Welcome to the Self Care with Marissa Radar podcast. I'm your host, Marissa and I am a certified life coach and self care expert. I'm making it my mission to help busy women build a self care centered lifestyle because self care is so much more than just pampering yourself. Society leads us to believe that basic rights like taking a warm bath or having our hair done is self care, but I'm here to change that narrative. I'm going to teach you how I went from overwhelmed, stressed to the max and burned out on life to thriving and loving the life I'm building. And it all started with making a commitment to myself. So what do you say? Are you ready to commit to your own personal development journey? Let me lead you to the path of happiness and contentment. That's right. The one that leads you to a life you truly love. Let's get started today. I have a very important question for you. I want to know if self care it is actually selfish.

We've all heard the coin term, you can't pour from an empty cup and self care isn't selfish. But what if I told you that self care actually is selfish. Now, before you chastise me, Hear me out in this week's episode, I'm going to break down my newfound perspective all about self care before I get too far into it though, I do want to apologize for the IA will win this week. It's brutal out there. It's gusting At about 50 mph. So if you're hearing it in the background, I apologize, but let's move on and get to my new perspective on self care. First off, I want to start off by saying that self care looks different for everyone and it looks different in different stages of life this morning, I got the opportunity to do a morning routine that was different than my normal and I was thinking man, it felt great to wake up at 6 45 do the girl's hair, go down and do my workout shower and just Be in my office by nine.

If I were to make that my routine every day, it would be amazing. I mean it felt so good for me to do that, but honestly if I did that in this stage of my life, that would be selfish, it would require trend to get to work later than he likes to every day, I would no longer be dropping the girls off at daycare. But man, I would feel good, wouldn't I Isn't that what society is telling us, it feels good, do more of it. There's this misconception right now that if you feel good or feel aligned, then it must be right, but in reality when we place too much importance on doing what we need and then put that in air quotes, we oftentimes justify choices that hurt us in the long run or other people simply because it's true to who we are, we think that as long as our self care, our self love and our choices aligned with who we claim to be, that everything is all good Now in two years, my morning situation is going to change.

I'm going to be able to put all three girls on the bus and send them to school and then maybe my routine can look that way. But for right now I'm going to have to sacrifice getting up earlier and getting those things done so that I can take my girls to school, which I love doing anyway. So that's not a problem. But this stage looks different than my next stage of life is going to and that's okay. Sometimes we have to deal with minor inconveniences because of where we are in our lives and that's okay. We live in a society that tells us that we can have it all and as much as we try, we really can't. And I've even been known to say that you can do it all. You can live your dream life and have your kids and run your business and do whatever you can, but you have to create a life that fits your own situation. I can't look At a single woman in her 30's who's been running her business for 15 years already and think that I am capable of having the exact same life she does.

It's not possible. I have kids, I have a family. I'm married to a farmer that looks very different than the people who can load up their stuff and travel around and spend weeks on end. In other places. I could leave, I could leave my family behind and go do all of those things because what I love it. Absolutely. But that is selfish. We need to stop talking about self care as manicures, massages, getting our hair done all of those things. Do they help us feel better? Sure if we don't have them done, are we going to have a miserable life? No, but we have this expectation that we should be able to do those things. Now. I'm not saying that you should feel guilty for doing any of the above. I get bi weekly massages to help with my neck and previous injury that I've had. I have my nails done and I even have my eyelashes done every other week. There is no shame in my game. But those are things that I'm choosing to be selfish about my life would not end.

I would not be completely miserable if I didn't have those done. I just enjoyed them and that is okay too. But we need to start focusing on self care as being the rest and rejuvenation that God calls for us. He knows that we need rest. That's why we require sleep vacations. All of those things are ways for us to rest and rejuvenate. We all know that burning at both ends of the candle leads to burnout. So how do we balance self care without being self absorbed? I want you to stop thinking of the things as a I deserve this activity. We need to look at self care as I'm stewarding my time. I'm stewarding my health, my body, my mind. We are being told as a society that we are entitled to self serving time because we are mothers, business owners, teachers, whatever the case may be. But that's not the truth. And we all know that there are times where life is unbalanced and we need to find strength in God during those times to pull us through it because we may not get that time that we think that we deserve.

Your Children may be sick. They may not be sleeping through the night. You may get sick. A spouse may be sick. You may have obligations from your job, your business, your church, places that you volunteer at that may cause you stress and fatigue and you may not have the time to rest right then, but know that that time is coming. There is a fine line between doing all of the things and doing what you've been called to do. And I think that that goes along with this. That unbalanced life often comes from us feeling like we should be doing or other people telling us we should be doing it. Oh, you're so good at this. You should do it. But God has given us each our own purpose in life. And when we are feeling that overwhelmed, we need to stop and think, okay, is he putting this on my heart for me to do? Or am I ignoring what my true purposes just to appease other people.

This all fits together. You guys, our self care, our rest and rejuvenation are overwhelmed. It's all this big giant puzzle. And so my challenge for you this week is to take a look just at your self care routines. Are they serving you in a way that renews you, provides rest and rejuvenation or are you practicing them because you feel you're entitled to that time? I recently read a book by Allie Beth Stuckey, it's called You're Not Enough and that's okay, escaping the toxic culture of self love and it really filled a void that I've had these past few years. I know the science behind self care, I know the science behind taking time for yourself, improving your mental health setting boundaries and all of those different things, but I think it's the perspective that we do them with that is the main factor here. The self care industry is teaching women that they are enough. They are perfect just the way they are when we all know that that's not true.

There's no such thing as perfection. We are not whole on our own, We need faith, hope, love, peace, joy to be fulfilled. And if we are chasing the idea that we can have all of those magically with just what's inside us were sadly missing the mark. I encourage you to read Ali's book, I won't lie, She's a little hardcore but her perspective is fresh and just what we need to hear as christian women in this world. I am going to link the book in the show notes and I don't want to leave you hanging with all of the thoughts that might be swirling around in your head right now because I'm going to tell you as I was reading her book, I battled myself through the entire thing. Yes, I agree with this, but I also feel this or I think this or what does this mean or how can I do this and this at the same time and how does it all fit together. It seems contradicting, I want to encourage you to, to read her book and to reach out to me about social media is kind of my jam email me and let's chat more about it.

I'm going to dive more into this as the weeks go on but I definitely wanted to get this conversation started and I honestly cannot wait to hear your perspective too. And so until next week I'm going to be here cheering you on and answering every Single one of your messages. So until then that's it for this week's episode of self care with Marissa raider. Thank you for joining me and listen if you enjoyed it and thank your BFF or any other woman you know, might benefit from it, Send them a link, share this episode or screenshot it and share it on instagram and tag me at marisa dot raider and hey, if you haven't already come, hang out with me on the gram where I share all things building life you truly love in order to help you be the best version of yourself. Until next week, I will be here cheering you on.