April 8, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode, we dive into the power of self-care and why it’s essential for our overall well-being. From managing stress to building healthier relationships, self-care is about more than just indulgence—it's a vital practice that nurtures your mind, body, and soul. Join us as we explore the different types of self-care, share practical tips to create your personalized routine, and discuss how to set healthy boundaries in a world that constantly demands your attention.
Whether you're feeling burnt out or just looking to reset, this episode will give you the tools to prioritize yourself and live a balanced, fulfilled life. So grab your favorite tea, relax, and let's talk about taking care of YOU.
Mental Health is a Lifestyle Podcast with Andrea Wise-Brown, is where we discuss practical strategies for managing mental health and wellbeing. Thank you for listening to this episode of Mental Health is a Lifestyle Podcast. We hope you found these practical tips helpful and encourage you to continue prioritizing your mental health and wellness.
If you have any questions or suggestions for future episodes, please email us at mhialpodcast@gmail.com.
See you next time!
Find Andrea: awisebrown.com
Follow The Podcast At @mentalhealthisalifestylepod Mhialpodcast@gmail.com I want to know your opinions…….
In addition; if you have any questions that you want answered on the podcast send your request to mhialpodcast@gmail.com or inbox me @mentalhealthisalifestylepod
Remember, Mental health is a Lifestyle!®️😘
Whether you're feeling burnt out or just looking to reset, this episode will give you the tools to prioritize yourself and live a balanced, fulfilled life. So grab your favorite tea, relax, and let's talk about taking care of YOU.
Mental Health is a Lifestyle Podcast with Andrea Wise-Brown, is where we discuss practical strategies for managing mental health and wellbeing. Thank you for listening to this episode of Mental Health is a Lifestyle Podcast. We hope you found these practical tips helpful and encourage you to continue prioritizing your mental health and wellness.
If you have any questions or suggestions for future episodes, please email us at mhialpodcast@gmail.com.
See you next time!
Find Andrea: awisebrown.com
Follow The Podcast At @mentalhealthisalifestylepod Mhialpodcast@gmail.com I want to know your opinions…….
In addition; if you have any questions that you want answered on the podcast send your request to mhialpodcast@gmail.com or inbox me @mentalhealthisalifestylepod
Remember, Mental health is a Lifestyle!®️😘
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast is not a substitute for our relationship with
your mental health professional. Hey hey, hey, family, Welcome back
to another episode of The Mental Health Is a lifestyle
podcast with your girl, Andrea wise Brown Family. I am
(00:26):
excited to be back here again with you this week.
And for you who have just scrolled by or just
decided to pick this podcast episode, but yet you have
not joined the family as of yet, please do so now,
and you need to do so now by subscribing to
(00:48):
the podcast or to the channel, Liken the channel, sharing
the channel, and then commenting on the episodes. Tell me
what you're thinking or let me know if you've actually
put what I'm teaching you into action, because I want
to know. Tell me. Tell me say Andrea, it's worked.
(01:10):
This didn't really work. I didn't really like it, or
Andrea I loved it, or Andrea, you know what. I
have another idea. There's something that I have a question
and I want you to talk about it. And so
I want to engage with you family. This is why
I show up every week. But we are getting ready
(01:30):
to jump right into it. So this week's topic is
all about self care. Now you may say to me
self care, Andrea people just use that. It's kind of
like kind of like a trendy topic and people just
talk about it. It's just easily tossed around. And is
that really even a thing. And I am going to
(01:52):
tell you that, yes, self care, i e. Taking care
of yourself is not only a thing, but it is necessary.
And I want to tell you that self care isn't
just about getting in a bubble bath or lighting the candle,
although you know I do sell candles and you can
(02:13):
find them at awisbrown dot com. Or just lighting a candle,
or getting your nails done or your feet done, a manicure, pedicure.
Those things are examples of self care also, But today
that's not what I'm talking about. I want to get
down to the ruda of the tuda. I like to
(02:34):
go deep and you know that, and I want to
take you there because I want to empower you to
change your quality of life. Okay, So let me just
hit you with this. Let me hit you with it fast, hard,
so you can get in and get out. Okay. So
when we're talking about self care, there are benefits to
(02:54):
self care. Self care reduces your stress level. When you
engage in self care, it improves your productivity. Also, when
you engage your self care, it helps you to maintain
your mental health. So these are all benefits that we
(03:16):
can't live without. You understand, it's really really important to
take care of self because what we want to do
is we want to avoid burnout. We want to avoid
having high anxiety all the time. We also want to
avoid falling into depression. We definitely want to avoid any
(03:38):
kind of health problems. You know. Family, When your stress
level is elevated, then what that does is it elevates
the cortisol level in your body. The cortersol levels elevate
your inflammation in your body, the inflammation in your organs,
which causes health condition via health problems. We don't want that,
(04:04):
nor do we want to be overwhelmed. We want to
live in peace. We want zen, don't we want zen? Family?
We want zen. So your girl is here, Andrea is
here to tell you how to take care of yourself.
So we're gonna start off with these four different steps.
(04:25):
The first step is learn family how to set boundaries. Yes,
setting boundaries is a part of self care. So you
may say, because I got you, I got your family, Andrea,
how do I set boundaries? I keep hearing this all
the time. How do I set So I'll give you
some examples. An example of setting boundaries, let's just say
(04:47):
physically is let's just say, for you to be in
a situation and someone wants to touch you without permission,
a way to set boundaries is to tell them, no,
do not touch me, because I don't want you to
touch me and that is inappropriate, and that may not
(05:08):
work out well for you. You know, even if you are
cool with the person, you know, you can tell a
person no, I don't think that it's appropriate for you
to touch me, And that might be right now, like
maybe you know a little bit later you might want
them to touch you. Then you tell them. But that's
an example of physical touch. Setting up boundary with physical touch.
(05:29):
And if you've heard an older episode of mine, I'll
bring up a personal story again about my hair. And
for some reason, when I am around women who are
not black, for some reason, they just assume that they
can just touch my hair. I don't know why. I
(05:53):
don't know why because that just states the entitlement. And
so this just happened just yesterday. I was literally in
at with my best friend, one of my best friends
and as we were in the store to the salesperson
that was helping her. She's a Caucasian woman and she
was helping her and I'm just with her, and then
(06:13):
all of a sudden, she looked at me and she
was like, oh my god, I love your hair. I said,
thank you, thank you, I mean, I appreciate that. I
think that's very nice and kind of you to say that.
And then her hands started to come towards it, and
I'm looking at her in her eye. She's looking me
back in mind, and she said, can I touch it?
I drew a boundary physical I said, no, you cannot
(06:35):
touch it. No, and don't you ever ask me or
any other black woman to touch the hair again. She
looked she said oh oh, like she was appalled, and
I just calmed her down and I said listen. She said, well,
I mean, you know, I didn't mean to like offend you,
I said, and guess what, you didn't offend me. But
(06:57):
I'm going to take this moment to educate you. Yeah,
I am not a stuffed animal. I am not a puppy.
I am not you know, a jurabil. I don't know
what people like to touch. Like, Yeah, so you don't
get to just I am a human to touch me
because you see something interesting over here on me. And
(07:20):
so she said, oh okay, And then I always give
this example. I said, okay, So to be clear, I said,
if a man were to see you, and he were
to say to you that you were an attractive woman,
and you would respond and say, oh my gosh, well
thank you. And then he came closer and he said
can I touch you? And he wanted to touch your
(07:42):
face or maybe someplace else. How would you feel? She
was like, huh, I got it. I got it now.
And I said that's all I wanted you to do
was to get it. So that was inappropriate, But family,
I was setting a boundary, a physical boundary. Don't you
touch my hair? All right? Another one example is an
emotion boundary. So sometimes you can be in a situation
(08:04):
where you may need to limit the time that you
spend with certain people to people who drain you. If
they drain your energy, if being around them triggers you
to be irritable, then you may have to set any
boundary and emotional boundary. Yeah, I'm not gonna be able
(08:25):
to do it. I don't think that I'm available Another
boundary you could set is on time. You know, you
can actually say no to request to request from people.
You know if they request some want to go out
to lunch or dinner. You know, if they are not
in alignment with you and what it is your purpose
in life. You'll set boundaries on your time. Don't you
(08:48):
give your time to anyone else who you are not
in alignment with. In some way, you can take care
of yourself and set the boundary. You can set boundaries
for your mental health. You can limit certain conversations. So
you know how these people today want to have conversations
(09:09):
around politics and religion, so they just want to start
sparkling off and just start to honey, draw boundaries for
your mental health and disengage and say, nope, I am
not going to talk about that. So if you want
to maybe talk about something else, but that topic is
a topic that is off the tape, set boundaries. So family,
(09:30):
that's number one. Setting boundaries is an act of self care.
Number two, using your voice. So using your voice, like
in that situation that I was in so opposed to me.
Let's go back to the situation when the woman wanted
to touch my hair. If I was afraid to take
care of myself and to use my voice. Then I
(09:52):
may have let the lady pet my hair, but that's
not happening. That ain't That is not but family. You
may find yourself in certain situations. It may not be
your hair. You understand what I'm saying. It may be
something else in life that you really feel like you
want to say something or you want to speak up,
(10:14):
but instead you decide or you choose to kind of
like cower and shrink and walk away because you tell
yourself the story of I really don't want to get
into it, and I believe that that's okay, because that
can look like a boundary in certain situations. But if
(10:34):
you find yourself repeating that behavior over and over again,
I e. Example is never speaking up for yourself, and
you see yourself consistently shrinking and cowering and running away,
being conflict avoidant family, I'm gonna tell you are not
(10:56):
practicing self care. You are not choosing to take care
of yourself. So you have to use your voice. No,
says hey, I get it. You're not trying to be offensive.
This is back to my story, but no, you cannot
touch me, use your use your mouth, use your voice.
Number three. Family a way to take care of yourself.
(11:20):
Another strategy for self care would be creating a rude tee,
like a daily routine, something that you can do every day.
And this is nothing that's really really big, you know.
So when people start these daily routines, sometimes they will
(11:41):
find themselves putting too much on the list. So I'm
gonna eat this every day. I'm gonna ride my bike
sixteen miles every day. I'm gonna do so many sit
ups every day. I'm gonna do so many wall squats
every day. I'm gonna write a book every day, you
know what I'm saying. Like, you know, they come up
with so many things that they want to do every day.
(12:01):
I'm gonna drink tea every day. I'm gonna put tumwork
on my food every day. You know, I'm gonna take
a walk at night every day. It's just like no, no, no, no, no,
slow down. You're doing too much, will think, bring it back,
Bring it back. So when you're creating a daily routine,
(12:24):
what you want to do is you want to create
it in little small bites and you want to make
the steps manageable so that they become a habit. So
I will tell you about a routine that I have
that I do every day. If not every day, I
(12:44):
do it five to six times a week, and I've
been doing it for years and I prescribe it to everyone. Family.
It is exercise exercise family, five days to six days
a week, just for thirty minutes a day if that's
all you can do. But look, look, family, I'm gonna
(13:06):
give you something. If you could at least do twenty
minutes a day, then I'm saying do that because that
will improve your health. Study. Hey, family, come on over here,
because I have something for you. Starting off with a
go to guide for keeping your minds healthy and strong.
(13:29):
This right here is the Bible to Mental Health. It's
your mental health Bible. The name of it is six
Pillars to power up your mind and make mental health
a lifestyle. Everything that you need to know about keeping
your minds healthy and strong is in this go to guide.
(13:50):
Where you get it from? Will you get it from
awisebrown dot com, backslash shop. But guess what, you don't
have to go any place else to look for you
aromatherapy because your girls got you. Okay, you can get
some aromatherapy here. This is a roma therapy in this candle.
This is called a slice of happiness. It makes me tingle,
(14:17):
like literally makes me tingle a slice of happiness. This
is a cruelty free candle with no parabins, no formaldehyde,
and no known suspected carcinogenics. Now, this one smells delicious
and it's good for you. Made with essential oils. It's
(14:37):
a soy candle. All right, y'all. And oh, I'm a
part of you. You're a part of me. We are
a family. We got hoodies now, and these are UNUS
sex hoodies and they wear well, they wash well, and
they feel so good. So you can wear them over
your clothes, you know what I'm saying, and look dope.
Or you can wear them as your clothes with nothing
(14:59):
under them, which I like to do often. And when
you travel everywhere, I mean every time I wear them,
I'm moving around, people are always asking me whether I'm traveling,
going to the supermarket, what's that? Who's that? And I'm like,
mental health is a lifestyle because see this is on
the back. Okay, they come in white and they come
in black. I'm like, join the family. Mental health is
a lifestyle podcast. So there you go. Family. Don't you
(15:23):
ever say then I give you nothing. You get all
of these things from awisbrown dot com backslash shop. All right,
I got your goods. I got you. You don't have
to go any place else. I'll see you on the
other side. Study show that it does improve your health.
(15:45):
Exercise does at least twenty minutes a day. This is
what I tell people. You don't have to go to
the gym and lift up, get a membership and lift
up wits and do all that. You don't have to
you know what I mean saying if that's not your thing.
If it is your thing, then do it, do it.
But if it's not, I am saying that you will
(16:08):
get benefits from just literally taking a walk in your neighborhood.
I tell clients all the time, walk out your front door,
walk ten minutes. When you get ten minutes out, guess what,
turn around and come back home. So now you've already
walked twenty minutes. And you could do it in the morning,
(16:31):
or you could do it in the evening. But for me,
I see benefits. And that's you know, determined by your
circadian rhythms, by your you know body's clock, you know
what feels good to you. I'm a morning person, so
for me, I need to work out in the morning.
So that's what I do. So every morning, at least
(16:52):
six days a week, five to six days a week,
I get my workout in. And when I tell you
the benefits of what it does, like it helps your
prefrontal lobe, It helps with your reasoning skills, it sharpens
your logic. It also you know, they did a research,
they did some research at Harvard that supports that when
(17:14):
you exercise, it increases your intelligence. Okay, So as I
you know, I'm a practicing therapist. I see clients daily.
Before I go in with my clients, I have already
worked out in the morning. It's what I do. It
is a part of my daily route team, and it
(17:38):
helps me. It also boosts my mood to where I'm happier.
Do you understand me? But that is a part of
my routine. There's other things that I do also every morning,
Like okay, there's another thing is my supplements, my vitamins
and supplements every morning, so I do those seven days
a week. It is a part of my morning room team.
(18:01):
I give myself the vitamins and the supplements that I
need that puts me in optimal health. And I'm committed
to it, so I do it every morning. So those
are just two things, family, that I do to practice
self care. In regards of a routine, something really small
(18:24):
and something manageable and sol family, I would ask you
what is it that you could do for you daily
and start off with little bite sizes. Don't get overwhelmed
with creating this huge list because trust me, the huge list. Listen,
you're gonna get trip over your own feet. You're gonna
(18:47):
start judging yourself when you start missing things because you're
setting yourself up for failure, failure, and then you are
gonna create for you trying to take care of yourself
some burnout, some high anxiety, okay, and become overwhelmed. That's
not what we're doing self care practice and self care.
What we're trying to accomplish is the opposite of that. Remember,
(19:10):
we want to reduce stress, we want to improve your productivity,
and we want to maintain your mental health. So okay,
So creating a routine is a part of your self
care journey. And then let me tell you number four.
So number four is spirituality, practicing some type of spirituality,
(19:36):
connecting to some spiritual source that's higher than you. Yeah.
So what research has shown us is that improves your
quality of life. Your connection to a spiritual source really
does improve your physical health and it actually expands on
(20:01):
your quality of life. So let me give you a
little bit of proof. Family, I want to give you
some proof on the benefits of self care. Here we go,
y'all know, teacher, got to put the glasses on. Okay, Okay.
So a survey by Vogaro in twenty twenty one found
that seventy five percent of Americans believe self care activities
(20:28):
help alleviate stress. Additionally, sixty four percent reported a boost
in self confidence, sixty seven percent felt more productive, and
seventy one percent experienced increased happiness after engaging in self
(20:51):
care practices. Okay, family, So that's some research, but there's
tons of re search that's out there that supports taking
care of yourself. Practicing self care will in hand your
(21:12):
quality of life. And this is one thing that some
people will say to me about the challenges or barriers
to actually taking care of themselves. They'll say to me
that they feel guilty when they take some time away
from their families or their loved ones to go exercise,
(21:32):
or they feel guilty or maybe disrespectful when they use
their voice, even in an appropriate way. You know, they
said that they feel a sense of guilt, And I'm
telling you you have to push through the guilt because
the reality is this. If you just imagine a cup,
(21:53):
if your cup, and just imagine pouring water into a cup,
if your cup is always full of the stressors of life,
of all of the things, taking care of the family
and going to work, and trying to maintain friendships and
finances and all the things. If your cup is always full,
(22:15):
and you don't take care of your cup and take
care of your cup is learning how to do these
things so that your cup is empty, then how can
you help anyone else? How can you help and give
to anyone else? Because your cup is empty? You cannot
help someone else their cup is full, your cup is full.
(22:38):
How you gonna help them? You can't. So that's why
I'm encouraging you family to take care of your cup first.
Empty the water and your cup first. Because the water
is getting rank, the water's getting stale, it's smelling a
little mildew, so we need to replace. We need to
dump that, and you're gonna dump that doing these four things. Family.
(23:02):
Number One, you're gonna set boundaries. Setting boundaries is a
part of self care. You can do that in a
physical way, in emotional way, in regards to time and
your mental health. Okay, so set boundaries. Number two, use
your voice in situations where you need to set boundaries
(23:26):
and say no. Don't be afraid to use your voice.
You need to practice using your voice to take care
of self. Number three, creating a routine, something that is
something that small, little small steps, little bite sizes, something
that is manageable, manageable habits that you can do. Create
(23:49):
that to take care of yourself every day. And number
four is spirituality. Connect to a spiritual source higher than you.
And I will always tell you that for me, mine
is God. I never leave home without him. Okay. I
(24:10):
believe He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and
the end, and I am nothing without him. And my
connection to Him, to my spirituality is what propels me
in life to even sit here and to keep going,
to keep you know, accomplishing things, to expand my life,
(24:31):
to have good friendships and loved ones, it's all through
him to be successful. It's all through Him through my spirituality.
So I am telling you I'm not putting mine off
on you, but i will tell you mine is good,
and mine is yours and yours is mine. But if
you have another source, I'm not judging it. I'm just
(24:53):
telling you connect to some sort of spirituality, a spiritual
source that is bigger than you. Well, all right, family,
that is the way to practice self care, to take
care of yourself because you are worth it, because God
(25:13):
says so. And that family is another episode of the
Mental Health Is a Lifestyle podcast with your girl Andrea
Wise Brown. Family, Please take care of yourself this week
and put a note down. Please tell me how you
(25:36):
were taking care of yourself. If you're watching on YouTube,
come on tape it down there. Send me some messages
to let me know what steps you took care to
take care of yourself. Tell me if they worked, if
they didn't, which one worked better for you? And I
will see you next week on the next episode. I
(25:57):
love you.
This podcast is not a substitute for our relationship with
your mental health professional. Hey hey, hey, family, Welcome back
to another episode of The Mental Health Is a lifestyle
podcast with your girl, Andrea wise Brown Family. I am
(00:26):
excited to be back here again with you this week.
And for you who have just scrolled by or just
decided to pick this podcast episode, but yet you have
not joined the family as of yet, please do so now,
and you need to do so now by subscribing to
(00:48):
the podcast or to the channel, Liken the channel, sharing
the channel, and then commenting on the episodes. Tell me
what you're thinking or let me know if you've actually
put what I'm teaching you into action, because I want
to know. Tell me. Tell me say Andrea, it's worked.
(01:10):
This didn't really work. I didn't really like it, or
Andrea I loved it, or Andrea, you know what. I
have another idea. There's something that I have a question
and I want you to talk about it. And so
I want to engage with you family. This is why
I show up every week. But we are getting ready
(01:30):
to jump right into it. So this week's topic is
all about self care. Now you may say to me
self care, Andrea people just use that. It's kind of
like kind of like a trendy topic and people just
talk about it. It's just easily tossed around. And is
that really even a thing. And I am going to
(01:52):
tell you that, yes, self care, i e. Taking care
of yourself is not only a thing, but it is necessary.
And I want to tell you that self care isn't
just about getting in a bubble bath or lighting the candle,
although you know I do sell candles and you can
(02:13):
find them at awisbrown dot com. Or just lighting a candle,
or getting your nails done or your feet done, a manicure, pedicure.
Those things are examples of self care also, But today
that's not what I'm talking about. I want to get
down to the ruda of the tuda. I like to
(02:34):
go deep and you know that, and I want to
take you there because I want to empower you to
change your quality of life. Okay, So let me just
hit you with this. Let me hit you with it fast, hard,
so you can get in and get out. Okay. So
when we're talking about self care, there are benefits to
(02:54):
self care. Self care reduces your stress level. When you
engage in self care, it improves your productivity. Also, when
you engage your self care, it helps you to maintain
your mental health. So these are all benefits that we
(03:16):
can't live without. You understand, it's really really important to
take care of self because what we want to do
is we want to avoid burnout. We want to avoid
having high anxiety all the time. We also want to
avoid falling into depression. We definitely want to avoid any
(03:38):
kind of health problems. You know. Family, When your stress
level is elevated, then what that does is it elevates
the cortisol level in your body. The cortersol levels elevate
your inflammation in your body, the inflammation in your organs,
which causes health condition via health problems. We don't want that,
(04:04):
nor do we want to be overwhelmed. We want to
live in peace. We want zen, don't we want zen? Family?
We want zen. So your girl is here, Andrea is
here to tell you how to take care of yourself.
So we're gonna start off with these four different steps.
(04:25):
The first step is learn family how to set boundaries. Yes,
setting boundaries is a part of self care. So you
may say, because I got you, I got your family, Andrea,
how do I set boundaries? I keep hearing this all
the time. How do I set So I'll give you
some examples. An example of setting boundaries, let's just say
(04:47):
physically is let's just say, for you to be in
a situation and someone wants to touch you without permission,
a way to set boundaries is to tell them, no,
do not touch me, because I don't want you to
touch me and that is inappropriate, and that may not
(05:08):
work out well for you. You know, even if you are
cool with the person, you know, you can tell a
person no, I don't think that it's appropriate for you
to touch me, And that might be right now, like
maybe you know a little bit later you might want
them to touch you. Then you tell them. But that's
an example of physical touch. Setting up boundary with physical touch.
(05:29):
And if you've heard an older episode of mine, I'll
bring up a personal story again about my hair. And
for some reason, when I am around women who are
not black, for some reason, they just assume that they
can just touch my hair. I don't know why. I
(05:53):
don't know why because that just states the entitlement. And
so this just happened just yesterday. I was literally in
at with my best friend, one of my best friends
and as we were in the store to the salesperson
that was helping her. She's a Caucasian woman and she
was helping her and I'm just with her, and then
(06:13):
all of a sudden, she looked at me and she
was like, oh my god, I love your hair. I said,
thank you, thank you, I mean, I appreciate that. I
think that's very nice and kind of you to say that.
And then her hands started to come towards it, and
I'm looking at her in her eye. She's looking me
back in mind, and she said, can I touch it?
I drew a boundary physical I said, no, you cannot
(06:35):
touch it. No, and don't you ever ask me or
any other black woman to touch the hair again. She
looked she said oh oh, like she was appalled, and
I just calmed her down and I said listen. She said, well,
I mean, you know, I didn't mean to like offend you,
I said, and guess what, you didn't offend me. But
(06:57):
I'm going to take this moment to educate you. Yeah,
I am not a stuffed animal. I am not a puppy.
I am not you know, a jurabil. I don't know
what people like to touch. Like, Yeah, so you don't
get to just I am a human to touch me
because you see something interesting over here on me. And
(07:20):
so she said, oh okay, And then I always give
this example. I said, okay, So to be clear, I said,
if a man were to see you, and he were
to say to you that you were an attractive woman,
and you would respond and say, oh my gosh, well
thank you. And then he came closer and he said
can I touch you? And he wanted to touch your
(07:42):
face or maybe someplace else. How would you feel? She
was like, huh, I got it. I got it now.
And I said that's all I wanted you to do
was to get it. So that was inappropriate, But family,
I was setting a boundary, a physical boundary. Don't you
touch my hair? All right? Another one example is an
emotion boundary. So sometimes you can be in a situation
(08:04):
where you may need to limit the time that you
spend with certain people to people who drain you. If
they drain your energy, if being around them triggers you
to be irritable, then you may have to set any
boundary and emotional boundary. Yeah, I'm not gonna be able
(08:25):
to do it. I don't think that I'm available Another
boundary you could set is on time. You know, you
can actually say no to request to request from people.
You know if they request some want to go out
to lunch or dinner. You know, if they are not
in alignment with you and what it is your purpose
in life. You'll set boundaries on your time. Don't you
(08:48):
give your time to anyone else who you are not
in alignment with. In some way, you can take care
of yourself and set the boundary. You can set boundaries
for your mental health. You can limit certain conversations. So
you know how these people today want to have conversations
(09:09):
around politics and religion, so they just want to start
sparkling off and just start to honey, draw boundaries for
your mental health and disengage and say, nope, I am
not going to talk about that. So if you want
to maybe talk about something else, but that topic is
a topic that is off the tape, set boundaries. So family,
(09:30):
that's number one. Setting boundaries is an act of self care.
Number two, using your voice. So using your voice, like
in that situation that I was in so opposed to me.
Let's go back to the situation when the woman wanted
to touch my hair. If I was afraid to take
care of myself and to use my voice. Then I
(09:52):
may have let the lady pet my hair, but that's
not happening. That ain't That is not but family. You
may find yourself in certain situations. It may not be
your hair. You understand what I'm saying. It may be
something else in life that you really feel like you
want to say something or you want to speak up,
(10:14):
but instead you decide or you choose to kind of
like cower and shrink and walk away because you tell
yourself the story of I really don't want to get
into it, and I believe that that's okay, because that
can look like a boundary in certain situations. But if
(10:34):
you find yourself repeating that behavior over and over again,
I e. Example is never speaking up for yourself, and
you see yourself consistently shrinking and cowering and running away,
being conflict avoidant family, I'm gonna tell you are not
(10:56):
practicing self care. You are not choosing to take care
of yourself. So you have to use your voice. No,
says hey, I get it. You're not trying to be offensive.
This is back to my story, but no, you cannot
touch me, use your use your mouth, use your voice.
Number three. Family a way to take care of yourself.
(11:20):
Another strategy for self care would be creating a rude tee,
like a daily routine, something that you can do every day.
And this is nothing that's really really big, you know.
So when people start these daily routines, sometimes they will
(11:41):
find themselves putting too much on the list. So I'm
gonna eat this every day. I'm gonna ride my bike
sixteen miles every day. I'm gonna do so many sit
ups every day. I'm gonna do so many wall squats
every day. I'm gonna write a book every day, you
know what I'm saying. Like, you know, they come up
with so many things that they want to do every day.
(12:01):
I'm gonna drink tea every day. I'm gonna put tumwork
on my food every day. You know, I'm gonna take
a walk at night every day. It's just like no, no, no, no, no,
slow down. You're doing too much, will think, bring it back,
Bring it back. So when you're creating a daily routine,
(12:24):
what you want to do is you want to create
it in little small bites and you want to make
the steps manageable so that they become a habit. So
I will tell you about a routine that I have
that I do every day. If not every day, I
(12:44):
do it five to six times a week, and I've
been doing it for years and I prescribe it to everyone. Family.
It is exercise exercise family, five days to six days
a week, just for thirty minutes a day if that's
all you can do. But look, look, family, I'm gonna
(13:06):
give you something. If you could at least do twenty
minutes a day, then I'm saying do that because that
will improve your health. Study. Hey, family, come on over here,
because I have something for you. Starting off with a
go to guide for keeping your minds healthy and strong.
(13:29):
This right here is the Bible to Mental Health. It's
your mental health Bible. The name of it is six
Pillars to power up your mind and make mental health
a lifestyle. Everything that you need to know about keeping
your minds healthy and strong is in this go to guide.
(13:50):
Where you get it from? Will you get it from
awisebrown dot com, backslash shop. But guess what, you don't
have to go any place else to look for you
aromatherapy because your girls got you. Okay, you can get
some aromatherapy here. This is a roma therapy in this candle.
This is called a slice of happiness. It makes me tingle,
(14:17):
like literally makes me tingle a slice of happiness. This
is a cruelty free candle with no parabins, no formaldehyde,
and no known suspected carcinogenics. Now, this one smells delicious
and it's good for you. Made with essential oils. It's
(14:37):
a soy candle. All right, y'all. And oh, I'm a
part of you. You're a part of me. We are
a family. We got hoodies now, and these are UNUS
sex hoodies and they wear well, they wash well, and
they feel so good. So you can wear them over
your clothes, you know what I'm saying, and look dope.
Or you can wear them as your clothes with nothing
(14:59):
under them, which I like to do often. And when
you travel everywhere, I mean every time I wear them,
I'm moving around, people are always asking me whether I'm traveling,
going to the supermarket, what's that? Who's that? And I'm like,
mental health is a lifestyle because see this is on
the back. Okay, they come in white and they come
in black. I'm like, join the family. Mental health is
a lifestyle podcast. So there you go. Family. Don't you
(15:23):
ever say then I give you nothing. You get all
of these things from awisbrown dot com backslash shop. All right,
I got your goods. I got you. You don't have
to go any place else. I'll see you on the
other side. Study show that it does improve your health.
(15:45):
Exercise does at least twenty minutes a day. This is
what I tell people. You don't have to go to
the gym and lift up, get a membership and lift
up wits and do all that. You don't have to
you know what I mean saying if that's not your thing.
If it is your thing, then do it, do it.
But if it's not, I am saying that you will
(16:08):
get benefits from just literally taking a walk in your neighborhood.
I tell clients all the time, walk out your front door,
walk ten minutes. When you get ten minutes out, guess what,
turn around and come back home. So now you've already
walked twenty minutes. And you could do it in the morning,
(16:31):
or you could do it in the evening. But for me,
I see benefits. And that's you know, determined by your
circadian rhythms, by your you know body's clock, you know
what feels good to you. I'm a morning person, so
for me, I need to work out in the morning.
So that's what I do. So every morning, at least
(16:52):
six days a week, five to six days a week,
I get my workout in. And when I tell you
the benefits of what it does, like it helps your
prefrontal lobe, It helps with your reasoning skills, it sharpens
your logic. It also you know, they did a research,
they did some research at Harvard that supports that when
(17:14):
you exercise, it increases your intelligence. Okay, So as I
you know, I'm a practicing therapist. I see clients daily.
Before I go in with my clients, I have already
worked out in the morning. It's what I do. It
is a part of my daily route team, and it
(17:38):
helps me. It also boosts my mood to where I'm happier.
Do you understand me? But that is a part of
my routine. There's other things that I do also every morning,
Like okay, there's another thing is my supplements, my vitamins
and supplements every morning, so I do those seven days
a week. It is a part of my morning room team.
(18:01):
I give myself the vitamins and the supplements that I
need that puts me in optimal health. And I'm committed
to it, so I do it every morning. So those
are just two things, family, that I do to practice
self care. In regards of a routine, something really small
(18:24):
and something manageable and sol family, I would ask you
what is it that you could do for you daily
and start off with little bite sizes. Don't get overwhelmed
with creating this huge list because trust me, the huge list. Listen,
you're gonna get trip over your own feet. You're gonna
(18:47):
start judging yourself when you start missing things because you're
setting yourself up for failure, failure, and then you are
gonna create for you trying to take care of yourself
some burnout, some high anxiety, okay, and become overwhelmed. That's
not what we're doing self care practice and self care.
What we're trying to accomplish is the opposite of that. Remember,
(19:10):
we want to reduce stress, we want to improve your productivity,
and we want to maintain your mental health. So okay,
So creating a routine is a part of your self
care journey. And then let me tell you number four.
So number four is spirituality, practicing some type of spirituality,
(19:36):
connecting to some spiritual source that's higher than you. Yeah.
So what research has shown us is that improves your
quality of life. Your connection to a spiritual source really
does improve your physical health and it actually expands on
(20:01):
your quality of life. So let me give you a
little bit of proof. Family, I want to give you
some proof on the benefits of self care. Here we go,
y'all know, teacher, got to put the glasses on. Okay, Okay.
So a survey by Vogaro in twenty twenty one found
that seventy five percent of Americans believe self care activities
(20:28):
help alleviate stress. Additionally, sixty four percent reported a boost
in self confidence, sixty seven percent felt more productive, and
seventy one percent experienced increased happiness after engaging in self
(20:51):
care practices. Okay, family, So that's some research, but there's
tons of re search that's out there that supports taking
care of yourself. Practicing self care will in hand your
(21:12):
quality of life. And this is one thing that some
people will say to me about the challenges or barriers
to actually taking care of themselves. They'll say to me
that they feel guilty when they take some time away
from their families or their loved ones to go exercise,
(21:32):
or they feel guilty or maybe disrespectful when they use
their voice, even in an appropriate way. You know, they
said that they feel a sense of guilt, And I'm
telling you you have to push through the guilt because
the reality is this. If you just imagine a cup,
(21:53):
if your cup, and just imagine pouring water into a cup,
if your cup is always full of the stressors of life,
of all of the things, taking care of the family
and going to work, and trying to maintain friendships and
finances and all the things. If your cup is always full,
(22:15):
and you don't take care of your cup and take
care of your cup is learning how to do these
things so that your cup is empty, then how can
you help anyone else? How can you help and give
to anyone else? Because your cup is empty? You cannot
help someone else their cup is full, your cup is full.
(22:38):
How you gonna help them? You can't. So that's why
I'm encouraging you family to take care of your cup first.
Empty the water and your cup first. Because the water
is getting rank, the water's getting stale, it's smelling a
little mildew, so we need to replace. We need to
dump that, and you're gonna dump that doing these four things. Family.
(23:02):
Number One, you're gonna set boundaries. Setting boundaries is a
part of self care. You can do that in a
physical way, in emotional way, in regards to time and
your mental health. Okay, so set boundaries. Number two, use
your voice in situations where you need to set boundaries
(23:26):
and say no. Don't be afraid to use your voice.
You need to practice using your voice to take care
of self. Number three, creating a routine, something that is
something that small, little small steps, little bite sizes, something
that is manageable, manageable habits that you can do. Create
(23:49):
that to take care of yourself every day. And number
four is spirituality. Connect to a spiritual source higher than you.
And I will always tell you that for me, mine
is God. I never leave home without him. Okay. I
(24:10):
believe He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and
the end, and I am nothing without him. And my
connection to Him, to my spirituality is what propels me
in life to even sit here and to keep going,
to keep you know, accomplishing things, to expand my life,
(24:31):
to have good friendships and loved ones, it's all through
him to be successful. It's all through Him through my spirituality.
So I am telling you I'm not putting mine off
on you, but i will tell you mine is good,
and mine is yours and yours is mine. But if
you have another source, I'm not judging it. I'm just
(24:53):
telling you connect to some sort of spirituality, a spiritual
source that is bigger than you. Well, all right, family,
that is the way to practice self care, to take
care of yourself because you are worth it, because God
(25:13):
says so. And that family is another episode of the
Mental Health Is a Lifestyle podcast with your girl Andrea
Wise Brown. Family, Please take care of yourself this week
and put a note down. Please tell me how you
(25:36):
were taking care of yourself. If you're watching on YouTube,
come on tape it down there. Send me some messages
to let me know what steps you took care to
take care of yourself. Tell me if they worked, if
they didn't, which one worked better for you? And I
will see you next week on the next episode. I
(25:57):
love you.
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