Being convenient is a priority for many people, and it is ingrained in our culture and our society. It impacts the way we show up in our work and with our families. I recently held a workshop titled "How to be Inconvenient" and several people shared that they gasped at the topic. How did being inconvenient get to be so controversial?

Being "convenient" means our self-care is happening at another person's convenience. This means we're not doing anything in a way that doesn't upset anyone else, doesn't upset the balance of power or the equilibrium of a given situation and we avoid doing things that have an impact anyone else. What happens is that self care becomes something we do in secret. We know it happens, but we make the effort to do it in a way that doesn't requires anyone to rearrange their schedules or be upset, or be "inconvenienced."

Convenience, and especially being seen as convenient to other people, is often an unseen hurdle to self care. And, discovering that many people feel so strongly motivated (often at a subconscious level) to maintaining convenience that it becomes a hurdle to self care was a big learning moment for me. Why? Because I personally do not feel strongly about being convenient to other people. And in fact, my being inconvenient, I see as a way of teaching the people around me that I do not exist simply to serve them.

And, so in this episode, I'm talking about this, and how to be inconvenient and why it matters for your self care and personal boundaries.

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I've been following Marlee Grace's Work for quite awhile, and when I was thinking about pioneers—people who are doing this a step away from, or even against, the mainstream, I thought about Marlee. I knew I wanted to bring her on the show to talk about creativity, stepping away from the socials, creating community, her books (Getting to Center and How to Not Always Be Working, especially).

I loved this conversation so much, and it was an honor to have Marlee Grace on the show.

Marlee Grace is a dancer and writer whose work focuses on the self, devotion, ritual, creativity, and art making. Her practice is rooted in improvisation as a compositional form that takes shape in movement videos, books, quilting, online courses, and hosting artists. Grace’s Instagram dance project Personal Practice has been featured in the New York Times, Dance Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, and more.

Marlee’s most recent book is Getting to Center: Pathways to Finding Yourself Within the Great Unknown. She also recently self-published a book of advice based on her radio show, Friendship Village.

• Marlee Grace's Website

• Marlee's books on Bookshop.org
• Christy's favorite resources
• Free Workbook: You're Allowed to Want Things

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One of the best ways to support the show is to leave a rating and review. It's the best way to spread the word and help more people find the podcast. Leave your review on iTunes, send me an email (to [email protected]) letting me know you did it, and I'll send you a free gift worth $20!

One of the best things about doing this work for as long as I have is the ability to see patterns over a long period of time. What are people struggling with? What are those tendencies that pop up again and again? And how can I fashion solutions that address those issues that don't seem to disappear?

In this week's episode, I'm talking about sustainable self-care.

One of the things I've noticed over the last few years is that people tend to take the same approach that got them into burnout, overwhelm, etc.—and apply it to their approach to self-care.

For example, if you overwork in your professional life, you're likely to try to overwork or do too much in your self-care. If you're a people-pleaser, you approach self-care so that it never inconveniences anyone and makes sure that you only do self-care that works for others.

While this might feel okay for a while, ultimately, it doesn't address the real issues of why you need self-care in the first place and how to create it in a sustainable way that actually resources you..

• Free Video Workshop: How to Be Inconvenient
• Free Workbook: You're Allowed to Want Things
• My Bookshop.org shelves for more books and resources

Ask yourself: what is the root of your need for self-care? What is the root cause, and how can you envision a root solution based on your unique needs, wants, desires, and way that you show up in the world?

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Welcome to Season 5 of Tending Your Life.

This season, I'm pleased to partner with Hyde Organic Yoga Apparel to uplift this slow, sustainable brand and bring you a discount on what I think are the most fabulous yoga clothes on the planet to get in on this awesomeness, click the link and enter Christy10 at checkout.

And if you're brand new here, this is a podcast that lives at the intersection of our political and spiritual lives and aims to help listeners redefine self-care and make a deeper impact in their unique way, wherever in the world, they find themselves. We talk about leadership.

Self-care creativity, sustainability. Sobriety mental health, social justice, mindfulness parenting, and so much more. Plus you'll enjoy interviews with luminaries and friends who are revolutionizing the way we think about joy, grief, love, dreams, boundaries, adventure, and life.

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In today's episode, I'm here to give a little State of Things update and to talk about my biggest a-ha moment so far in this unexpected and highly usual moment in which we find ourselves. In the midst of this shelter-in-place/COVID-19 pandemic moment, what do we do about self-care, let alone all of those difficult emotions and feelings that come along with this moment of deep uncertainty?

In this episode, I'm proposing something that is both compassionate, yet counter-intuitive. This is about sitting with our discomfort instead of trying to self-care it away. 

Read all of the episode notes on Christy's blog.

• Links and resources for this episode
  • The Art of Self-Advocacy
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We all know that perfectionism is the enemy of liberation.

Which means that imperfection is our ally in liberation. Which is awesome!

In this episode, I'm talking about embracing imperfection and the awesome impact that imperfection might have on our lives. Once we set down perfectionism, what could we choose instead? What are the things that we're able to access in the context of imperfection that perfectionism could never give us?

What I want you to take away from this is, is really that we do not live in a binary of perfection and imperfection. (We're never going to reach that perfection! It's not an option!) If we're never ever going to get to perfection, then we become free of its hold on us.

It means that we all exist somewhere on this spectrum of imperfection. Finding our place on that spectrum is pretty amazing.

• Episode: Perfectionism is the Enemy of Liberation.
• Episode: Sitting with Discomfort.
• The When I Grow Up Coach: Michelle Ward.
• Free Self-Care Course.
• My Favorite Self-Care Resources.

• Rolf Gates
• Holly Whitaker
• Elena Brower
• Laura McKowen

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What is it like to put yourself out there, and how do you feel when you're considering doing something new? 

I've noticed a pattern for people when they start to put themselves out there. I've noticed people talk about self confidence first, and we talk about developing self confidence, in a vacuum as though it happens on its own.

What happens is we wait for that self-confidence or the perfect timing, or a certain threshold of expertise or that perfect moment. We wait for these things first, before we decide to speak or own our expertise, or create an experiment, or decide to make an impact, or tell our story ,or show up, or put ourselves out there.

We're waiting for confidence first.

And we have decided that confidence shows up a somehow on its own, and when it does that that will be the right moment to start putting ourselves out there.

Spoiler alert: It doesn't quite work this way.

Read the full show notes here.

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One of the best ways to support the show is to leave a rating and review. It's the best way to spread the word and help more people find the podcast. Leave your review on iTunes, send me an email (to [email protected]) letting me know you did it, and I'll send you a free gift worth $20!

When I first got into the "self-care" game many years ago, Jen Louden was one of the first names I heard. In this conversation, we talk about her book, "Why Bother?"; plus how to find your bother and get your bother on. We also talk about creative process, climate activism, and what it looks like to show up imperfectly and in process.

We talk about learning as we go, daring to start imperfectly, and how creativity and imagination can fuel positive solutions for the planet.

I loved this conversation so much, and it was an honor to have Jen on the show.

Jennifer Louden is a personal growth pioneer who helped launch the concept of self-care with her 1992 bestselling debut book The Woman’s Comfort Book. She is the author of six additional books, including The Woman’s Retreat Book, The Life Organizer, and her newest release, Why Bother? She appeared on a number of television and radio shows and podcasts—including The Oprah Winfrey Show.  As an entrepreneur and educator, Jennifer has offered women’s retreats for over 25 years. She lives in Boulder County, Colorado.

• Jen's Website
• Jen on Instagram

• Jen's books on Bookshop.org
• Christy's favorite resources
• Free Workbook: You're Allowed to Want Things

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One of the best ways to support the show is to leave a rating and review. It's the best way to spread the word and help more people find the podcast. Leave your review on iTunes, send me an email (to [email protected]) letting me know you did it, and I'll send you a free gift worth $20!

Recently, I've been thinking about boundaries. I mean, I'm always thinking about boundaries. But specifically, I've been thinking about the way that we create and honor our boundaries in our online and digital spaces. It occurs to me that while we all know intellectually that we need good boundaries for ourselves, they can be hard to create and even harder to maintain.

And in the online world, this is doubly true. For two reasons:

First of all, it's endless. The emails keep coming, and the algorithms of social media are designed to keep us glued to the app as long as possible. And second, we are taught that we should aim to always be available, share as vulnerably as possible, and give it all away for free.

In this episode, I get nitty-gritty about how I decide what to share, what I definitely don't share, and how I honor my boundaries and protect my privacy online.

• Sign up for the free workshop: How to Be Inconvenient!

• Electronic Frontier Foundation

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adrienne is a facilitator and author, a writer, a pleasure activist, and a movement leader. I look to her for inspiration in my activist practice, and in how I relate to other people. In this episode, we talk about pleasure, activism, trust and visionary writers.

See the show notes on the website.

• Website
• Instagram