One of my favorite things about being in my forties is evaluated experience. Getting older certainly does not automatically create wisdom, but it can if you’re willing to learn!
Something I’ve witnessed in myself and others is how hard things get when Self Care KALE is off balance. What’s Self Care KALE?
It’s the basics!
- Are you getting enough sleep? Have you determined how much sleep and down time your unique body needs to function well? Are you following through on that?
- Are you hydrated? Do you add electrolytes when you need to?
- Are you moving your body regularly and getting outside?
- Are you nourishing your body? Have you figured out what kind of nourishment your unique body needs?
- Are you nurturing your relationship with yourself and your friends?
I learned this as Self Care KALE from a sermon by Rev Julie Moret at Agape a few weeks ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s simple, and simple means actionable.
A swift inventory I learned in 12 step was HALT when I feel off–Hungry Angry Lonely or Tired means I need to actually stop and attend to those needs instead of taking some ill-advised action.
Self Care KALE sets us up to enjoy life and feels proactive for me.
I have witnessed so many people hit levels of success (including myself) and then plummet because their Self Care KALE was out of whack.
Extractive exploitative capitalism wants us to be never ending work machines producing capital for money.
Parents especially have it hard because of the ways we have been isolated from village/tribal living.
Our bodies are living as though we still exist in interdependent villages where our neighbors contribute to fulfilling our daily needs. Our bodies have not evolved as swiftly as our brains or society and our bodies think we are still living in agrarian times and need two hours of movement outdoors every day.
I was once an attorney and studied law all the time now I work with bodies and study the physiology of wellness. It is very understandable how our bodies resist grind culture and it is bonkers how our culture glorifies burn out.
Two hours outdoors daily moving around or lying on the grass is hard to fathom with a typical 9 to 5 and all the other things that go along with that. Big lifestyle shifts might be necessary to optimize our wellness and those are choices that are hard to make if you have to grind just to make housing possible.
I believe housing, food and healthcare are human rights and just by existing you deserve those needs fulfilled. The skyrocketing costs of housing concern me greatly.
I have no answers only information and my own experience. It brings me hope to vision a future where folks have universal basic income and can facilitate bringing their unique gifts to the world. Every problem that exists for us has a solution inside one of us–human diversity is our strength as a species.
The CEO of Netflix once said their biggest competition is not other streaming platforms it is sleep. I’m gonna choose enough sleep over TV. I’m gonna choose a catch-up with a friend over TV. I’ve learned that my overall well being long-term is the result of my choices today.
Lifestyle is in the valley between priorities and boundaries. Self Care KALE happens when you arrange your lifestyle to facilitate it. I look at how I once hustled so hard with main gigs and side gigs and distractions and I don’t wonder how I developed a chronic digestive disorder.
As a lawyer I processed other people’s stress for a living. Now I help people process their own stress through movement for a living. That lifestyle change took me a decade to make and a ton of micro decisions and a few leaps of faith into uncomfortable uncertainty. It was worth it.
Moving up to the North Pole from Los Angeles was a choice between continuing to toil just to make rent and the chance to focus on my aerobics business full time and pay far less rent. And live down the street from my mom and her spouse and that’s been super great and helpful and far more interdependent than living single in LA. (I talked about the process of my decision in real time on episode 6 of my podcast back in 2019. It feels like a lifetime ago.)
Turns out I don’t miss living in the city at all except for dating and I’m grateful for how much of my time is spent healing and resting. I made all of these choices by centering my mental health and according to the Stutz documentary on Netflix (highly recommend) 85% of our big mental health issues are resolved through facilitating life force energy. Self Care KALE.
Choosing to shrink my lifestyle by not eating out and not buying little treats to make an out of balance life feel worth living to me allows me to be so intentional with my spending and dropping more and more out of extractive capitalism. I spent so much at LUSH and Sephora when I was a lawyer just to distract myself from the misery of that career.
Most people sacrifice their health to create wealth and then spend their wealth trying to get their health back.
The book The One Thing talks about how to find balance and priorities while seeking to live out our potential. It’s a powerful perspective that helped me make my big lifestyle choices to simplify in order to pursue my potential.
What could Self Care KALE do for you?
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