Unconventional Self-Care Diary with Dionne Nicole

Category: Self-Awareness | Similar Episodes: 056, 085, 093 | https://www.unconventionalselfcare.com | [email protected]

“We aren’t born knowing how to be awesome at everything. We have to spend our time learning. And our knowledge grows with one exposure at a time. We can speed up the process if we have examples to follow or get really focused but it still requires effort. No matter how old we become. Self-care is no different. If you’re feeling like you’re doing self-care wrong, you aren’t! It takes time to understand your intangible needs. The needs that are hidden beneath the surface and can’t always be verbalized. ”

P.S. You’re doing great!

Category: Self-Awareness | Similar Episodes: 061, 083, 107 | https://www.unconventionalselfcare.com | [email protected]

“So I have a confession. I've been feeling what Michelle Obama has been feeling. A low grade depression that has become an undercurrent that ends up coloring everything around me. It has manifested outwardly in several ways. Most notably, I haven't been as consistent with posting podcast episodes because at the end of the day I have to ask myself, what will help me to feel 1% better? On most days it hasn't been trying to make sense of my self-care or emotions or actions or thoughts and then recording it for the world to hear. ”

P.S. You’re doing great!

Category: Actions | Similar Episodes: 014, 048, 077| https://www.unconventionalselfcare.com | [email protected]

“You know that feeling you get when you realize that you forgot something when you’re ten minutes down the road and you have to decide, do I stop and go back and get it? Or do I just keep moving forward and improvise? Today I left my phone in my car and by choice, it was 4 hours before I retrieved it again. I didn’t realize I was addicted to it, not really, until this moment.”

P.S. You’re doing great!

Category: Actions | Similar Episodes: 060, 066, 069 | https://www.unconventionalselfcare.com | [email protected]

“For the past week I have been taking a trip down nostalgia lane and it has been so incredibly restorative. I’m Present-Focused by nature so it was different to allow myself to slip into Past-Focused mode and just stay there. If these concepts are foreign to you, never fear, check out previous episodes because I go into more details! I’ve just been in a state where I just haven’t wanted to do real-time reflection. It can actually get a bit exhausting when you’re constantly asking yourself, “What does this meaaaaaaan?” Sometimes it doesn’t mean anything at all.”

P.S. You’re doing great!

Category: Mindset | Similar Episodes: 008, 018, 068 | https://www.unconventionalselfcare.com | [email protected]

“I decided to let my “Mental Health Day” last a week! Why? Because why not? I was processing some pretty heavy emotions and they weren’t the kind that you just snap out of. I think we feel as though we need to “get better quick” because it’s uncomfortable for the people around us or we don’t want to be a burden but I let my emotions be exactly what they were. I didn’t water down what I was feeling. I didn’t feel like I needed to “be a certain way” because here’s one thing I feel confidently in: my “too much”ness is just the right amount. You can handle me at that level or not at all. Part of self-care for me is not apologizing for myself.”

P.S. You’re doing great!

Category: Mindset | Similar Episodes: 020, 037, 051 | https://www.unconventionalselfcare.com | [email protected]

“I decided yesterday evening that I needed a “Mental Health Day” today. I was feeling a lot of emotions and most of it was coming from conversations I was having, and I had just had enough. I know myself. I have a certain threshold and I had reached it. I didn’t want to have to be mindful of the words I was saying. I didn’t want to have to be overly aware of someone else’s emotional baggage and try to compensate for it. I didn’t want to have to care or be nurturing for anyone else because I was the one who needed the nurturing. And only I know what I truly need.”

P.S. You’re doing great!

Category: Actions | Similar Episodes: 012, 044, 092 | https://www.unconventionalselfcare.com | [email protected]

"I recently delivered 40 personal postcards to my neighbors on my apartment floor. Don’t worry. I delivered them with a mask and gloves. I even said so right on the postcard to alleviate all fears. Pre-Covid days I would have actually knocked on doors but I had to get creative because I like knowing who my neighbors are. It’s also been harder to meet new people in general because meetups are happening online and people aren’t as receptive to chatting up a stranger out in the world, even if you’re both wearing masks. So the postcard was my way of saying hello first."

P.S. You’re doing great!

Category: Mindset | Similar Episodes: 033, 058, 091 | https://www.unconventionalselfcare.com | [email protected]

“It rolled off my tongue so easily. I was in a conversation with someone and they made a pretty bold declaration and my immediate response was YET. Y-E-T. It may not be reality now but it can be in the future. And if you want it to be in the future, you better start adding YET to the end of those declarations. Especially the ones that are focused on what you're currently lacking. I'm not pregnant. YET. I'm not making a million dollars. YET. I'm not married. YET. I'm not a good sleeper. YET. I'm not a good dancer. YET. I'm not feeling better. YET.”

P.S. You’re doing great!

Category: Mindset | Similar Episodes: 021, 040, 084 | https://www.unconventionalselfcare.com | [email protected]

“Someone reached out today to say that she was having one of those moments where she wanted to do something radical. She was feeling the urge to up and move to a different country. She admitted that whenever she feels this way, there’s a part of her that feels in a slump or empty. I’m sharing this because we’ve all be there. And I felt so very honored that she was sharing her emotions with me in real-time when they are really fresh because that’s when we’re the most honest. When you’re ready for something to be different - anything at all - you can feel so restless that you don’t know where to begin.”

P.S. You’re doing great!

Category: Actions | Similar Episodes: 014, 053, 079 | https://www.unconventionalselfcare.com | [email protected]

“Today was an unsubscribe day! I spent time looking at my email. Really looking at what was coming in and deciding whether it was something I valued enough to actually stop and read RIGHT THEN. Since I’m not really on social media — I try but can never be consistent — email is where my dopamine gets the most hits. It’s why I’m on a gazillion email lists. It’s why I have a graveyard of PDFs that I never actually read but downloaded anyway just to see what people have to say. I love reading interesting things but I started to do an audit and realized that there were only maybe 5 or 6 emails from strangers that I actually looked forward to. The rest were just filler. It felt like noise. If I never received another email I probably wouldn’t miss it. So I decided to raise my standards as an experiment.”

P.S. You’re doing great!