We are joined today by Carolyn Rubenstein, author and doctorate student (soon to qualify) of Psychology.

In today’s episode we are discussing the importance of drawing upon different areas of well-being in order to flourish, and how it is all too easy to hyper focus and funnel our entire identity into one area of our life, and when things don’t go to plan the sense of loss and confusion that ensues, and how to move past it.

Using Carolyn's experience working with children who have fought through cancer, we set a backdrop to what it means to take care of ourselves, what motivates us to change and how we can imitate that same mindset of perseverance, resourcefulness and perspective that these children cultivated in themselves in overcoming their illness and thriving.

We dig into the ways that we distract ourselves with to-do lists to hide from the thing that is most calling to us, and how we can create personalised tools for listening to our heart, our values and living in line with our authentic motivations.

This episode is perfect for you if:

• You feeling broken because a thing you put your heart into didn’t turn out as expected,
• You feel overwhelmed by your many struggles and you don’t know the first step to take to get yourself back in alignment, or
• You don’t really know how it really looks to be in alignment: what are the signs to observe within (and without) that are guiding you the right way?

Time-stamped Show Notes

04:07 How Carolyn pulls from different well-being domains and how it helps us flourish.

05:48 Putting “all our eggs in one basket”: how having just a few focuses in like has a detrimental effect on us, and how to move past it.

09:45 Retrain our brain to not invest our identity so heavily into our achievements, and scheduling time for self-care.

12:08 How we don’t see the process and work that goes into achieving goals, so we have a skewed perspective.

13:01 Why we need motivation for change as the process takes a lot of momentum.

13:37 Starting small in our self-care makes it impossible to fail.

14:53 Carolyn’s book about lessons learned from child cancer-survivors. The important lessons that we can apply in our own lives to flourish [unique value point]

20:17 The importance of perspective shift. Awareness of authentic motivation as we take action in both our both short-term, and long-term, goals.

22:40 What is the big thing that you are scared to look at, the thing you avoid by adding more and more to your to-do list?

24:00 How can we be clear on what we *truly* value vs what we *think* we value. The danger of intellectualising our values.

26:00 How to know when you are on precisely the thing that you value, or true authentic motivation.

26:56 Why we shouldn’t be asking ourselves “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life!”: a better, more easeful way.

29:08 How to handle stress in your own personalised way.

Key Take Homes

• When starting to shift your perspective about self-care, you should start as small as humanly possible so you are setting yourself up not to fail, that could mean simple reframing something that you currently already do.
• Three key words, resilience, perseverance, and resourcefulness. If we can perspective shift the meaning of these words into our mind, then we will flourish in the face of adversity
• Building complete clarity around our “why” will make the “what” and the “how” so much easier.

Curious Question

Every morning for the first 20 minutes of the day I do not look at anything work related, or social media - I take that as me time, thinking, making breakfast, meditating. I do this already, but I’m shifting my perspective about it from “just something I do” to “self-care”.

What small self-care shift will you make in your every day? Start small, what is one thing that you already do that could be reframed as self-care? Let us know in the comments or shoot me an email directly [email protected]!

Thank you so much for listening, and until the next episode, take care of yourself.

Jen xx