Jean’s Word of the Week: Trigger
The Importance of Knowing Your Triggers and Being Prepared to Move Through Them with Ease
Jean Edelman: Great to be with you this week. It is summer and how about we fine tune our self-care routine so that when we hit the fall, it's a part of us and we don't give it up. And so August is going to be about self-care.
Why is self-care so important to me that I want to share it so much with you? It's because when Ric and I, when we started our business together, this was the missing piece. I was the detail person I was always doing, doing, doing, fixing, fixing, fixing, and I wasn't taking care of myself. Lightbulb! Got to take care of yourself. And so what I'm going to share with you, what I always share with you, is my journey. The things that I have learned that have worked.
Life is about being in balance and life is about having tools to deal with our life, with the emotions of life, with the stress of life. So I want you to picture the seesaw. Remember, we've talked about the seesaw. And when we're overstressed or overcommitted or we've overeaten or anything, anything can throw us out of balance. The world throws us out of balance. But the goal is to be here, just to be here. And so we only have this one body, this one vessel, this one life. And this is why we have to try to get it right. We're not going to get it perfect. But as long as we're moving in the direction of health, making small changes, that's the key. Don't give it up.
So this month is going to be about self-care. I want to help you understand and connect the dots that what we put into this vessel, what we expose this vessel to affects our health. It may not be today. It may be 10 years from now because life is cumulative. Our health is cumulative. And so what we did in our 20s, 30s and 40s is going to affect us in our 50s, 60s and 70s. And so connecting these dots with our health, our mind, our body and our health, when we nourish ourselves with whole food, when we drink water, when we develop good sleep habits and we have good tools to process our emotional health, then we will know balance. And it's so easy to know when we're out of balance, but when we're out of balance, we're not helping ourselves and we're not helping others. So the simplest thing to learn about our balance is our breath. And I've recently shared this with you, the diaphragmatic breath, full belly breath to help calm us down. You can look for that. But that is a very good exercise. So when we're out of balance, when things are whirling around us.
Learn to Just Exist in Your Body, Your Stillness, and Your Breath to Promote Your Own Self-Care
Find a quiet spot to sit down and just breathe. Just be in your body. This is the first piece of a toolbox of self-care. The second piece, which I've talked about a lot, is journaling. We are constantly being challenged in our life. We are constantly being put in front of people that know how to trigger us or do trigger us. The key is to know, Hey, I know what you're going to do to me, but I'm ready for it. And I'm ready for it because I can find my breath and I can journal. Journaling is so healthy and so helpful in our self-care toolbox. I've shared this before. We journal. We sit in a quiet spot and we write and write and write until there's no more emotion. And then we find a quiet spot and a safe spot, and we burn it and we let it go. This is the journey of life. This is the process of life. And this is the best tool to have to help us deal with our extreme emotions.
And so my word of the week is going to be TRIGGER.
T is for trust
We need to trust what we're feeling. Don't push it aside. Face it. So then we can let it go.
R is to rise
To evaluate. If we can rise above the fray and not get pulled in, we're going to feel a whole lot better.
I is to impart
To make known. If we can express our emotions, to say them in a calm, rational way, in a safe environment with no judgment, we can diffuse our emotions.
G is to gain
To advance. Life is a journey. It's about knowing ourselves and not repeating the mistakes, the old thoughts, the old feelings. It's about advancing and moving forward. Baby steps. Baby steps are the key.
The G is to grow
To have progress. This is what life is about. It's about learning about ourselves and learning about others.
The E is for ease
To flow. If something is really too difficult, it's probably not meant for us to do it that way. It's probably a nice little message for us to find a new way, something that's easier and a little bit simpler and not too difficult. We want to flow with life. We want ease.
And the R is for rare
We are so precious. We are one light in this beautiful world. We need to hold that in our hearts and share that with everyone every day. So embrace our emotions. Use our tools when times are difficult, share the joy and be the light. Let's build this month as our self-care month.
Have a great week, everyone.