Tending Your Life

In this particular political moment, I've been feeling depleted and wondering how I can resource myself better for the long haul. The newness of activism has mostly worn off at this point, and the bright rage isn't enough to keep me going in a sustainable way.

One thing that I've been thinking about is the idea of imagination and particularly imagination as a political tool. How can we use our imaginations to fuel us? How can our imagination help to inspire us to keep going? And how can we use political imagination, collectively, to build more of what we want in the world?

Tune in!

• This week's freebie: Mission Statement Maker

• adrienne maree brown
• Octavia's Brood
• Emergent Strategy
• Pleasure Activism
• Follow me on Instagram
• Mission Statement Maker

Complete your Mission Statement!

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I'm so excited to welcome Olwen Wilson to the show, and to share this conversation with you.

Olwen Wilson is a healer & creative facilitator who helps people who are drawn to making visual art but they don't feel like they have enough talent or time. She helps them figure out how to make it a part of a regular practice in a way that helps them clear their mind (even for a moment), get better at making decisions and take action.

Having taught self-care practices for over a decade, Olwen's practiced everything from yoga to energy healing, drumming to meditation. But the one she keeps coming back to the most is visual journaling. It helped her learn to trust herself again after suddenly getting diagnosed with a chronic illness so that she could stop wasting time waiting and worrying about what other people think and go after what's important in life.

In this conversation, we talk about the importance of play and rest; her journey with rheumatoid arthritis; and the power of visual journaling. This was an awesome conversation that I'm beyond excited for you to hear.

• Olwen Wilson
• Instagram

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Today's episode is all about listening: what that looks like and how to do it and how to do it better and how to make it a practice and how to do it for all of the people in our lives.

When we pay attention to the people in our lives. We are really giving them. The greatest gift, the most valuable thing we have, which is our time, our attention, our energy. 

• Episode: Feedback is a Gift
• Episodes on intuition: here + here
• Free Intuition Meditation
• RIE parenting
• Janet Lansbury

Tune in for the free workshop, Intuition Over Fear

Free Intuition Meditation

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This week, I'm so excited to welcome one of my dear friends (and the producer of Tending Your Life), Paula Jenkins of Jump Start Your Joy.

Paula Jenkins is a podcast producer, certified life coach, and host of the popular podcast, Jump Start Your Joy.  Her mission is to bring more joy into the world through coaching, podcasting, and helping others create podcasts to share their voice. Jump Start Your Joy launched in 2015, and has been on iTunes New & Noteworthy and What’s Hot.

After receiving her Master’s degree in Religion from Yale University, Paula was a project manager for 20 years in the digital marketing space.  She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Sean the Chef, their 9 year old son, and their friendly rescue chihuahua-mix named Chewbacca Baloney Jenkins (who goes by Chewie).

In this episode, we talk about choosing joy, even when it feels hard; the value of playing small; and how to demand more than just "bed in a bag" joy for yourself—especially during the pandemic.

• Jump Start Your Joy episode: Playing Small
• Jump Start Your Joy episode: 6 Ways to Create the Foundation for a Joy-Filled Life During the Pandemic
• Jennifer Louden
• Christy on Instagram

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How do you cultivate trust, and learn to trust yourself? Trust relates to allowing for imperfection, embracing pleasure, knowing yourself, and taking action. Trust is very much interwoven and bound up in so many things related to self advocacy.

• Course: The Art of Self-Advocacy

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In today's episode, we're going to talk about action. This is really where the rubber meets the road for our self-advocacy.

For instance: when we talk about boundaries, we can talk about figuring out what our boundaries are all day long, but action is where we start setting and holding those boundaries. We can talk about developing a new habit when it comes to our self care, but action is what allows us to actually begin and to follow through on those new habits.

Action is what allows us to go from avoidance to tackling the thing that we've been avoiding.

So today I want to talk about action—In a little bit differently than the way I usually hear it discussed. I want to talk about actions that are maybe a little bit less "heroic," but no less impactful.

• Course: The Art of Self-Advocacy
• Meal planning: Busy & Broke

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Too many of us don't have a courage practice.

 We aren't cultivating courage on a regular basis. We are reckoning with or encountering discomfort or some sort of barrier, but we're not putting ourselves in a mindset of courage so that we can go and transform what needs changing.

Without a practice of courage without cultivating courage on an intentionally regular basis, our self-knowledge stays theoretical. While I believe in self-knowledge, what matters is what we do with it. What matters is how we translate that into impact in our lives. 

Without that courage practice, our knowing stays in our heads. We don't have the difficult conversations or set the boundaries that we need to; we don't make it real in our lives. So this episode is about about the courage to make knowledge something tangible, to see it clearly, and to let it transform us.

• Course: The Art of Self-Advocacy
• Episode: Pleasure

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How do you get to know yourself? Especially when your are finding ourselves in a new phase of life—whether you're an empty nester or you're just going away to college yourself, whether you're a transitioning in your job in your family roles—knowing yourself is a critical piece of showing up in the world.

When we hit these transition points, it can be a shock to our system because we can lose or become distant from our orientation to ourselves. So when I talk about knowing myself, I'm talking about knowing what I hold sacred; knowing what my values are; knowing who I am in relationship to the people I love in my life... and beyond.

So if you aren't sure about yourself in any area of your life, it can be a little bit of a lonely and scary experience. What I know for myself is that the benefits of knowing myself really well are ever unfolding.

• • Course: The Art of Self-Advocacy
  • Sylvia Boorstein

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In my experience, having worked with thousands of students and clients and change makers and activists and creatives over the years, urgency is often such a barrier to our self care. It's one of the things that can really derail us when it comes to maintaining a self care practice, and setting aside that time, energy, and space for self care.

Because it has this capacity to derail our self-care in this way, I see that it is often one of the leading causes of overwhelm and burnout because when we can't get ourselves out of a seemingly endless cycle of, of urgency, dealing with tasks all the time that we see as incredibly urgent, then we can't.

When we can't break ourselves of that habit, then our self-care gets neglected in a chronic way. So in today's episode, I'm going to be talking all about how we unwind ourselves and untether ourselves from what feels like a constant sense of urgency these days.

• The Un-Burnout Un-Challenge

• • The Un-Burnout Un-Challenge
  • Episode: Perfectionism
  • Episode: Imperfection

Join The Un-Burnout Un-Challenge

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How do we embrace pleasure? And why does pleasure have to be "guilty"?

In this episode, I break down how to create more pleasure in your life. It starts with what feels good—and it's a process that unfolds and evolves over time. Self-care doesn't always have to be "productive". It doesn't need to just recharge us so we can go out and make ourselves more overwhelmed or burned out.

We need to stop shaming ourselves over our self-care. It doesn't need to be all gym workouts and green juice. It doesn't need to be about making ourselves look good for someone else.Shockingly, self-care can just feel good. And we can make it happen without an ounce of guilt.

• Resource Guide
• Free Self-Care Course!
• doTERRA Essential Oils

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