

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Megan: So

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Megan: the point I'm trying to make is that creativity can be a wonderful outlet if we're not hyper. Hyper focused on the outcome so very much like I talked about before with Marie Kondo with the usefulness of something not necessarily being what we traditionally think of.

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Megan: Once you've created it, it's served his its purpose.

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Megan: and you can donate it, or you can throw it away, or you can burn it, or you can do whatever you want with it without feeling guilty. You don't have to create something with the purpose of keeping it forever, or with the purpose of giving it to someone, because it's a magnificent thing that you created. It really doesn't matter what you do with your creative project once you've done it, because the point is not to have necessarily a finished product, the point is to do the creative thing and enjoy doing it.

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Megan: If you don't enjoy doing it, take something else and move on. So if you let's just take painting. For example, if you decide that you're gonna do a little painting and you plan it out, you pick your paint colors, and you just really enjoy doing the painting. Let's say it doesn't turn out the way that you wanted to. That's fine, because the point was to do the painting. It wasn't to have something that you want to keep forever.

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Megan: Let's say that you do the painting, but it's not quite finished, but you spent your hour that you set aside for self care time. Well, it still has fulfilled its purpose. You can either put it away and finish it later or not. You don't have to finish it, because finishing it isn't the point. And again.

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Megan: if you pick an activity and you don't enjoy doing it. Just move on, pick something else. Resist the urge to do something creative that other people will appreciate.

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Megan: So don't

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Megan: choose painting as a means of saying, Oh, I'm going to paint something and then give it away as a gift, or I'm going to hang it in my home and show it to people that I did this thing. It's not for anyone else to appreciate. But you just

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Megan: find the activity that is right, for you

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Megan: make learning about it part of your self-care journey. So there's always

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Megan: all kinds of resources for you online. There are classes and therapeutic guides. If you're doing self care as a therapy modality, for example, art therapy

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Megan: really do your research. Ask for referrals on that. Read the reviews, and if you're looking for creativity especially to be like an outlet for difficult emotions, you want to make sure that the person guiding you through that is trained and experienced and certified, and that they're acting ethically in that space because there are a lot of people who advertise that they're doing art therapy or dance therapy.

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Megan: and they're not actually trained in any way. They just think that if you do it. It's going to be therapeutic. The difficulty with that is that if you're doing it in connection with really difficult emotions or traumatic memories, you can have it can have a negative effect on your mental health as well. You can end up stuck in a place. If you don't have a therapist to help you come out of

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Megan: the difficult emotional state. So I just wanna use that as a disclaimer, just to say, Be careful about the type of therapeutic creativity that you do so you can do. I'm just just wanna give you a few ideas about creative things that you can do that are good for self care, of course, making music like learning an instrument, or just singing, even singing karaoke by yourself in your car, or

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Megan: with an app on your phone, or something can be great dancing, of course, and then all of the different art modalities, like glass, art, and murals. Hair styling can be a form of art, fabric painting, coloring books are great, just for you know, mindfulness. If you just wanna color while you think about emotions or think about your day, or whatever it is, sculpting with playdo or clay.

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Megan: Especially if you're a tactile person, and you want to do something with your hands, painting ceramics or other objects. There's all kinds of places where you can do a paint by number, type of type of thing. You can order a paint by number online, and then, lo and behold, you're a successful artist right away.

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Megan: making objects. Objects can be a really good way to get into creativity as well, although

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Megan: just be mindful that you're not doing it with the end result of having an object at the end of it, or giving an object to someone at the end of it. Just the fact of making it is is what we're aiming for here. So whether it's jewelry, or whether you're gonna sew clothes or pillows or something like that. One of the things I love is like the old fashioned art of hat making, you know, decorating a hat band or decorating a hat.

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Megan: candle, making

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Megan: film photography, doing ribbons and packaging as a form of self care building with those bricks that snap together. I'm not going to endorse any kind of a brick, making company, but creating with food, doing cake or cupcake, decorating, learning about wine, and doing wine, pairings, mixology, learning how to make really awesome

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Megan: cocktails, learning how to make a diverse sharcuty board, or different kinds of hors d'oeuvres, or just experimenting with flavors, or baking something new. All of these things can be ways to create with food.

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Megan: You can do all kinds of writing, creativity, calligraphy, or other kind of letter art, writing short stories or poems. Writing jokes experimenting with, you know. Stand up, even if it's just you in your kitchen. Coming up with new rules for card games or board games, those kinds of things. Playing.

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Megan: using storytelling voice imitation. One of my favorites is gardening. Learning how to do a butterfly garden or a pollinator garden doing 0, escaping or just even learning about 0, escaping just the the act of learning about something can be a great way to practice self care. I really enjoy trying to grow vegetables. I'm not always successful at it, but I enjoy the process of it, and I enjoy getting my hands in the dirt

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Megan: that makes me feel really connected to the ground. So I hope that I've given you some ideas of different ways to practice self care. Of course it's not exhaustive. There are plenty of other things that you can do. I hope that we get to the point where we think.

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Megan: and we believe that self care is not selfish, and I hope you recognize that the importance of taking your stick, taking care of yourself before you start emptying your energy. Caring for others is something that you need to consider, if nothing else. I hope your takeaway is that you'll prioritize your mental health by taking some time every day to do things that recharge your emotional energy and help you to love yourself as you care for yourself.

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Megan: I hope you've gained some insights into what areas might be your strengths in self care, and where you might need to focus extra attention, learning how to do things like being mindful just

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Megan: learning along the way to recognize and honor the emotions that come up for you as you make these small changes are going to also help you to prioritize your mental health. So I want to encourage you to be patient with yourself

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Megan: as you continue to explore these ways, to adopt new routines and be kind to yourself when you fall short, and you just need to readjust.

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Megan: I know from experience that a journey of self care is going to lead to better relationships with the people that matter the most to you.

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Megan: a better love of the most important person which is you and I wanna encourage you again that the midlife revolution, this whole podcast is about making small changes that change everything. It's not about making huge, radical, sweeping changes to our entire lives. So I hope that none of you get stuck in this idea, that self care has to take over your life right now in order for you to create a good routine

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Megan: around it, and I hope that you're able to just make one small change that hopefully is going to change everything again. Be well, beautiful humans, take care of yourselves, and I will see you again on another episode of the midlife revolution.