Try Self-Love

In today’s episode, Kristen chats with fellow coach Elizabeth Soto-Baez who is a Transformational and Master Certified Women’s Empowerment Coach.

She works with divorced women in their 30s and 40s who have lost their identity, self-worth, and passion for life. After losing herself in a 13-year marriage, numbing out, and moving through life as a robot, Elizabeth now desires to draw women back to themselves, building the lines of communication within, and igniting self-love so they can show up in the world empowered and ready to give their best selves. Elizabeth created Launch Your Life Coaching as a community for women to safely shed societal and cultural expectations and reclaim their intuition and personal power. In this way, women can show up for themselves first, love themselves first, and honor who they areas they go into the world to nurture and love those around them. In addition to being a mom to two beautiful boys, she loves to sing and play guitar. She has built a meditation practice as a way to stay grounded and present in her life, and enjoys keeping active through yoga, weight training, and running. No longer lost or on autopilot, Elizabeth works to make conscious decisions about how she shows up in the world, honoring herself first in order to love and serve others well.

Elizabeth found her particular niche in coaching because in 2019 she realized that she could no longer be married. She had been married for 13.5 years and she realized that it was not healthy. She didn’t feel very good in the marriage most of the time. So, she decided to file for divorce and she went through with it and saw therapists and coaches and friends in order to figure out what she was going to do and who she was after the marriage. This story was no longer her story and she needed to figure out her new story. She discovered coaching. She wanted to take her story and her experience and use it to empower other women.

 She started having people calling her to find out how she has the courage to get a divorce which fueled this realization that other women are like her and other women are suffering in their marriages and living in a dark space.

She wanted to able to help any woman who is having this kind of problem feel like there is someone on their side, reminding them that they have worth and value. She helps them understand that they can show up for themselves. It may be hard, but it can be done.

Elizabeth speaks about how part of her mission is to help women shed societal and cultural expectations and reclaim their intuition and personal power by helping women who have forgotten that they do have these qualities remember. Through her work, she is realizing that many women in these situations feel lonely and feel like it’s their fault that they can’t make

their marriages work. She created her community so that women have a space where they can be safe and seen by other women in the same situations. They feel less alone in their pain and loneliness. They feel less shamed and judged in this space. The personal power and intuition pieces come into play in her work where she wants her clients to know that we all have these aspects, but we live in a society that doesn’t necessarily acknowledge women’s intuition and personal power. Things are changing, but women are still on the lower part of the totem pole regarding what we feel and what we think. Many religious communities still don’t acknowledge women as equal to men. And Elizabeth says that it doesn’t have to be like this anymore. Elizabeth explains how she realized that her husband made it her job to make him and their family happy and that when she couldn’t do that, it was her fault. She needed to be different or better to make him okay.

Often mom and wife have this unspoken expectation of needing toa make everything right: you need to make everybody good; you need to show up as your best self all the time...

Becky is talking today with Liz Georges who is a health coach, a lifestyle consultant, energy therapist, and a consulting practitioner at Thrive Healing Center in Chesterton, Indiana. Liz helps her clients overcome metabolic dysfunction and return to a more balanced state of health so they have more energy, less pain, and are able to participate in activities they love.

Since her pre-teen years, learning from her grandmother, Liz has taken an interest innutrition and natural health. After continually resolving her own health concerns in her 30s, while working as a radiology technologist

in a family practice, she realized the medical industry has a very limited but crucial function--treating disease or delaying death--but not teaching patients how to avoid or reverse health conditions.

Feeling frustrated at her inability to counsel patients in her role and wanting to help people achieve better health the way she experienced, Liz left her job and returned to school. Earning her Bachelor's degree in General Studies with a concentration in Social and Behavioral Sciences and a minor in Sociology, graduating with high honors. Not satisfied with her opportunities, she became a certified health coach and started coaching clients. The following year, wanting to dig deeper into her clients' health concerns, Liz discovered Functional Diagnostic Nutrition and has been helping her clients restore their natural vibrance ever since.

When someone calls Liz for her services, she first explains what a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner is. She lets them know that she bridges the gap between a health coach and a doctor. She looks at more clinical

aspects.

She runs six lab assessments in order to see what is going on in the body in order to find healing opportunities in the body.

All the body systems are connected to each other, so she finds out where her client is experiencing dysfunction in the body--in the adrenals,

the gut, if it's oxidative stress, liver congestion. She looks at very targeted areas of the body, which are all connected so that she can provide detailed self-treatment opportunities.

She says that food sensitivities are a big issue and if you are sensitive to lettuce and you are eating salads to lose weight, you are actually harming yourself. She wants to figure out what is not working for her clients so that she can figure out what will work. She tests so taht she doesn't have to guess.

It's not like she is doling out a bunch of things that don't work. She actually gets to know her clients' physiology. She says that people's lifestyles are also a major contributor to stress. Besides people using drugs and alcohol, how much sleep are you getting? The body needs more than five hours of sleep each night to be able to function properly. The body does a lot repair, detoxification, and work all night, is seven to eight hours is necessary for proper healing of all the systems of the body.

She also finds out if her clients are taking care of their food sensitivities and stress. What cookware are you using, what chemicals are in your home, what skincare products are you using? These things can also cause a great deal of stress and toxicity on our bodies. If you are in a really stressful relationship or have to take on your partner's stress, how is this affecting your health?

She had to learn from her own stressful relationship situation that she had to make herself a priority and focus on herself in order to help her relationship improve and to be able to even help her boyfriend out at all.

She goes really deeply into her clients' lives to get the overall picture of their total health. She needs to go in depth so that she can find the right protocol that is feasible for her clients' lifestyles. She wants the client to be able to actually do the program and not feel defeated by trying to do something that is not manageable.

When someone...

Becky is sitting down with Ali Ringer today who is the founder of Recov.her.y Life Coaching and is a life and business coach and also a published writer. Ali specializes in breaking free of toxic cycles--the cycles we often fall into without even realizing just how much they hold us back from living our most aligned life. Yes, including our businesses and our abundance. This began with breaking free of her own toxic cycles, at 10+ year emotionally abusive relationship, crippling perfectionism, anxiety and panic disorders, self-harm, sexual trauma, a corporate job she hated, money scarcity. The list goes on and on. But she recovered from every piece of it, and now she lives her most aligned life today with her healthy partner, thriving businesses, and completely ailment free.

Through her own recovery, she discovered her soul purpose was sharing her experience and supporting other women in ending their cycles and finding their power.

Ali does one-on-one coaching and group coaching and with her one-on-one clients, the program is structured to their particular toxic cycle needs.

Common themes she works with are mindset and confidence, which streams into anxiety, not thinking we are enough, feeling like we don't have what it takes. This is a common one that many women are battling with in society today. Once she has gotten their confidence to a good level, it becomes about letting the rest of their life match this on an energetic level. Becoming energetic matches for the life you desire. This looks different for everyone.

Common themes: Having a job that lights you up, living in abundance so that you are capable to having time freedom, energy freedom to do and live however you want. You are able to become a match for partners who are going to light your soul up, friendships, community.

It usually starts with the individual toxic cycles that are internal and then you become a match in the external world and you call in what your heart desires. This is the broad scope regardless of the cycle she is working on with her client.

She can go anywhere and focus in on what the client really needs.

Today, Becky and Ali will focus in on the abundance mindset or the money scarcity issue. Women still don't hold the majority of wealth in our world, so wealth is still in the hands of 65% men. She believes this should be more of a 50-50 split. Projections indicate that money in the next 20 years will be going more into the hands of women. She is passionate about helping women step into this mindset so they can be a part of this movement or keep themselves in a place of scarcity just because that has been their money story that has always played out in the world.

Ali's story is that she was in high school in 2008-209 when the recession happened and her parents were divorced. She saw both of them lose their houses and their cars. They had to move a lot. She had to drive about 30 minutes to school in order to be able to graduate, so she also had to work to pay for her gas and car insurance.

They started empowering her to get a job, which was hard at the time, but helped her in the long run. She has always had a mindset that she can have it all if she really wants it.

She had a great opportunity to work with teens on reproductive education.

She decided to work full-time for two years and save money so that she could pay for college in cash. She worked between four and six jobs at a time for those two years. She went to college and graduated in three years so that she could afford it.

When she got out of college, she had no student debt, but she still felt the scarcity. She felt like she had to work SO hard to get the things she desired.

She wanted to figure out how she could do this. She had a corporate job that she hated and that was not fulfilling at all. So, she decided that she would start her own company. On the other side of her life, not related to the...

In today's episode, Becky sits down with Melissa Rohlfs who is a certified holistic health and life coach who helps busy women break free from sugar without deprivation, so they can be happy, healthy, and love their life. She's committed to empowering women to break free from dieting, emotional eating, and self-image issues, so they can ditch the diet mentality and feel empowered in their own skin.

Melissa loves to teach women how to find freedom and peace with food, their bodies, and their lives. After her own tumultuous history with food, withholding and then, later in life, with bingeing, she learned how to deal with the core issues around her broken relationship with food. AS a result, she felt called to go to school and learn to teach other women how to do the same.

She graduated from the Health Coach institute as a Holistic Health and Life Coach in 2018 and is the proud owner of "Free to Be Coaching."

She's a proud Boilermaker Alumna living in Arizona with her husband Chad and two kiddos.

Mellissa says the back story of her bio is that they lived in Illinois and had a newborn who wasn't sleeping through the night and they also had a two year old daughter who had undiagnosed food allergies and sensory processing disorder. Her husband was also traveling or work and she had recently been diagnosed with PTSD from childhood trauma.

This overwhelmed her and brought her to her knees. So, she got help in the form of therapy, changing her daughter's diet, and seeing a naturopath for her own vitamin and mineral deficiencies as well as her cortisol levels being out of whack.

All of this inspired her to go back to school so she could help other women in the same position. It wasn't just the food. It was also the life. It is all connected; it's holistic.

Becky notices Melissa's compassion for herself when she mentioned that she was lying in a fetal position whenever her husband arrived home from work each night and how she knew she needed to get herself some help.

Melissa acknowledges that there is a correlation between childhood trauma and sugar addiction. There is a connection because we just want to feel good. When we eat sugar, it releases dopamine in the brain, which is that feel good chemical. And over time, we need to have more and more sugar to get that same dopamine rush to feel good. It's the same with alcohol and drugs, but sugar is just more socially acceptable.

Melissa started on her sugar addiction journey when she was eight and her trauma was happening and had been happening. She hid candy and cookies in her room. Sugar was how she numbed and self-soothed and pushed down the feelings because she didn't know how to handle it.

Becky mentions to just think of that little child who had a hard time and have so much compassion for him or her.

Melissa then continued on her journey and she and her family moved to Sioux Falls. Her friend was a Beach Body coach so she decided to do Beach Body, and drink the special shake and try to lose weight. Beach Body helped her find this piece of herself that had been missing. People noticed her weight loss, but she didn't really care that she had lost weight She wanted people to know how good she felt about herself more than the weight loss.

She felt calm and not who she used to be. She didn't attribute the change in herself to the therapy or changing her diet. She gave the credit to Beach Body and became a Beach Body coach. Other women weren't having the same results that she was having. Beach Body seemed to be missing something--habit change and mindset change was not in their program like it was in her health and life coaching program.

She knew there had to be more to it than changing your diet and exercising. That felt to her like behavior modification and she knew there was a way to help people with their habits and she knew that she needed to figure out what she had done to be successful so that...

This week, Becky and Kristen talk about safety and feeling safe within ourselves as the way to grow in self-love.

We love to talk about deep things and we think the world needs to be talking about deep things more. People are in pain and the more we talk about our pain, the more it creates a sense of safety. When we talk about something heavy, we vent and release it. But when we talk to people who don't make us feel safe and judged, that is hard.

So, this episode is about creating safety in yourself in order to create more self-love.

Telling someone your story is very healing and much of the time we don't realize that.

Becky met a new friend and was worried about sharing too much and wondered if what she said might freak her out, but the new friend could related to her and understood her and it was really nice.

Becky is pulling in her tribe! When we heal and we love ourselves, find that sense of safety and trust in ourselves and stop doubting ourselves, we start pulling in people who help us see our worth. They mirror and reflect that back to us.

Especially when you are the kind of person who gives a lot and wants to help people, it's often not reciprocated by others.

Oftentimes growing up in our families and in this society we don't feel a sense of safety--because of abuse or neglect. We are also taught not to be vulnerable and the collective reflects that. "Don't air your dirty laundry," or "You're a burden" or "That is just too much for me" are messages we often get.

When we try to go to people who have a lot of stuff they haven't processed, it might be too much for them to take on your stuff too. They might make you feel invalidated if they dismissively ask you, "Why are you unhappy all the time?" or "Why are you so negative?" It's not that you want to be negative, you just want to share and vent to get it off your chest and move on.

You get it out, speak it, and then it starts to float away.

People often can't handle anything but a false happiness. They may just not be the person you need to listen if they simply cannot be real and compassionate with you. You don't want to end up feeling more ashamed of yourself when you've already got a lot of shame going on within yourself anyway.

On the self-love journey, a big part of it is trying to source from within and often that might look like turning inward to a higher power. If that feels out of reach, that's okay, but at least try to source from within by being your own best friend. And once you create a sense of safety inside yourself, that builds trust, you create boundaries, and you don't let people influence how you feel about yourself anymore, that is huge. Then you don't feel like you have to "burden" anyone else or that you are "too" something, and maybe then you will feel a little bit better about sharing some of your things with people.

Just to be clear here, talking about negative things or thinking about fearful things doesn't create more if it. It's when you don't validate and feel your feelings fully that the negative things are more attracted to you. So, you want to talk about it.

Inner resourcing is wonderful and there is also nothing wrong with having people who you can talk with about your problems. But building that up in yourself is very important because people do come and go in your life.

Build up your inner resiliency; look at your strengths and see what you have been through and how you've come through it. Feel all your feelings and be safe with yourself. Nothing is off limits because if you resist it, it's just going to grow. It takes great strength to sit in your pain and allow it.

Listening to our episodes on surrender and positivity might be beneficial to this conversation. There is nothing wrong with being positive, but you can't be truly positive if you don't feel out the negative.

We so often want to avoid pain so we distract ourselves with...

Today Becky is interviewing Sheri Johnson, a coach who helps women who are childless not by choice to awaken their worth in a world that makes them feel inadequate. Her passion is inspiring these women to live full and joyful lives of meaning instead of lack.

She coaches women immersed in loss. Her clients vary from women who never found the right partner with whom to bear children; women who are married and cannot have children of their own; women who feel "less than" because they are not mothers.

Sheri suffered three miscarriages and 6 years of infertility before deciding with her husband not to continue attempting to bear children. Entering this new phase of life influenced her decision to change her coaching practice.

Sheri is offering a free quiz for you. Is your self-worth blocking your happiness as a childless woman? Once you finish the quiz you will unlock some other really cool free gifts. www.sherijohnson.ca

Some of her clients are still very much in grief. After emerging from the depths of that sadness, issues with self-worth show up. Sheri teachers them to feel their emotions in a safe space. There is no manual to grief. And when you have had grief before, that can compile. The feelings from a previous loss (of any sort) compounds into the next loss. It brings up all the feelings again.

Never compare yourself to others, especially with loss. The more you judge or feel judged, the less love you're going to give yourself and the less love that you will be able to give to others. If you don't feel you're worthy of love and care, you won't take care of yourself.

Sometimes a big loss can crack you open to healing. These cracks in the walls around your heart allow the light to come in. You are heartbroken when you lose someone, especially a baby or the dream of a baby, but that is when your heart is open to the healing God (or your higher being) can offer.

Sheri says she is a completely different person after her losses. She had the chance to put the pieces back together in a way that serves her better. The life she leads now, where she is able to serve women in this way, would never have been available to her without having gone through this journey.

Self-love is a practice. Just like a muscle you have to use it to make it stronger.

Your children could choose not to have children so that type of legacy is not a guarantee. Instead think of the legacy you can leave the world when you leave it. How did you leave this world a better place? Will it be a book, a piece of art, or maybe a contribution to whatever field you serve?

All women "mother" in different ways because we are natural nurturers. We have the innate drive to love, comfort and support those around us. This is another way to leave your legacy on others.

There is a beautiful life waiting for all women, whether they have children or not. This is available but you will need to take action. You are worthy. Motherhood does not equal worthiness and womanhood does not equal worthiness. We all have value and it is up to us to cultivate that self-worth through self-love.

When we find someone who understands what we have gone through, that is part of the healing. We are strong and resilient; when we learn from our trials you will then be able to offer others, as well.

We don't look back enough at what we have been through and what we have grown through. We deserve to celebrate and acknowledge that. All women deserve to be celebrated!

Life is happening so fast right now and we are often being sort of forced to surrender in many ways. Sometimes you just feel like you have no choice but to take it slowly, be in the moment, think that it is what it is to a certain extent, and just let go a lot.

It can just be hard because we are so used to thinking that we are in control of so many things, and when it comes down to it, we really are not. The truth hurts.

Surrender isn't giving up but it kind of feels like it is at times. It's really about making peace with the situation but not give up. It's an interesting balance. You don't want to give up, yet you are fighting so hard to go against the flow. You want to lean in.

Author Mark Nepo describes surrender as a fish finding the current and just going with it. So, if you can just find your flow, find what you are supposed to be doing, even with the inevitable setbacks--and do it. Find the answer to the question, "Now what?"

Now what is like being in the reality and accepting what is. You can still hope for a better outcome eventually, but for right now, this is the way it is. This helps you make room for something different and/or better to come along.

Surrender is kind of like giving up in that you might need to grieve your loss in order to come into more of an acceptance. You might need to be laying on the floor shattered for a little while. Eventually you will get up off the floor. You will find a new way.

Honor whatever feelings that come up. No one wants to feel the pain, the anger, the disappointment, but give yourself space and grace to feel it all.

As Mark Nepo mentions, we're so attached to our narrative and our dreams and that this is like a cocoon and once we come out of it, we don't need it anymore. It doesn't mean it wasn't true or important, but the cocoon got us to where we are today and is helping us get to the next place.

The "bad" things happen for our own good, really. Just make peace with it.

Also, the cocoon is part of the transformation into the butterfly. And surrendering into the pain helps you not suffer anymore. If you avoid the pain of the "bad" situation you are facing, then you are going to suffer more. So, you might want to sit in that cocoon, feel that pain, and then you will transform into the butterfly. You completely transform and are then at a higher level of spiritual evolution.

We get attached to relationships and the old beliefs and we don't really want to let go of them even if they are no longer serving us. When it's time to move on from those, that's when we have that conflict. Appreciate and learn by leaning into the pain.

It's easier said than done, obviously. And you can't really make any changes until you are aware that it isn't want you want or is serving you.

The feelings stay, fester and grow the more you push them down and away.

As Kristen often says, "The universe hits us over the head with a frying pan" when we don't get the lesson the first time and don't get what's happening. It will force us to grow no matter how much it hurts. It feels very bad but it is always meant for you to grow from. You become wiser as a result.

Going forward, when you see red flags, start paying attention to what feels off or not ok so that you can let it go earlier and not have to be in so much pain in trying to let it go later.

Psychology Today says that when trying to surrender you are going to try to resist it, reject it, fight to not go there.

True surrender is when you realize that you really don't know what to do. You can't think your way out of it or barter your way out of it or plead or beg your way out of it. Surrender is when you realize that you can't do anything. You can't control any of it. It is what it is.

This is out of your hands and the only thing you can control is yourself--how you're thinking, how you're showing up.

The "I don't know" space is a big part...

In this week's episode, Kristen and Becky discuss "The Martyr Complex" and what it means to know someone who is a martyr or recognize it in yourself if you have this kind of patterns or identity within you.

The old school definition of a martyr is: someone who is willing to die for their country, religion, or belie." These days, a martyr is someone who unnecessarily sacrifices themselves for others while ignoring their own needs. They have a victim complex, but in their heart they are really trying to do the right thing for other people. It's a little like being codependent where you think you can save or rescue someone, but it becomes self-righteous and out of range because then you get upset when people don't do what you think is right for them.

Or, you get upset when someone isn't grateful "enough" or prove of you "enough." It's not intentional but the martyr feels like that is the only value they can offer others is to serve and give and take over for other people, but people don't like that and the martyr feels resentful because they aren't being appreciated for all they are doing for the person or people.

Kristen has been affected by martyrs and has even exhibited it in her life, especially with her kids, at times. It's good to catch it when you notice patterns you have picked up from your family or society. We are often doing a lot of things we were conditioned to do on autopilot, and unless we are totally conscious of the things we learned before we could even talk or think about it--often before we were born we were already marinating in our family or society's patterning. And we might think that we don't want to behave that way once we are adults, and that might be very true for us, but it doesn't mean that we will automatically not behave that way. When you can't be as conscious because there is stress in your life, you might forget to be aware of changing your automatic, conditioned responses.

As long as you catch a pattern or behavior and reflect on it later and remind yourself that you want to change it and not act on it again, then try not to beat yourself up because you learned it at a young age. So, it's all about becoming self-aware.

Becky tells a story about a young five year old boy who spills some milk and his mom reacts in a lot of anger. Instead of comforting him, she starts to talk about how she is the worst mom ever and then he feels a need to comfort Mommy instead. He learns that her feelings are more important than his own. Later, he is taking care of his sister, bringing his mom medicine and food. This is where he thinks he is getting his value. Later, as an adult, he is the one who sacrifices himself at work--he is always willing to cover an extra shift; in relationships he is always over-giving and over-doing. These patterns just pop up. We don't choose them. This man's mom never meant for him to take this on and yet she was probably so proud of him for taking such good care of his little sister and helping her out so much. Sh wasn't thinking that his feelings don't matter and that hers were more important than his and that he needs to take this new pattern to his grave. Parents don't think like that; we are all on autopilot until something wakes us up and we are willing to do it differently.

It is tricky to overcome this, but it can be done. And it might not be a pattern you do all the time. It might be something you do occasionally. So, if you do it, notice it, and forgive yourself for it. We don't know all time about the things that we are doing. We might not even know that it's a bad thing to do.

There is a lot of blame and shame when you are a martyr. The martyr doesn't take responsibility for their behavior. They victim-blame and shame and they act like they are the victims. So, if they do something that you don't like and you ask them to be accountable for it...for example, you tell them that you don't like the way they treated you or spoke...

On today's episode, Becky interviews her good friend Jill Krause, who is a certified cancer empowerment coach, oncology yoga teacher, and breath coach.

She is the owner and founder of YOUniversal Love, a community creating space for women who have been affected by cancer--whether by diagnosis or by genetic testing results.

Jill created Youniversal Love to fill the void she felt when she was diagnosed with breast cancer almost 12 years ago. She had an arduous three-year journey treating her cancer. She endured eight surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and targeted therapy. Jill has spent the last nine years surviving the diagnosis and its treatment and she has been healing her body, mind, and soul.

She wrestled with accepting her new body with the missing parts and she spent years feeling more like a science experiment than a woman. She struggles with long-term side effects that include pain, medically-induced menopause at age 38, osteoporosis, and lymphedema.

Blessed with the tools from therapy, coaching, yoga, breathwork, and prayer, Jill currently owns her feminine energy and womanhood. She accepts all of who she is and embraces the magnificence of her body--every scar, missing eyelash, new curl in her hair, and hot flash.

She now appreciates her body's amazing ability to adapt and heal. Jill is dedicated to empowering women to re-connect their own healing powers, to create a community to remind women that they are Universal love, and embody everything they need inside of them. Women feel safe to exhale and let love return.

Becky says that our podcast is about self-love and that it is the key to healing and living your best life.

Jill's story began at 38. Right off the bat she plugs the idea of knowing your body--knowing the ins and outs of your own body. Wash your body with your hand, not with a loofah or a washcloth, so you can feel every mole, every birth mark, every cellulite dimple, so you know your own body. Normally, she wasn't doing a regular breast self-exam. One day, she was showering after her workout and she lifted her breast and she found something. She says that when you find something that your body is not used to, you try to find out if it is real. She moved her body around in different ways to see if it might disappear, but it did not disappear. She said it did not feel like anything she had ever felt before. She double-checked with her husband and he confirmed it was actually there.

She went to see her OB/Gyn who also felt it and found a second lump. She thought it was a cyst and told Jill to go and get a sonogram and a mammogram and that they would probably just aspirate it right then and there. The doctor was not concerned, but Jill knew something was different and off. What she has learned in her long journey is to trust that gut wisdom. She believes that is God or Spirit or whomever you believe in--whispering to you.

The radiology tech couldn't get a good mammogram picture--one lump was right at her nipple and one was just under. They tried for three hours to get a good picture and they couldn't get one. She went onto her sonogram and they told her they had never seen anything that looked like that before. The radiologist said that she was fine and that she could come back in six months. Jill suggested that she had been there for four hours, she has two palpable lumps, the tech has never seen anything like this before, so she wanted to speak to the radiologist. The tech said, "No, he says you're fine." Jill wasn't having it and had her go and get the radiologist, but the radiologist would not come and see her. So, she ground down into her core and advocated for herself and asked for everything that was taken that day to be delivered to her in the waiting room. She took the films to her internist for next steps. Her internist sent her to a breast surgeon.

She did that and the diagnosis came back as breast cancer and she found out...

We want to know you! Please feel free to email us with any questions, comments, feedback, or topic ideas. Our email is: [email protected]. Or, join our Facebook group called "Try Self-Love." We love interacting with our listeners and we love making new friends, so we hope to hear from you!

Today, Becky and Kristen discuss the importance of having a morning routine to get the day started off in a healthy way.

Kristen had a life-giving instead of a life-sucking morning today by exercising first thing. Every article anywhere discusses the importance of exercising first thing in the morning. Getting it over with in the morning helps Becky and Kristen feel great and feel more organized throughout their day.

Becky feels like she struggles with a morning routine all the time except for when it's a break for her kids from school. Then her kids sleep in later and she can get a lot done like exercise, read her scriptures, pray and other things in and her cup is filled up and she is then ready to go and face people. This is not the norm for her, however, because on school days her boys are up before 6a.m., so getting up even earlier is challenging for her.

Summer will be here for her soon enough and then she can have her mornings to herself

again. But as soon as summer is over, she will go back to not having that time in the morning again.

The morning routine is a habit that can be built in if we take it in small chunks. It's very rewarding but sometimes waking up at 4:30 a.m. to meditate or to do anything at all might not be feasible for people. Kristen was able to do this much more easily when her kids were babies and little. She would get up before them and clean the house, journal, or meditate.

This helped her feel centered and when her kids got up, she was ready to do the mom

thing with her kids. This made her feel like a better human and a better mom and that she had control over her life.

A morning routine is a great way to love and take care of yourself. It shows you that you matter to yourself.

When Becky lived in Texas several years ago, her kids got to go to school later in the morning so she had from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. all to herself and she felt amazing as a result. Now, in Tennessee, she is getting three kids ready for school and out the door between 5:45 a.m. and 7:45 a.m. and then she is exhausted, so she often takes a nap then for a little while and then goes about her day.

She wishes she could exercise before she even got her kids out the door so then she'd at least feel a little more awake.

Kristen thinks that you want to find what works for you and what is actually sustainable. You want to ask yourself, "What works for me?" "What makes sense?" When you continue pushing it off until later, later often never comes. So, if you can find one or two things that you know you CAN do early in the morning and show yourself that you can do them, that gives you the confidence to know that you can do it. Find something that makes sense for you. If going to the gym at 6 a.m. and doing aerobics isn't fun for you because you hate bouncing around at the gym with people at 6 a.m., that won't last very long.

We also judge ourselves a lot for not doing enough and that shaming only makes it worse for us.

Becky used to have a friend she walked with in the early mornings and now she doesn't anymore, so maybe it's time to make some new friends.

The idea is not to judge yourself and to just do something that feels good and right for you. And sometimes we get into a funk or a rut and it is hard to get out of it. We stay in the pathway of least resistance and the comfort zone we are in. Kristen just made it happen today because she was inspired by seeing other people walking out of the gym this morning who were already done with their workouts. So, she just decided to get on her spin bike at home and get it done with and it felt really...