How to Practice Self-Care | #PERSPECTIVES with Sharon Pearson

What this episode covers

Self-Care is not as simple as taking baths, lighting candles and pampering yourself, it’s allowing yourself the time to feel your emotions and tell yourself you’re doing great, who you are today is okay, all of you is enough, more than. Tune into this episode of #Perspectives to learn the steps to take to develope and practice true self-care and self-compassion so that you can bring more love and light into your life. Get your FREE getting started as a successful life coach gift pack here: https://tci.rocks/gift-pack-2020 RESOURCES MENTIONED: Ultimate You Book – www.thecoachinginstitute.com.au/book Ultimate You Quest Telecast - www.ultimateyouquest.com Upcoming Events at The Coaching Institute - www.thecoachinginstitute.com.au/trainings Sharon’s New Website - www.sharonpearson.com Disruptive Leadership- https://www.disruptiveleading.com/ Phone The Coaching Institute - 1800 094 927 The Coaching Institute Fan Page – https://www.facebook.com/BecomeALifeCoach Feedback/Reviews/Suggest a top to be discussed - [email protected] Perspectives Youtube Channel – https://www.tci.rocks/youtube **KEY TOPICS/ TIME STAMPS** **1.55 Continue the conversation on compassion…what is self-compassion… What it means to have compassion for yourself.** - Often as soon as you say compassion people think it's something you got to bring for other people. - Seeing myself accurately and accepting myself which is always an unfolding journey - Every time I think I'm getting to know myself then a year later I look back, I knew nothing. - Favourite line from Game of Thrones is the ‘You know nothing Jon Snow’ because every year when I think I’m getting a clue, a year goes past and I realise you know nothing Sharon. - Self-compassion has not been my strong suit. I always strive so much and I want to grow so much, and I want to learn so much. Pausing and even long enough to reflect, ‘You’re okay, you’re okay as you are, you’re doing okay,’ instead of striving for the next thing to ‘be okay’. - That's been a big part of my addiction for years and I've been working for five years now on enjoying the pauses the breaths, as much as the run, the sprint and as much as the marathon. - But it's still my slick. This journey for me of self-compassion is accepting me as I am in this moment and being really okay about it, including all my flaws. - But to say I accept myself, I've got to see myself accurately first. So to me self-compassion isn't an arrival point it's an ever unfolding moments of learning more about who I am and who I could be and how I'm showing up. - And it's not as simple as having baths and light candles and meditating. Self-compassion is I'm doing great. Who I am today is okay, all of me is more than enough. More than. • **5.30 • So it's not just bath salts and candles and mood lighting. Which people call self-care, It’s a much deeper reflection within ourselves. Am I showing up in this** moment taking care of me? You know people pleasers. This is for you. People pleasing is, suppressing me expressing what I need in this moment. • Self-compassion is feeling it, noticing I feel it, acknowledging I feel it, expressing I feel it and then the ultimate is having that acknowledged appropriately and compassionately, that self-compassion. - compassion could probably be measured by how people allow you to express and can reflect it back to you accurately, respectfully and appropriately and fully not just the bits and aspect that their comfortable with but all the aspects. **7.30 - What would be the first step for someone that supresses their emotions to begin to identify what their feeling** - I've had feelings all my life everybody has. To consciously tune into it for the purposes of self-compassion, that's a whole different conversation because we can reactively just feel what we feel and say that’s self-compassion but it’s not. - So you and I would always have feelings, we're just suppressing them or not worrying about them, not think about it and get busy doing something else. Think whatever, dismiss it and think other things are more important. But that’s not very good, that’s not self-compassion. But there is a time and place for that, like when I'm in business and I'm doing a strategy meeting, I'm all good having access to being able to supress. - And also that’s a self-compassion component, that there's a time for feelings and there’s a time for facts and I can access both as easily. **9.10 So how do you take the first step to tune into your emotions** - So the first step is knowing the language of emotions. This is in the book Ultimate You. So knowing the basic emotions: happiness, sadness, disappointment ,resentment, I believe shame is also one that's generally not talked about. Just basic emotions, joy, sadness, they're there the basic emotions just know the language for that. - Plenty of people relate to anger which the basic emotion. People pleasers will relate to happiness, scratch the surface and they won't go to anger, that's generalizing, some do but there's gonna be comfort levels **10.00 Anger is a way to translate sadness into something powerful.** - this is why a lot of guys are very comfortable with anger, but what they’re really saying is I can translate fear or sadness into something that gives me power. - So that’s your secondary emotion, anger is really an expression of a boundary violation that we've violated within ourselves or someone's violated but that's where people go comfortably. - **10.20 So How do you do it** **Step 1:** get comfortable with the language of the basic emotions anger sadness disappointment joy happiness curiosity. Just name some basic ones. It could be within your repertoire. Could be a little bit out of focus. **Step 2:** Ask yourself which of these do I play with and which do I just push away. • The point a lot of people just stopped trying is because they've trained everybody around them to not accept their, insert your emotion here, and I think especially with this education and without knowing all these layers underneath it they will come to the conclusion that that's just the way the world is now. They wouldn't know how to change it; they wouldn't know that they've created it. • It's true, so many years when I went to go to express sadness and got rejected, suppressed, denied, ignored, neglected, shamed, I learnt said you can't be sad read people and then start realizing how often people can be sad around me… • And it's really easy to stop there and just go man, ‘this is too hard’ or not even get conscious about it and just go unconscious they just shut it down. • **Step 3.** Next step towards this is… • There’s a level here of suck it up. It's really tough and it would be easy to tortes the shit out of this and put your head right back in and just ignore and go into your cave. • Then you've got to face, how do I change the nature of my relationships with people around me? **18.40 How I got friendly with my emotions** - My husband and I went travelling as you know for six weeks overseas and I decided this is it. I'm going to learn how to have an emotion in front of someone, not supress it, be comfortable with it. And I'm going to keep doing it until I'm really friendly with my emotions and I'm friendly with the idea of other people being friendly with my emotions. - And that's where the whole mirroring exercise came from. So everything I wrote in the book is what I did. **20.00 Story of how she did the mirroring exercise with her husband** - Mirroring is when you start doing it and the other person has to be the parent and you'd wished you had when the first event happened until you can parent yourself the way you wished you had. So the other person needs to be open, curious, not try and fix it, no judgement, not make it about you and maintain eye contact and positivity not rah rah. **28.20 Shame loves shadows** - I think when people hear compassion they sometimes think they have to do it alone and that it’s gonna start with themselves. It's OK if and it's important for you to maybe hear this from someone. In fact it’s vital - Shame loves shadows, so the emotions were not comfortable with, we feel shame, we feel rejection or we feel a need to hide it. These are all variants of shame so we felt those emotions as a child and it was shamed by not being literally shamed but it could have been mocked, judged, rejected, ignored, neglected, shunted aside or made insignificant or silly, six or seven different ways it's shamed, then in adulthood our own consciousness is still playing out the same thing that emotion is required for this moment of intimacy. But because I link shame to that emotion I won't be able to show up and into this moment because I'm feeling shame right now and it’s going to be all about me. So we need that person so we can play out that unconscious pattern in a safe way where it's all about us. - And here's the thing you never reverse the role if you will my mirroring partner I don't then turn into yours because we need to learn the unconditional acceptance of it's all about you as you feel that yucky read emotion not friendly with emotion, the point is not about being a trade.