EP 171: A Pep Talk For When You Need One

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• The Essential Guide to 100% Guilt-Free Self-Care: Get Your Time + Energy Back to Create the World You Want to Live In 

Transcript:

Welcome friends. We're almost at spring, my favorite season, because the long winter will finally end. I don't know about you, but I needed a lot of pep talks later.

I'll need this later. I have required a lot of pep talks lately, so I. Am here to offer you some of the wise words that I've, I have either read or been said to me or have otherwise encountered in the last few weeks slash months where I have been a little out of sorts, you all. I would like to tell every person I've encountered recently.

I'm pointing at my eyes with my two fingers. I see you. I've been giving everybody the are you okay? Are, I know you, you play okay on the internet, but like, how's your heart? How are you feeling? Because I don't know if I'm okay. I feel weird, and every person I've talked to has been like, everything's a little odd right now.

I'm feeling a little shaky. That's been my word. I'm feeling wobbly. I've been feeling sick. I've felt like everything's hard; it was magically easier in 2020. And now that we're in 2023, we're all wondering what we are doing. You are in the right place if you feel a bit wobbly or out of sorts or need a pep talk.

So before I get to the wise words, I want to thank everyone for leaving ratings and reviews on this show because they make me feel like it. I am wrapped up in a cashmere sweater, drinking a perfect temperature cuppa chai, and wearing fuzzy warm socks on a cold day in the rain.

So lovely. And for everyone who has left a rating and review, either on Good Reads or Amazon or Bartons and Noble or your favorite place where you buy books about my book, the Essential Guide to 100% Guilt-Free Self-Care. I am throwing all heart-eye emojis at you because your words about my words make my heart go pitter-patter.

If you have not yet left a rating and review on the podcast or the book, and you feel so inclined to a five-star rating, I'll love you forever. I love you forever. And if you screenshot. Said, reviewed, and sent it to the email or via dm. I would love that. You can reach [email protected] or Tammy Hackbarth on Instagram.

Without further ado, friends, let's get into the wise words that have been helping me lately. Oh. Words that have been helping me lately. Here's one. This is a quote from my girl, who I love, Tracy Ellis Ross. And Tracy says, I'm learning every day to allow this space between where I am and where I want to be.

Inspire me and not terrify me. I'm taking a moment. Let me read that again. I'm learning daily to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be to inspire me. Annette terrifies me; in this quote, Tracy Ellis Ross is directly speaking to my insides. You like me, like all of us who are listening, we have all done incredible things in our lives, and there may be a little voice that's you haven't done enough, sis.

Guess what you have for now, and you'll keep doing great things. After all, you will have the support of people around you because you have my support. You're going to be kind to yourself. You're going to celebrate your wins. All of it and looking in the future like, Ooh, my reward for doing the good work I've done so far is I'm going to do more good work.

Okay. Okay. Again, trying to let what we have not done yet inspire us and not terrify us into being paralyzed from taking action. If you remember from last week, we talked with Mon. Malcolm about her new book. Don't let Fear have all the fun. And I'm telling you, Fear is natural. Like that chorus of critics gets up in there, and it's okay, you made it this far, but don't go any further.

It's okay. Let's make some peace where we are now to keep going. Thank you. Tracy Ellis Ross, your words are helping me, and I hope they help others. Okay. Some comment from Tina Turner, who spoke directly to my heart, is you must love and care for yourself because that's where the best comes out.

Tina. Tina. Tina. Yes. Friends. Tina Turner is telling you. And me and everyone who's listening, your mom, your sister, your best friend, Tina Turner, would like a word. And Tina Turner would like us all to. Remember, we must love and care for ourselves because that's where the best comes out. So if you want to do better work, I'm talking to myself.

I should put a mirror in front of my microphone if you want. Continue to do great work. You have to feed the beast. You have to take care of yourself for that to happen. We don't need to get to the burnout stage for that to happen. It can be like, did a project, now I'm going to rest did a project, now I'm going to rest.

I did a big project. Now I'm going to rest a lot. I did a little project. I might rest a lot. Why? Great work takes tremendous energy and a great time, and that great work can be a project at work, or it can be raising your kid, or it can be being a cycle breaker in your family. It all is excellent work, and the only way we get the best out of ourselves is when we take great care of ourselves.

Okay. Oh boy. I met with a health coach this morning because I'm having some. I'm not going to say deferred maintenance. I'm having some more things happening, and it's messing with my sleep, so I'm taking care of it. Gold stars for me, and ooh, shout out to my new health coach through Kaiser. If you've got Kaiser, you can get health coaching.

Check it out for your practitioner. But anyway, the. My new coach, who I met, her name is Katie. She was lovely. She asked me a question today that stopped me in my tracks, and I thought, I'm going to have to sit with this question, and I'm going to have to mull it over, maybe take a nap with it, possibly hang out in the hammock with it on a nice day.

Think about this question while I'm swimming or on a walk, but I want to offer you this question the way it was provided to me: how does it feel to take care of Tami? So I'll reframe it for you, friend. How does it feel to take care of, insert your name here this way?

What? So it will probably feel different when we do other things and care for ourselves differently. And there may be a reason why we haven't done it before because we've never seen it done before. Maybe our people didn't take care of themselves in that particular way. And so perhaps we feel wobbly because we're doing new things, but let's try not to beat ourselves up about being wobbly when doing new things.

Because that's when you're learning, it's hard. Oh, the other thing I want to say that everyone has been saying lately is, oh my God, why is life so hard? And we're all a little bit surprised. And then remember people saying that throughout our lives, life is hard. And then you deal with friends. You're not doing it wrong.

What you're doing is hard living as a human is complicated. It's not just hard for you, hard, hard for toddlers, hard for grown people, and hard for all of us, but we can make it easier by taking care of ourselves and all that jazz. Okay, you are so speaking of being able to see things. I'm currently reading the Light We Carry by Michelle Obama.

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend the whole thing is a pretty damn genius. She talks a lot about self-care, but it is only in the book's third part that she discusses it. This idea is that it's hard to become something we can't see, right? It's like I; I'll see it, to believe it.

But here's the thing. She talks about how she has, in the past, maybe even today, red profiles of high-performing women. It could be like this female c e o or this teacher of the year, or this member of Congress, this astronaut, or this, says First Lady or former First Lady. And when you read these profiles, everyone.

Looks effortless. Like they've got their shit dialed right. Their hair is on point. Their outfit totally works. They're somehow wearing high heels, and they look comfortable. There's no pinching on their face. The whole shebang, right? and when they talk about their family and job, they're not crying in the bathroom from imposter syndrome.

Their kids seem to be doing okay. They're eating, playing sports, doing the things, and in your mind, you think she got some playbook that I didn't get. This other person is rocking it because she has; she has something I don't have. the woman in the profile is better than me.

What Michelle Obama says is, in those profiles, we get tips on how to do things and maybe some life hacks, but what comes down to it, it's the things that we don't see that are really what's propping this woman up. And it is not because she needs a crutch. It's not because she's weak; it's not because she's.

She sucks, right? It's the same thing for powerful and successful men, and it is this, it's complicated because their success is predicated. We don't see other people doing that on this invisible triangle of work. This is infrastructure. So it's a team of stylists that gets the outfit.

It's the tailor who makes the. Outfits fit. It's the stylist, the hair stylist, the facialist that works on it; it's the makeup artist. It's like the people who work on the outside, the canvas you see. But then it's all this stuff you don't know; you don't see the nanny picking the kids up and shoving them to the dentist, the sporting practice, or doing the homework.

You don't see the grocery delivery, and it's all. These collective efforts of a team are what I like to call your family success team because, in the words of Michelle Obama, no one is kicking ass by themselves. She did not say it that way. I am paraphrasing, but you get the point. The point is when you're looking at other people's success, and you're comparing.

Your own life, all the messy bits to their outsides, you might be missing the architecture of that pyramid of other people's labor that they are sitting on top of. Also very precarious because, as we all learned in 2020, you take people's infrastructure, school day, childcare, and all of that away.

Woo. It's a lot harder, right? So if you still need to get your family success team, if you don't have regular childcare, or if you don't have someone to help with cooking, cleaning planning, holiday magic, and all that, We weren't meant to do this on our own. And if we're doing it on our own, that's why it feels impossible because the people who are quote-unquote succeeding have this built-in infrastructure.

They have support; they have other people helping them. So those are some of the words. and ideas helping me get through this shaky time. The place where this, the area between, as Tracy Ellis Ross says, where I am and where I want to be, I'm trying to get out of that idea of oh my God, it's so scary and into oh, cool.

I get to go after that new set of things. Words I hear on the Daily are from our friend over at Tidy Revival, Carly Adams, and these words help me every day, and they are, you've got this. , every win is a win. We're all in this together. You've got this. So until next week, remember that you matter too.