Finding Gratitude and Practicing Presence

Posted on January 15, 2023 by Sabrina Renee

Nesting Intuitively

Each day this week my morning started with a strong urge to deep clean something. From the moment I opened my eyes I found myself imagining how satisfying it would be to transform a space from dirty to clean, from disorganized to everything having its home. One day it was the bathroom, from the toilet to the shower, another day it was the kitchen from the countertops to the pantry. Scrubbing, sweeping, slowly cleansing my space and transmuting the energy all around it.

There’s something so magical about having the energy and motivation to complete something that’s been on your mind, even if it only recently popped in. Cleaning is one of the most tangible ways to practice energy work because you’re quite literally transforming a space, the energy in it, and the items that occupy it. Everything is energy and if you bring intention to whatever it is you do, anything can become an offering.

There’s a palpable change in the environment when that happens, and when you can bring mindful awareness of what’s being moved, thrown away, cleaned thoroughly, or properly placed it’s like you’re waving the magic wand of change.

That’s what nesting has felt like to me and it’s been a lot of fun.

Exhausting but fun.

Exhausting because it’s coming in waves of urges that I can’t seem to suppress or logically wish away. So during the moments when I’ve attempted to tell myself “just relax you can get some of this tomorrow,” there’s a loud inner voice that instantly responds “let’s just see how much we can accomplish now.”

It’s been interesting, however, to maneuver this energy work with a big belly and swollen limbs. There are absolutely times when my body is speaking louder than my thoughts and forces me into a nap, or at least sitting down in between tasks. And believe me, I listen.

It’s been a loud reminder that intuition isn’t always woo-woo. Sometimes it’s incredibly practical, it offers guidance that you know is best for you but maybe you’ve been too distracted to listen.

Somewhere in between reorganizing the pantry and elevating my swollen ankles, there’s a voice of wisdom guiding me throughout my day. After more than half a year of transformation and change grounding me into the physical realm, it’s been pleasant to feel my intuitive senses reignite within me. Whether it’s coming in the form of nesting for my sweet babe’s arrival, or suddenly feeling like an open channel with the ability to write for three hours straight, I’m grateful, I’m open, I’m willing to be guided.

Finding gratitude in the lack of control

This week I’m grateful for the bursts of energy that have been followed by the inevitable winddown. From starting off my day like a firecracker, with focus and intention on specific tasks that are calling me, to the hot shower and red raspberry leaf tea routine at night, these moments are sculpting something beautiful in my home.

In an incredibly physical way, all these little moments are teaching me the importance of balance, the feeling of doing and being, listening and taking action. More importantly, it’s helping me understand the balance of that which I can control and that which never was in my control. When I tune into the rhythms of my intuition and the direction it’s guiding me each day, I become more trusting of the universal wisdom that is all around me. For all of the lessons I’ve learned, there are another thousand I have yet to learn, and that’s such a wonder.

Each time I follow my intuition the universe ushers me closer to where I’m meant to be, all while miracles and shifts are taking place behind the scenes, most of which I’ll never even know about. Something as small as following the “urge” or “inkling” to clean my kitchen countertop could be the smallest step in a larger vision unfolding for me. And the more I listen the deeper I establish trust in what’s to come. The more I trust in what’s unfolding the easier it will be to practice gratitude for it all, not just what I believe is working out or in what I am in control of, but for the unseen unknown parts of my life as well.

These days I’m finding gratitude in the unknown because I’m faithfully falling in love with this next chapter way before I know what’s written. I’m choosing to be grateful rather than be worried because the vibration is higher and honestly it just feels better. Even if I’m blissfully unaware of what’s to come at least I’m choosing to do so from a positive standpoint. I’m choosing to surrender the illusion of control for the belief that something greater has my back. So while admitting there will always be areas of life I can’t control, I’m also willing to accept the areas I can-like my thoughts, my mindsets, and my beliefs about what’s on the other side of the unknown chapter.

And that, my friend, is the greatest power any of us can harness.

How I’m Practicing Presence

I’m at the point in my pregnancy where the baby can come in the next 5 days or 5 weeks and still be considered in the realm of healthy. It’s easy to get wrapped up in wondering when things are going to start to happen, looking for all the signs, and listening to the old wives’ tales about which gender the baby will be. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t swept up in those “what-ifs” every now and then. But the truth is this is the ultimate unknown territory and as a mindfulness teacher it’s the greatest curriculum I’ve come across yet.

Not knowing what motherhood looks like, not knowing exactly when my child will come earthside, now knowing how it’ll feel or what to expect, it’s the perfect opportunity to remain open. There will always be moments when worry or doubt creep in and in those moments they’ll be brief pauses between the thoughts that follow. In those pauses, I see the string of narratives created in my mind and recognize when I’ve gotten lost in the thick of it all, allowing the unknown to consume me rather than cultivate curiosity and openness.

It’s interesting, you can try and plan every detail of how something will go but the truth is everything is unknown. Sometimes it feels like that’s how the media and society promote pregnancy, as something to prepare for from the nursery and toys to the schedules and types of parenting. But as a first-time parent, I’m becoming a brand new version of myself that I’ll have to learn and figure out as I go. And that’s okay. Planning is okay and so is not knowing it all, making room for both I believe is key.

Something as transformational and unpredictable as pregnancy can really drive home the point of not being in control, while simultaneously teaching me all the ways I am.

I can control my breathing when it’s time to calm down.

I can control whether I move my body or whether I allow myself to rest.

I can control whether I fuss over when the baby will arrive or whether I chose to be present.

I’m incorporating mindfulness practice by focusing my energy where I actually have a say while calling energy back from all of the worry and doubt that drains me.

To be present doesn’t necessarily mean to feel pleasant. It doesn’t mean I have to enjoy what’s currently unfolding or have control over it by any means. Presence, rather, is the choice to be here now, no matter what. To practice presence is to be where my feet are, to observe my thoughts, to notice my attitudes and body language, and the energy I’m offering at this moment.

It’s only in the present moment that I can recognize the ways my mind is driving me to nest, or when my body is begging me to take a break from moving so much, or when it’s time to hydrate and take some deep breaths. Life is happening in the present moment always, never in the past or the future, so each time I notice myself worrying or planning or assuming I know what comes next, I remember I’m not living. I’m oscillating between thoughts of the past and the future, constantly ignoring what the present is currently offering.

The beauty of this practice is that it’s a practice, meant to be revisited consistently. The present moment doesn’t take it personally when I’ve been lost in thought, instead, it invites me back in with grace and compassion. It invites me with a deep inhale and a slow exhale.

To embrace what is.

To be here.

To notice.

To allow.

What is the present moment offering you right now?

What is it inviting you to experience?

MindBody, Weekly Insights

A Journey From Maiden to Mother

Posted on January 8, 2023January 21, 2023 by Sabrina Renee

Moments of Transition

The past few weeks have brought on more tightness, tension, pangs of discomfort and even douses of pain than I remember experiencing before. While my tolerance for pain is quite high I’ve also never had to endure it so consistently for such an extended and unforeseen specific amount of time. As my body prepares to give birth in the next four weeks or so I’m being stretched beyond limits I onced perceived for myself, a true time of growth and expansion. From restless legs and pelvic pain to getting up to pee multiple times and finding it impossible to get back to sleep, I’ve begun to experience life through a different lens. One of transition from what once was to what will be, more importantly how it all is right now.

This transition isn’t one that took place over night, or even just over the past 9 months. In fact, I’d argue it started a few years ago, the moment my husband and I decided starting a family was going to soon be a priority. Back in 2020 when the world began to change in unprecidented ways we both felt called to share with one another the visions we saw for the future. That discussion consisted of what type of parents we wanted to be, the values in which we’d raise our children with, the intention we’d pour into ourselves to welcome this chapter into our lives, and the type of environment all of this would take place.

For the next two years the goal was to turn inward and get curious about the parts of us that were longing to grow. Individually we assesssed the values important to us and the goals we wanted to pursue before conception like health, nutrition, spirituality, healing, and other paths of maturity. Now, this isn’t to say we decided on the perfect time to concevive, I don’t believe any of us has the power to play God in that sense. But we did decide that an important part of conception was the intention that came before, the life we cultivated beforehand, and the energies we were planning to merge to create life.

For two years healing, maturity, love, and learning, and unlearning, were a priority both individually and collectively.

For two years we dove into becoming the greatest versions of ourselves, establishing deeper connections to our ideal selves and inching closer to them each day.

For two years we leveled up before ever “trying” to have a baby.

I’m so grateful this was our path.

But I’m also reminded of how mutlifaceted transition truly is. Shifts into who we are becoming start in subtle ways, most of the time before we are even paying attention and long after we’ve begun to see. This helps ground me into perspective in moments when my joints are achy and my legs are so swollen it hurts to walk. It reminds me this is yet another shift in transition.

And sure maybe it isn’t as glamorous as working out, eating healthy, or learning deeper self-love practices. But I’m also reminded that those moments weren’t always the most fun either. It felt good to share my life vision with my life partner, to talk about our desires and dreams about the future, but the work that came after wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It was two years of leaving no stone unturned so that I could face my inner world head on and heal the blocks that stood in the way of becoming my greatest self.

Transition isn’t meant to feel good all the time, it’s meant to uproot and redefine. So I’d like to believe these false contractions and sleepless nights are wonderful opportunities to help me continue to expand, pushing me toward the culmination of all my past efforts. The more I practiced shifting my mindset from “why is this happened?” to “this is happening because…” the less personal and painful it feels, and the more I’m willing to be with what’s happening rather than focus on my opinions about it all.

Being Okay With How Things Are

A struggle I faced this week is not feeling grateful 100% of the time about being pregnant. Even feeling the urge to complain about my physical discomforts and the ease of living that had been taken away. On a particularly challenging day where the baby’s head pushed deeper and deeper into my pelvis I sighed loud and said “JUST COME OUT ALREADY!” Almost immediately I felt awful, and here’s why.

Now maybe that doesn’t sound like the craziest thing to say to you but to me it felt like I committed the ultimate sin: not being grateful to be pregnant. To me, saying that was like saying I’m over this, I dont want to do this anymore, I’m tired and just want this to end already. And in that moment maybe it was my truth. My frustrated, exhausted, impatient truth.

I came down so hard on myself for not feeling enthused about being pregnant anymore and for finally giving into the urge to complain about the discomforts in my body. Expressing my truth felt like trading in my immense gratitude for a heaping pile of guilt because I “shouldn’t” be feeling anything less than joyous every moment of everyday of this pregnancy.

As my emotions cooled down, and my loving husband comforted my hormonal self, I began to see cleary that there were lots of expectations at play. The reason I came down so hard on myself for feeling that way was because I expected myself to feel a different way, all the time, everyday, no matter what this transition brought into my experience.

It’s funny, recently I was explaining the word perspective to my 5 year old niece after a conversation about change being hard, especially when we want things to go our way and they don’t. We talked about how perspective gives us a chance to see things differently and that different isn’t always bad. Sometimes, if we’re open to how things change, we may find a new even better way of looking at things, if we’re willing to try. And as I was simplfying this concept to her I realized how much more complicated I was making my own life.

It’s easy to want things to be particular.

It’s hard to accept that life changes.

It’s even harder to hold onto what we want as life is already changing.

Sometimes it’s just about choosing the road of least resistance.

Sometimes choosing to accept the change is a lighter load than holding onto how we wish things were.

And in those moments we accept ourselves as we are, adding a little more self-love and a little less judgment to our lives.

Accepting Life As It Is

Daily mindful living is a mantra in my home, an intentional lifestyle choice fused into how we move about the day. It’s been a refreshing challenge to welcome that way of navigating life into pregnancy. The beauty of mindfulness is that the principles apply no matter who you are, what you’re going through, or how it’s making you feel. But in my experience it’s been exceptionally powerful during trying moments that test your patience, faith, and belief. So it’s safe to say practicing mindfulness throughout pregnancy is a wonderful training ground for parenthood that’s soon to follow.

Acceptance and non-judgment are the attitudes that have come up for me most recently. These are the attitudes and lenses in which I’m anchoring into during challenging moments. I’d like to believe each of the attitudes feed off of one another but in particular acceptance and non-judgment are joined at the hip. Because once you’ve accepted life as it is you can recognize the judgment you’ve been passing about it. On the flip side, once you’ve recognized how much you judge your experience or circumstance, you can begin to accept what is rather than focusing on your opinions about how it makes you feel or how it should be.

Anchoring into these attitudes, along with any other mindfulness practice, is just that, a pratice. It’s implying that you’ll never truly master these ways of being and that’s the point. To continue coming back to apply what you learned last time and the time before that so you can choose to expand your consciousness once more, open your heart once more, open your mind once more. Mindfulness is a simple and profound in that it releases the unneccessary while inviting expansion.

Expansion.

That’s a reoccuring theme for me.

Physically, emotionally, spirutally, even on a cellular level, expansion has been happening within me for quite some time.

Maybe that’s one of the many miracles giving birth is meant to teach, how to expand beyond this version to create the next.

To expand from maiden to mother, from one archetype to the next, never able to shrink back to who you once were with a brand new capacity to hold what’s meant for you.

What a terrifyingly empowering thought that I will never be the same again.

As I enter the week ahead I leave behind my opinions of how it “should” be, what things are “supposed” to feel like, and how I “think” life should be moving. And instead I’ll practice anchoring into accepting what is, noticing judgments, releasing the heavy burdens of the unneccesary and tune in to what’s right in front of me. The expansion of my being, my body, my soul. It’ll be a trippy ride to reflect on one day, but imagine how powerful it’ll be to present to the push and pull of it all, right here right now.

May you choose to live mindfully in anyway you can this week.

Start small, start now, just start.

MindBody, Practices

A Guide to Creating Conscious Change: Alignment vs Action

Posted on October 19, 2022 by Sabrina Renee

Awakening to Your Life

Mindfulness is the practice of moment to moment awareness, awakening to your life as it is. This is a simple yet powerful practice that allows you to adopt a new set of attitudes, to view your world with a fresh pair of eyes. Becoming aware of who you are and what you are doing at this moment brings you out of the thinking mind and into the body, where experiences have been happening unnoticed. By bringing your attention to the experience of your physical sensations you are learning to ground into the present moment, whereas the thinking mind will take you away from it.

Awakening to your life as it is will bring opportunities of profound change into your life. Often people choose only to look at the future to dream, or to the past for reflection as a reference for the change they want. These ways of viewing experience and creating change can only get you so far. It’s the present moment that will reveal all the things about yourself that you’d like to change and how your current lifestyle choices are shaping you as a person. Therefore, if you want to become a better version of yourself tomorrow you have to start paying attention to how you’re showing up today.

The Steps of Conscious Change

A conscious change is one that you are involved in, have contemplated thoroughly, and decide on deliberately. Now is always the best time to time to create conscious change in your life. The first step, as you already learned, is becoming aware of what needs to change. But before any change occurs willingly most people wait until they’ve become frustrated with their own ways or circumstances. The laziness will begin to annoy you, the tardiness will impact your relationships, he procrastination will ruin yet another weekend, the doubts will no longer hold up as truth. You know deep down it could be better, and you also know that the responsibility for these changes falls on you. At some point, you will have to break up with your way of living and welcome change. Choose to do it before you’re at your wit’s end and save some energy for what’s to come. Here are the 3 steps to creating conscious change or A.C.T.

Awareness

Becoming aware of what needs changing is the first and most important step. Nothing can shift in your life until you become aware of what needs to. This is the starting point for inviting the new and releasing the old, where you learn to focus on what is serving your highest good.
Choice

After taking some time to observe there’s of your life you’d like to change, you’ll then get ready to make a choice. Sometimes this choice is a giant leap into the unknown, while other times it’s a simple step in the right direction. Even if it’s a small change it can conjure up some indecisiveness within you. This step is about deciding on what feels the best rather than comparing what “would be” better. You can’t see how things will play out exactly but you can tap into your intuition and figure out what course is best for you to take.
Trust

Finally, it’s time to trust this entire process. Trust in your ability to observe what behaviors, thoughts, or habits need to change in your life. Trust that your choice is a stable one that will bring you closer to who you envision yourself becoming. Trust within your ability to consciously create an overall improved lifestyle for you. Each time you actively build inner trust you strengthen the foundation of your relationship with yourself and your ability to make things happen in your life.

Observing Misalignment

To understand whether you are on the path bringing you closer to who you wish to become, it’s important to know when you’re misaligned or veering off course. An indication that you are experiencing alignment is when you are feeling positive and pleasant emotions. Alignment is the experience of feeling good and allowing more good feelings to find you. This happens when you are thinking healthy thoughts, making choices that line up with your idea of happiness or success and position yourself in a way that invites more of this feeling. An indication of misalignment is when you are feeling negative or unpleasant emotions. In this state of being, you are allowing more of these experiences to gravitate toward you. This happens when you’re thinking of harmful or uneasy thoughts, making choices out of emotional reactivity that do not align with your idea of happiness or success.

Although alignment is the ultimate goal, it’s important that you learn to notice when misalignment is occurring. The most notable thing to become aware of is the experience arising in your body. When you’re thinking troublesome thoughts or experiencing an unpleasant moment, it does not stay only in your mind. It travels throughout the body depositing stress in pockets of your muscles, bones, and internal systems. If you can begin to link your mental experiences with your physical ones you’ll begin to uncover certain patterns of behavior that follow your thoughts. For instance, if you are thinking thoughts of self-doubt your shoulders are likely to slouch and round forward; if you are experiencing an anxious thought that may appear in the body is a fast heart rate or sweaty palms.

Once you’ve become aware of misalignment in your mind you can locate it in your body. The thought patterns you’ve created over the years are powerful and often difficult to shift into a more pleasant experience. That’s why it’s important for you to recognize how misalignment shows up in your body, because that you can change by moving. Move your body in a healthy way, go for a walk if you can, stretch your arms, roll your shoulders back and release the tension in your face, unclench your jaw and take a deep breath. All of these simple choices will help bring you toward feeling better. The closer you are to feeling better the closer you become to alignment. Once you have tapped into the feeling and experience of alignment you can begin to take action toward your goals.

Planning Your Action

Deciding to take action or make an important decision isn’t something to be done without consideration. The right plan of action taking at the wrong time could push you further back than when you started. This is where the importance of alignment comes in. Making decisions in a state of clarity will bring you closer to the change you wish to see, whereas making decisions in a state of emotional reactivity most likely won’t. Although there is a huge difference between allowing your emotions to overcome you and channeling their energy for change, some people can’t quite point out those differences. For most people, emotions running high isn’t something that you thrive off of. It’s actually more likely to stress you out than bring you clarity or confidence about what’s next. This is why alignment and action go hand in hand.

By orienting yourself in the direction of joy, happiness, and success, you are aligning with your higher self. The more you consciously align with yourself the easier it will be to take action. Think of alignment as making your way to the diving board, each step bringing you closer to what you want to do, have, or be. The closer you get the more intense you’ll experience feelings of excitement, joy, and maybe a tinge of apprehension, but you keep moving. toward what it is you want. Now imagine jumping off the diving board as your plan of action, diving into the unknown whether it be by a single step or a massive leap. Don’t rush your way into action without appreciating the role and significance of aligning yourself with what’s meant for you.

Let’s Review

Mindful awareness is the key component in creating any conscious change. Awakening to your life as it unfolds means to release resistance to the state of your life now, so that you may invite new opportunities to find you. Before you begin to make changes you must first become aware of the areas in your life and things involved that need change. In this article, I’ve mapped out 3 steps of creating conscious change that can serve as a guide to making strong decisions that instill your inner trust. By first becoming aware of what needs changing, then making a conscious choice of how to move forward, and finally learning to trust the outcome and your ability to handle it. After you’ve made your decisions and have begun to experience that inner trust, you can learn to build on it by practicing alignment.

The simplest way to practice alignment is to become aware of the moments you’re feeling good and work to invite more of that feeling. This does not mean resisting negative emotions or rejecting unpleasant experiences, these are all apart of the journey. Instead, it’s about becoming aware of both alignment and misalignment, observing and understanding how they both show up in your experience. Misalignment will be tied to negative emotions and bodily sensations of feeling contracted or tight. Being in alignment will feel more open and flowing, with pleasant thoughts and positive feelings. After you’ve become familiar with how it is you want to feel continue striving for that feeling, building up the opportunity to take action. A plan of action is powerful on its own, just like aligning yourself with how you want to experience life is powerful. however, together they become an undeniable force propelling you toward the life you are creating.

You are the creator of your life experience and you are responsible for the ways you choose to respond to the world around you. Every day you are capable of bringing yourself closer to your higher self. It’s in the choices you make, the thoughts you observe, and the behaviors you begin to uncover. Bring a sense of curiosity to what it is you’re noticing within yourself and work on releasing judgment. Who you are today doesn’t have to be defined as good or bad, right or wrong, success or failure. Practice mindfulness with how you are showing up each day as a means for understanding the person you’ve become, not condemning or judging but welcoming. Allow your experience to be one that reveals deeper levels of yourself and uses them as ways to expand.

If you want to create conscious change in your life never stop paying attention. Keep aligning with what feels good and releasing what does not. Keep coming back to the present moment and all of the wonders it has to offer. And when this road gets more challenging than you had anticipated, keep coming back to the breath. Because as long as there is another breath cycle flowing through your body, you have another chance to begin again.

Uncategorized

October 26, 2020

Posted on December 16, 2020 by Sabrina Renee

**Actual footage of the what waking up symptom free after 6 weeks looks like.**

After last week’s migraine scare I made an appointment with a medicine man. It’s something I felt called to do since about September, a card reading I did on Youtube prompted it initially. Something about a health scare coming up soon. That’s when I changed my diet, cut back on caffeine and bought the Cleanse To Heal book by medical medium. I told myself to have no expectations about what would come from this appointment, just that I would remain open and listen.

I put my mask on and walked in. He had me stand by the door until he put his on, what a weird fucking world we live in right now. Looking around at the shelves filled with dozens and dozens of herbs, powders, and mixtures that he prescribes, I already felt better. I chose a medicine man because the last doctor had me on migraine pills indefinitely. Fuck that. I respect that for some people that’s the route to take but I’m not one of those people.

After that appointment I decided to look into more traditional ways of healing, in February I took a book out of the library on the 5 Elements of Self-Healing. Soon after the quarantine began and I ended up keeping the book until the summer, taking notes and learning an introduction of some of my ailments.

He looked at my tongue and in less than 3 seconds told me I had been through some serious trauma throughout my life. By the rhythm and heartbeat within he could tell I’m stressed because I don’t take deep breaths. He found a cyst, discovered my liver needs to be cleansed, and that I’ve been having gut and digestive issues.

The brainfog I had attributed to being an airhead was actually an ailment I’d been suffering for years, along with the anxiety and stress I had normalized. Trying to somehow save face for my physical condition I told him about my dietary and lifestyle changes, how I’m moving my body, drinking water, cut out alcohol, meditating. But he said the trauma, anger, fire had been within me too long and began to compromise my organs-hence the continuous migraines even when I’m not eating trigger foods.

He broke down some technical stuff about the body, and how Chinese medicine sees organs as different types of life force with deep purpose. My poor body. She’s been a victim of my thoughts for so many years and is paying a brutal price. This is going to take serious daily commitment and that scares me. I’ll be doing 6 months of herbal medicine and acupuncture with him, that’s not what scares me.

What scares me is changing my mindset, my habits, my choices, because they directly impact my family. Speaking my mind where I’ve been taught to bite my tongue. Live a truth that’s awkward and uncomfortable. Taking space for myself, to begin a life separate from them so that I can rebuild our connection. I’m scared for what this will mean for the business I’ve put on hold to heal. I’m unsure of who I am without these ties I’m tethered to and what the coming undone process will look like. I’m fearful of standing fully in my truth.

I’m excited for what this means for my health and wellbeing. For the kind of wife I can be when I’m fully healthy and the home I can build for us. I’m looking forward to eating the nourishing foods and hydrating tonics that heal the insides before they manifest on the outside. I’m thankful for my mindful practice and for the clarity I’ve already been experiencing since embracing the truth. I can’t wait for the brain fog to go away so I can see the world as it is, without the blinders of my own limits and traumas.

I feel so much right now, but mostly I’m just happy to be writing again. And getting a life.

MindBody, Practices

Self-Care While Serving Others: Wellness Tips for Caregivers

Posted on May 25, 2020January 21, 2021 by Sabrina Renee

Do people depend on you?

Being a support system for other people is sort of like having a superpower. Your presence has energy that others can feel just by being around you. It feels safe, making it easy for them to open up and maybe even ask for help.

Those who have this quality are likely to be spectacular beings, but being there for others can have its challenges. On one hand, being the person that others depend on can bring you a sense of fulfillment, knowing that you have a positive influence on someone’s life.

On the other hand, being the person people depend on can feel like a heavy responsibility, that could ultimately cloud your focus of what matters most.

It’s easy to lose yourself in what you believe you “should be” doing for others, while your needs get pushed to the bottom of the priority list.

Before you find yourself experiencing angst, frustration, or worse, resentment, it’s important to become aware of your relationship with being there for others.

Checking-In With Yourself

Some people have very welcoming energy about them, once you’re around them you feel comfortable and safe to speak your truth. This is a wonderful gift that could easily be taken advantage of if you’re not careful.

People who are always there for their loved ones, coworkers, and sometimes the occasional stranger on a park bench, aren’t always there for themselves. It’s challenging to set a boundary that requires you NOT to be available for other people, after all it has become a part of who you are.

This doesn’t mean that being of service is a bad thing, but too much giving and not enough receiving is a recipe for an imbalanced lifestyle.

A good place to start is by checking in with your experience as well as how others are doing. The next time you are needed or being asked to do something, ask yourself:

How do I feel at this moment?
Can I handle this emotionally?
Am I doing this for the right reasons?
How will I feel after accomplishing this?
Will this hurt me or anyone else?
Is this way of helping aligned with my highest good?

Check in With Your Wellbeing

Get curious about how serving others is impacting your wellbeing. By deepening your connection with the service you provide you are more capable of creating a much-needed boundary.

Because if you are willing to do anything for anyone, you’re going to quickly burn yourself out. The more attentive you are to your own needs the better able you are to show up for those who need you most.

Tune into your energy levels, check-in on how you’re feeling, listen to any resistant thoughts popping up, all of these are signs that you need to take care of yourself.

When your energy is replenished you have more to give, no matter what pops up in your day. Start by checking in with how you’re feeling moment to moment and allow the honest answer to surface within you.

There is a difference between feeling overwhelmed and feeling disconnected from the way you serve your community. The only way to understand which one you are experiencing is by turning inward, which may not come naturally to someone who does so much for other people.

It can feel selfish to consider your own feelings because the obligation to others is so deeply rooted. The people who invest a considerable amount of time and energy into the needs of others are wired by service.

If left unchecked this can be a driving force toward resentment or anxiety about what you do and who you do it for. By tuning into your personal experience and choosing to be present you can tap into the truth of how this affects you.

Self-Care is Necessary

When caring for others more often than not the mind is wired to focus on them, considering their needs before your own comes with the territory. But when you aren’t at your best you can’t deliver your best self to them.

Your performance may suffer, your energy levels may deplete, you may be physically present while your mind is somewhere else. Something as rewarding as serving, providing, and caring for others shouldn’t have to come at the cost of your mental health.

What I would love for you to take away is that there is most likely something in your life that isn’t getting the attention it deserves.

Maybe it’s the lack of healthy food your eating or movement you giving your body. Maybe it’s the way you deal with the hardest challenge in your life or the troubling emotions that feel too impossible to handle. I’m telling you to pay attention.

Look at how you treat the unpleasantness in your life, and how it returns the favor in your lifestyle. Notice the lack of attention you give yourself, while you glorify the attention you give others.

Raise your level of self-awareness so that you can truly begin to deal with and heal from whatever is going on in your life. This is the first step to being better for yourself and for those who need you most.

Tag: Selflove