Hi Everyone September is Here!
This is a four part series celebrating Self Care September. This is post one of four.
Each year in September I’ve had a ritual to reboot after the summer. However, for the past seven years I’ve made a very good habit to not go off track during the summer with my wellness goals due to my emotional binge eating disorder relapse in 2013. In order to stay in recovery I live a strict lifestyle around my wellness plan. After sharing this with clients and students of the self care and wellness lifestyle within the GuttyGirl Lifestyle it kind of became a ritual that many people could relate too. Therefore, each September is dedicated to jump starting all newbies wellness plan. So, if you are new to self care or eating healthy or wellness in general and wanting to start your emotional healing journey please join us this month to jumpstart your wellness goals. I will write about whole life detox in a four part series so stay tune for the next three post in this series. Each series will help you get started in each area we discuss.
The thing is self care means many different things as you may define it in a different way than me or someone else. It’s very personal and unique depending on your lifestyle and wellness goals. It includes asking questions like are you getting enough sleep, setting realistic goals, journaling your thoughts, creating a monthly budget, spending time with those you love, setting boundaries and balance in business, your home life and other relationships, monitoring self-talk, starting your day with prayer and meditating and reading inspiring literature before starting your day with something I like to call tag sessions “time alone with God?” But before we jump into any of that I like to give thanks to the past season while entering the new season with gratitude and hopes of new possibilities. Therefore in this post I’m going to reflect on the profound lesson I learned and note which areas I may need to perform a bit more inner work in doing this new season.
Here we go!
Wow, I can’t believe it’s almost Fall. My favorite season of the year. Now that summer is coming to an end it’s time for me to do my reflection ritual I perform each season. Each season I look back on the season and see the profound lessons I learned around my physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, relational, energetic, and financial health. I do a full life detox so I know which areas I need to cleanse during this new season.
Full Life Summer Detox Audit
Mental Health
At the beginning of the summer I was very excited because I just wrapped up a full year of work. A lesson I learned early in life being a trucker wife living in a city with no family or support. I had to create a lifestyle model I could follow to balance my work and family life. My life is modeled by my kids school calendar and the school teacher model. My first term starts each August which I call term one and term two starts in January and ends in May. So you can see my work life is basically from August to May. This year mentally I was excited and grateful because my family and I had a trip to San Diego planned to support my daughter that graduated this year. She had a FCCLA National Competition to attend. We had a ball. I left mentally clear and returned home with an even higher frequency. Therefore, mentally I’m all good.
Emotional Health
As I just mention the summer season was great. But after my return home my high energy started to die down due to family issues on both my husband and my side of the family. One family member experience an unexpected stroke, another an unexpected suicide death, and then one experience an aneurism. Unfortunately, this all happen back to back within a two week period. Although I was triggered by the pain I was not to the point of being down and out or feeling hopeless due to I tend to feel responsible for other peoples pain and well being. A lesson I learn during my recovery is to pause when things get stressful so I want react by escaping with food to feel. So that’s what I did, pause. This allowed me the ability to calm down stop, think, and reconsider how I wanted to cope with this situation. To cope I ran straight to my wellness toolbox not food. I jumped straight into performing my inner work. I grab my shadow work journal and started processing my emotions. Then, I begin performing my somatic healing practice that I do when I feel sad, upset, angry or embarrassed. For those of you who is not familiar with somatic healing it’s when you move your body or do something as a way to create an outlet for energy to flow. Some somatic practices includes:
Tapping/EFT
Shaking
Breath work
A Good Cry
Laughter
Exercise like running
Screaming to release angry
For me, I like to release my energy by punching on my weight bag. I also love music I’ll blast my music and shake off the bad JuJu. If that doesn’t do the trick I’ll turn to Hallmark and watch a movie because being a Empath those feel good movies always make me cry at the end. It’s a good form of emotional release and a way to raise your vibration all at the same time.
Relational Health
I’m very grateful that all my relationship are in a good place. They are healthy and my boundaries are enforced. Although I don’t need to enforce them as much as I used to I still perform a yearly relationship audit to ensure I protect my emotional energy. Most of the people in my life are now aware of my emotional healing journey and binge eating disorder so they have come to respect that each choice I make is because of my wellness plans and not relapsing. My entire focus is on wellness prevention. My message to you for this area is if in your relationship you “overall” feel seen, heard, valued and appreciated for who you are then you have created a healthy relationship. However, if you tend to hide who you are to avoid conflict, you feel fearful to express your point of view or difference in opinion, you’re not able to be independent, you fear if you share your emotional struggle because someone may use it against you, you don’t speak your truth due to shaming, guilt, or someone using silent treatment or you no longer trust yourself these are all signs of an unhealthy relationship and emotional manipulation tactics. It’s time to do a relationship audit to see which toxic people you need to release from your life.
Physical Health
I must say physically I feel good. I got my sugar craving under control. But unfortunately I broke my toe coming off the splash mountain ride at Disney Land so I’m in the process of having surgery. This sucks because I will be wearing a foot boot for a while in recovery. So this will defiantly be a goal that goes into fall season as I will need to heal and recover.
Energetic Health
As you can see from reading about my summer my energy was pretty high until I got home. I even snuck in a little work while in California. I had a client that I schedule a kitchen detox with during our stay. I must say her home was beautiful and on Coronado Beach OMG I didn’t want to leave. But our conversation got deep as we reorganized her pantry and fridge. She explained that her sister in law was such a kind spirit but lately she was annoying the CRAP out of her with her body image, diet culture insecurities and how much she stress about clean eating. She asked was it unhealthy that she felt this way?
To which I said...
"The fact that you have this awareness shows how HEALTHY your mindset is around your own relationship with food, self care and wellness goals."
We went on to talk about what my late mentor Louise L. Hay use to teach about how people are mirrors and a lot of times what bothers us about other people are unresolved traumas within ourselves that we can't stand to see in others.
For example; she has left the diet culture and quit counting calories and eliminating entire food groups from her diet after a while she notice that she can't stand to be around people who talk about the diet culture and watch them starve themselves- she begin to think its unhealthy and self sabotaging to treat your body this way... when just a few months prior that was the behavior she was participating in when she to belonged in the diet culture world.
The first step in all this is simple- AWARENESS.
Is this person really bothering you or are they REMINDING you about a part of yourself that you dislike or on the flip side... wish you were more like?
Being able to witness these parts of yourself (your shadow traits) rather than project it on to the other person is very healthy. It allows you to protect and raise your personal vibe through acceptance. That’s all apart of energy work. I am grateful for that conversation. I hope to see more like that this season.
Spiritual Health
I decide to focus more on my hoodoo rootwork. I usually only do cleanse, protection prayer and rootwork with my herbs through using herbs to heal with food, juicing, my aromatherapy products and bath salts. But a client was really upset and needed my help and wanted me to do some release work with her. So, I partook in my first ever release work ceremony with Archangel Michael and set intentions to help her cut cords and unbind from whatever is holding her back. To do this I cleanse the space with my special blend of holy water with herbal infusions and refresh the water on my altar to ensure it was clean as water is a portal to the spirit world, we both did a spiritual bath and wore all white to the ceremony, gave a offering to pay our respects to our divine team which was white roses, we gave thanks to ancestors, God and ask archangel Michael to come help to banish negative energy through prayer and charka work. Usually I don’t do intentions or ceremonies directly with clients but I made an exception because she was really stressed and I didn’t want her to go into relapse because she has worked so hard with her inner work. This may be something I continue to do in the future, I don’t know for sure but we will see how things go. Because my rootwork is usually strictly herbalism not ceremonies. I do work with Archangel Micheal a lot but usually through prayer.
Financial Health
Each Friday I do a weekly reflection of my books and monthly goals to see if I am on track with my quarterly and yearly goals. My financial health is the result of this Friday ritual. It’s kind of like manifestation but you are tracking all the things happening to ensure you are aligned. The thing is
we are manifesting all the time. Our thoughts and feelings about those thoughts create our field of energy and all energy is always reacting to your personal energy field.
You need to ask yourself each week, “What kinds of seeds are you planting in your energy field that are creating your life and business experiences?”
Are you excited about your life and business?
Are you excitedly anticipating success, abundance and flow?
Or is your personal energy field maybe confused... are you sometimes believing and other times not really believing in your life, business or wellness goals?
You can see what is happening in your energy field by checking out your reality.
What is actually happening in your world?
This is the measuring stick I do each Friday. Because each week you should know your numbers and what is happening in your business and life, what is working and what is not working. Here's the good news... you can start to shift your reality by shifting your thoughts and feelings after you have collect all this data!
That means you must do the work.
The ritual is very simple. Let’s say your yearly goal is to make a six figure income. If you have a goal to make $10,000 for the month-that’s $2,500 each week. If it’s the end of week 2 of the month and you’ve only made $2,000 and you need an extra $500 to meet your goal? You now understand what you need to do. Your income generating activities should involve: Reaching out to past clients to see if they need support. Can you sell some products this weekend opposed to going shopping with your friend spending money opposed to making money. Can you create some valuable content for your email list or blog to get them excited about a workshop you will teach on Monday to get that money. Can you look at your projects and determine which one will impact your bottom line. For example, for me since I’m not really on social media like that I mostly connect with my clients 15% in person, 80% via email and 5% over the phone. My in person connections looks like this: If I need that extra $500 to meet my monthly goal I would pack up my car and go to a busy area and sell Avon right out my trunk. Yeah that’s right. No shame! I know if I sell a bootle of perfume and one skin so soft product that is $25 if I sell that gift comb to 20 people I made my $500 and I can do this sitting in Walmart or Target parking lot for three hour max all while watching Masterclass. Ain’t know shame that’s how you level up and get your money and reach financial goals. Plus, I gain twenty new customers to shop my online store and give people information about my other businesses. I can leave with $500, new Avon customers, 2 skincare appointments for next week, and 3 clarity sessions for recovery counseling sessions. If I’m lucky I may run into a business owner who needs notary or office cleaning to give to my cleaning team at Sage by spiced life conversation. You gotta leave your comfort zone and get in front of people if you want to build your business and get clients. If you are not serving others you can’t get paid. I hope this helps someone. Just remember do what works for you. Social media ain’t for everyone. With my recovery journey I pretty much only participate on Pinterest or my website. Facebook triggers me. Since I know this I limit my time in that space. Wellness looks different for everyone. Do you. And keep moving forward no matter what anyone else has to say.
As many of you may know, I believe that sharing my personal experience can help inspire others to start taking care of themselves better. If I can inspire one woman to begin her healing journey. I’m achieving my intention. As I pray for God to send me those who need healing to my world I pray that what I share will give them strength to begin their own journey.
Performing a life detox audit each season always allow me to come back to health and restore balance within my life. It gives me deeper insight, clarity and new healing tools to try. I am a firm believer that we need ample fuel to care for ourselves, contribute our gifts and share our shame stories to inspire, encourage and motivate others to live their best life and move through emotional pain. So as you rap up the summer season and move into autumn. Remember to keep your tank running. You can’t help anyone if you’re running on empty. So there you have it my seasonal reflection ritual.
Join me for the rest of September for our annual self care September Workshop. I’ll be posting the next three article each Monday to help assist in your self care journey. I’m finally making it available to the public through each of these post. As usually only take what you need and leave the rest.
Until next time,
Life Love You and So Do I!
Nikki
xoxo
Help Developing A Plan For Self Care
Do you want help developing a self care plan that works for your own busy schedule? Do you want accountability implementing a self care plan? If you or someone you love is struggling to maintain optimal mental and emotional health, consider reaching out to Spiced Life Conversation Art Wellness Studio and Botanica. We are a Metro Atlanta, Conyers Georgia area. We are a coaching and counseling practice with empathetic, skilled counselors and recovery coaches who can help you set goals, develop a self care routine and move forward to build a more fulfilling life. Our team would be happy to work with you either just for a couple of sessions to develop and implement a Self Care plan or longer term to work toward overall better mental health within our membership site or other programs.
About The Author:
Dr. Nikki LeToya White MSEd-TL, Ph.D. RHN is the founder, director and a full time board certified trauma-informed nutritionist, folk herbalist, and wellness consultant at Spiced Life Conversation Art Wellness Studio and Botanica. She created Spiced Life Conversation, LLC
Art Wellness Studio and Botanica to provide the Metro Atlanta area with a counseling and coaching services where clients are carefully matched with the right program for healing abandonment and childhood emotional neglect trauma that cause codependency, emotional eating, financial stress, and imposter syndrome as it relates to fear of success and being abandon. We help you begin your emotional healing journey with ease. Recently, we have expanded to include online membership site so we now provide support to people living all over the world. All of our recovery coaches provide at least one evidence based treatment to assist in your recovery. Dr. White is a big proponent of self care and helping people live a fulfilling life! She has been in full remission with both codependency and emotional binge eating disorder since 2016. In live a life in recovery from sugar addiction. Loving her low sugar balance lifestyle.