Your intention will bring you back to what's important. And when we're in alignment with what's important, we feel nurtured.

–Kelley Grimes

We have some bonus episodes of the PlanSimple Podcast with some of the speakers from our recent event Your Best Holiday Season Ever, including today’s guest Kelley Grimes, who wrote The Art of Self Nurturing. I’m so excited to have her talk about self-care, not as the buzzword that it’s become or another thing on your today list, but as a non-negotiable essential. 

We talk about self-care specifically around the holidays. Kelley talks about choice and empowerment — choosing what we do for the holidays, not just doing traditions because we feel obligated. One way to do this is to declare an intention for the holidays and then use that as a lens to look at what you are choosing to do. 

Kelley recommends making a list of ways to nurture yourself. She breaks it into three parts: body, mind, and spirit, because there are different parts of ourselves that need to be nurtured. She also includes self-nurturing that can be done alone, with a partner, with family, or with others. 

We talk about: 

• Putting your intention someplace you can see it
• Writing yourself a A permission slip for self-nurturing
• How permission giving and making a commitment go hand in hand
• Specific ideas for nurturing different parts of ourselves
• That commitment to prioritizing yourself is the real act of self-nurturing, whatever you do
• Self-nurturing is an ongoing act with ripples from ourselves to others

BIO

Kelley Grimes, MSW, is a counselor, speaker, internationally bestselling author, and self-nurturing expert. She is passionate about empowering overwhelmed and exhausted individuals to live with more peace, joy, and meaning through the practice of self-nurturing. Kelley also provides professional and leadership development to organizations dedicated to making the world a better place. She is married to an artist and board game maker, has two empowered daughters, loves singing with a small women’s group, and is overjoyed to be a new grandmother. Learn more at www.CultivatingPeaceandJoy.com and download your free Self-Nurturing Starter Kit.

LINKS

• The Art of Self Nurturing book
• The Art of Self Nurturing starter kit
• FLOW365
• PlanSimple on Instagram

Doable Changes from this episode:

• CHOOSE A YEAR OF SELF-NURTURING. Leaning into your life—figuring out what you really want and making time for that is ultimate self-nurturing. Allowing yourself to be held is self-nurturing. Making space for sacred circles and calming your nervous system are self nurturing. Your doable change today could be to choose FLOW365, choose to have all of these self-nurturing acts (and more) as part of your life for a full year. That one doable step opens up support for so many more doable changes.
• SET AN INTENTION. Set your intention for the holiday season or this week or today. How do you want to feel? Declare it. Write it down and put it where you can see it. As you approach things throughout the day or week or season, ask: Does this fit with my intention? Let your intention guide your choices and how you show up.
• WRITE A PERMISSION SLIP. Permission and commitment go hand in hand, so give yourself permission for self-nurturing. THat means giving yourself permission to prioritize yourself, your needs, your intention, what matters to you. Write it out as a permission slip. And then commit to one act of self-nurturing. (And then another and then another …)