(Step 1 of 7 in Mini Series) What does self-love look like? 

Hello and welcome to the In The Rising Podcast. I am your host, Bettina Brown, and this is the platform from which I talk to you about living a life without the captivity of guilt and regret, so that you can use your self-worth to live an empowered, independent, and free life. Let me start off by saying that I am not a licensed counselor, psychiatrist, or psychologist, but I am a student of life and a healthcare professional who absolutely loves to research and to have meaningful, deeper conversations.

I love conversations and just kind of figuring out what makes us tick and what makes us when we feel that we're. What makes us tick and when we're not, what's, what's kind of missing there. So if this topic and similar topics are of interest to you, go ahead and subscribe. I also enjoy receiving feedback via email at Bettina@intherising.com 

This is also in the description box below. So this will start off my mini-series,. One of my most popular podcasts was, well, what does self-love look like? And I talk about seven different things. And that first thing is being aware, self-awareness. So I'm gonna start off by saying that we get a lot of information about what interests people.

How they think and what they are struggling with by observation. Paying attention is so critical that it's the first thing that anyone in law enforcement and in the military will tell you. It's the first thing they learn. You need to pay attention to your surroundings. You have to know what's going on around you.

And unfortunately, our news is filled every single day with sad occurrences that are happening in our most secure or seemingly secure places. Such as our schools, our grocery stores, and our churches. But I have a question. Are we paying attention to one critical person in the equation? And that would be ourselves.

When we stop the busyness of being aware of all of our surroundings, the people in our sphere of influences and the dangers that are around us all, all the time, anytime a day and any season. Are we able to stop that chatter long enough to slow down and even recognize if there's any other chatter going on in our mind about ourselves?

So I put together a little list here about the full dangers, but also I look at it more as possibilities involving our awareness. So number. Is the physical danger that is around us. And it's pretty easy to evaluate whether or not we are in a relatively safe situation or not. And this can be a literal situation.

For an example, you're in a bad part of town or there's a loud altercation nearby that's continuing to escalate and you're there with your kiddos and you know, this is not where you need to. But what about other physical situations that can be unhealthy for our general physical need? So I wanted to talk about shoes and give a little example.

Full disclaimer here. For the longest time, I love shoes so much that I would say I had a little bit of a mini addiction and I purchased all types, whether, they were platform shoes, flat shoes, cute little tennis shoes. I bought them proudly and wore them proudly. I wore them whether or not I had pain in them immediately, or if it took at least 10 minutes, but nothing was gonna stop me from getting into my favorite shoes.

And I never spent, quote unquote, a good deal on on of money on my shoes either, because that would involve buying fewer shoes. I had a limited resource of money and I wanted it to go as far as possible. And, I became a new mom. This became a little bit of an epidemic. You know, I spent less and less of my resources on myself, especially on my shoes, and I'm embarrassed to say I wore them till they really needed to be in the trash.

 But I ne neglected, negated. I neglected my physical. And you know, just the fact that good shoes support your knees and your back. They give you better alignment for your posture. This changes your course of health, your alignment for the rest of your life, pain, it affects your pain, affects your feet.

Your feet are important. And so basically, figuratively speaking, and literally your feet carry the weight of you and the weight that you have placed on your should. And yet I, like many of us didn't even go so far as purchasing and investigating proper shoes, but I only paid attention to what was on sale, discounted or readily available.

And so I get the personal financial situation with shoes and all of that. But if you can go down this path with me for just a. What, what does buying something that's only on sale, discounted or available, do to you when it's, when you know it's important? Does this consistent self-talk, maybe do something negative to our inner psyche?

My basis for movement was basically what was available that was cheap, and I showed myself that my own physical health was not a priority, and if you don't make it a priority, who will?. The other part of physical awareness is whether or not we are placing ourselves in situations that can best serve us when we are always making ourselves available to help others.

For example, while they're doing their binge drinking or they need yet another ride, or they just need to be available to meet and talk, or you're helping them move and redecorating their house, you're placing your own physical body at the mercy of. And this is great to do to help other people, but there has to be some balance.

And so are we taking care of our physical needs with the same attention that we dedicate to other parts of our lives? And one of those things I'm talking about is sleep. Particularly women. We don't do this too much, but according to the sleep found, The hours of sleep that we really need as adults are still being investigated, and it still seems like a mini controversy, but the, the basic standards are seven to nine hours.

That's not what we're sleeping, but guess what their recommendations are for getting better, higher quality sleep for a country's sleep deprived. As the USA for example, they, they stress. Getting your bedroom to be the right temperature, having some mood lighting, comfortable mattress and pillow available to you.

So basically taking care of your physical needs helps you take care of other physical needs that you know you need, who to thunk it. And so far as exercise and nutrition, all of that, that's a whole nother episode. But I'm gonna move on to number two, our emotional. So there's a cliche. It says in relationships in certain situations, it's more of a give and take.

For example, in our intimate relationships, we have to help one another. One time, one member may do a little more housework so that the other person can add some time to their project at work or do an extra. Another example is, a coworker has been newly diagnosed with an illness and they're not able to do as much work, or they're not able to do their full job description.

So you pick up some of their load, and though these are physical tasks, there are emotional ties with these, they're 10 tends to be a sense of teamwork, cooperation, and giving and taking when we're helping one another and usually. Or often I say the situations I just described are kind of short-lived.

However, there are other times that they're not. And so this sense of community changes, it shifts to frustration, rejection, irritation, and a sense of loss. We're giving and taking in relationships and what is one thing, but it's not an assignment of people. One person is not the giver, while the other one shall be the the take.

So right now I'd like to pause. Are there any situations or relationships that you find yourself in right now? This is maybe the case. There's this feeling of I'm giving and I'm giving, and I feel rejected and, and not paid attention to. My needs are not paid attention to by other people because I'm giving, and giving and giving, and I'm teaching them to some extent that that's, that's my role.

I am a give. So give yourself that chance to stop the go, go, go and just allow yourself to recognize some of these emotions that are inside of you. And it's okay to have 'em. It's okay to have 'em. So I heard again the other day, and it's one of my favorite sayings, but I hadn't heard it from a long time, and it's, you need to handle your business well.

We also need to handle our emotion. So we should be able to have emotions without actually becoming these emotions. And if this is an area of your life, when you're doing a little spot check that you're noticing is becoming harder and harder, especially with certain people when you're around them or in certain situations or just in general, it's a sign that you're struggling emotion.

And we have to kind of take our emotions for what they are, because what we suppress will eventually arrest us. It will arrest our time, our passions, and our life. And number three that I'm gonna talk about is spiritual awareness. Now, I get that some of you may not believe that there's something greater than your.

You can go ahead and, and hit the pause right now. I totally respect that, but I appreciate your time in listening. But for those of you that are of that mindset and belief that you feel that you're in tune with a greater collective, pause again for another moment and, and, and recognize, are you feeling connected to other people?

Are you feeling connected for a higher sense of purpose? Are you feeling that you're on this planet for a reason? I hear a lot about influencers. I've been hearing a lot about it cuz this is my fifth episode and all the research I'm doing about podcasting and learning and new strategies and tactics.

There are a lot of people that say, well, are you, what's your goal? Is it to be an influencer? Are you trying to be an influencer with a certain brand or an influencer with this and that? I feel period that you are an influencer on your, your sphere, your circle of people right around you. And when you have a little more spiritual connection with other people, whether they share your belief or not, but you know, there's a purpose for you to be here, that there was a purpose for you to greet that person that really no one talked to, that there was a reason why you were able to stand at the store.

Donate a few extra cents to the person in front of you who clearly didn't have it, whether they had the money in general or not, but they didn't have it at that moment. You're showing a spiritual side to yourself. Are you feeling any of that? And when we are disconnected from the divine or something greater, it is really harder for the most of us who do believe to feel connected to our fellow.

And it is even harder to figure out what you're supposed to feel connected to. So spiritual awareness was number three. Emotional awareness was number two, and physical awareness was number one. So to sum all of this up, I wanted to share with you a time I took a course, a continuing education for my professional degree, in which they talked about the four zones of intention and a.

And so that first zone was the area right around you. So you were in it and you know, maybe an inch around circumference, circum your circumference, circumferentially. I knew I was gonna get it out. And so then the second one was between you and your client. The third one was you, your client in the room, and the fourth one was you, the client, the room, and kind of that whole building around you.

Now, the point of this was to increase our awareness and to realize that our attention deviates. So we can be from going from laser focused to completely distracted and we just go back and forth. But when we are interacting with another human being, we need to be in a zone of a, which is with us intent focus.

It all starts there. None of the other zones of attention and intention really hold any consequence until we are really connected with ourselves. So sometimes this may be a little bit easier. Sometimes this may be a little bit more difficult, but the more we turn inward and get our self-awareness together and realize.

What our needs are and accept that it is okay to even have needs and desires and wants without being selfish. Being, taking, being in a place where you can take care of yourself on all three levels. Physical, emotional, and spiritual is the most selfish thing that you can do that can allow you to be a healthy, selfless person even.

And it's not about, well, how long does this process take? It's always a continuum, but that is your first step. So all of our time is incredibly valuable. I took up about 15 minutes of your day today and I appreciate the time that you invested. Again, if you'd like to subscribe, if these sort of podcasts are of interest to you, new ones will be available on Tuesdays, and you can still email me at betina in the rising.com.

I hope you find this, episode valuable, and if you would leave a. It would be awesome and I hope to see you next time. Let's keep building one another up.