Prioritizing Me Season | Developing a Self Care Budget
Welcome to our 2nd episode of the season! As we begin the new year, we also enter a season of prioritizing our needs, taking action toward loving ourselves, and showering ourselves with some much-needed self-care.
In this episode, we will explore ways to prioritize our needs and pour into ourselves. Additionally, I'll focus on identifying self-care that feels right for us, creating a self-care budget, and learning how to get to know ourselves through dating ourselves.
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Episode 2 Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:03 Hey y'all. Welcome to Mindfully Yours. I'm your host Ajah, and on this show we talk about all things mindfulness, wellness, loving ourselves, and the journey to showing up authentically as who we are in this crazy world. This podcast is a safe space where we can vibe and chill and chat for a minute about real stuff to help you heal, grow, and evolve into the person you are meant to be in this life. Thank you for being here, and I hope y'all can feel all the love and hugs. I am sending you away. Welcome to Mindfully yours. Let's go ahead and get into it.
Speaker 1 00:00:49 Welcome back y'all to episode two. Yes, numero Dose of the Mindful Yours Podcast. Today we'll be chatting about entering a season of prioritizing our needs, so that season of me is here, budgeting for our self-care in the new year. We'll break that down and the differences between self-care and self maintenance as we enter and maneuver this new space of a brand spanking new year. Just like you, I'm goal setting, I'm creating a plan. I'm manifesting the things I want to bring into fruition this year. And as I'm going through setting these goals, it's important for me as well as you to recognize our wants and needs as priority. And like I said, it's entering that season of me. It's prioritizing me, and it's almost like a season of truly adoring ourselves, like falling in love with who we are. It's a season of kindness, embracing the present moment, meeting ourself with compassion, gentleness, growth, and dating ourselves.
Speaker 1 00:02:09 It's just a season of true adornment and just a season of, wow, I love me and I'm gonna pour into me. When we think about dating ourselves and really getting to know ourselves, what does that look like? Ultimately, when we think about dating ourselves, dating ourselves is self-care. And when I say dating ourselves, it's going out to eat. Treating yourself to that meal that you enjoy. It's going to your fave sushi spot, picking up some sushi, bringing it at home with you or sitting there and enjoying it, dating you, getting to know yourself and aside from even just going to eat, dating yourself includes that. Getting to know who you are as a person at your core. It's doing the journal props and self-reflection, reflecting on your day at the end of it and really understanding who am I and how do we do that?
Speaker 1 00:03:15 How do we date ourselves and get to know ourselves? It took me so much time to recognize who I am as a person, and it was after the many years of journal prompts, writing in my journal, daily meeting with the therapist and going through things from childhood till now, really understanding what I like, what I don't like, setting boundaries with myself and other people. Dating yourself is more than just going out and sitting at a restaurant and having lunch with yourself. Part of dating yourself is being able to sit with yourself and your emotions and your day and the things that you've been through and processing them and healing from them and growing from them. So that's important to do as you're prioritizing your me season, prioritize dating yourself and getting to know who you are as a person as a whole. That is true self-care.
Speaker 1 00:04:14 In addition to that, self-care is doing the things that pour into our cup. Now, y'all, I used to be a preschool teacher, so we read this story to our kids all the time about filling being a bucket filler not a bucket, dumper. So when you're filling your bucket, you're pouring into yourself. It's the words of affirmation. It's doing the things to care for you that you enjoy. You're pouring in the good positive intentions to yourself. You're pouring into yourself the good, the love, the empathy, the grace, the kindness. When you're a bucket dipper, you're pulling from all of those good things. You're pulling them out and you're replacing them with the negative self-talk. And ultimately, you want to respect yourself. You wanna build yourself up, support into yourself, those words of love, affection, kindness, grace throughout your day, prioritize the things that ultimately bring you a sense of peace and fulfill you and fill your bucket.
Speaker 1 00:05:30 Like for me, self-care is going to the park and just sitting and just enjoying nature around me. To me, that is just how it's so powerful to just sit in nature, take it all in and embrace it, and just breathe. No matter how small the task is for self-care, at the beginning of your day, always add it to it and don't skip over it because you're prioritizing. You boo you. It is the season of you, and it could be as small as just looking in the mirror and saying your affirmation and telling yourself how much you love you, and that was your self-care task for the day. You are beyond worthy of taking those small tasks and pouring into you. Create a savings account for just self-care to pull from so you're not pulling from your other things. As you break down your self-care budget and you're identifying the things that ultimately fulfill you, write them down what ultimately fills your cup.
Speaker 1 00:06:44 And once you write them down and you identify those things that truly bring you peace, you can then move to the step of identifying how much each of those costs. What is the amount that it can cost per month for you? Once you've identified those things and you've calculated the cost for each of them, you can then get to the space of how much are you willing to put aside for these self-care items each month? How much is feasible for you and your monthly income, your family household? How much is feasible for you to allocate to those self-care items? And if you're listening and you're like, Aja, I can't allocate money to those items right now, that's okay. There's other things that you can do that don't cost money that can still fill your cup. It's again, going back and identifying what things that you consider to be self-care for you and moving forward from there.
Speaker 1 00:07:48 Self-care goes beyond what you do daily that you're, you do on autopilot. Self-care are intentional chosen tasks that you do that are an acknowledgement of what your mind needs, what your body needs, and what your soul needs. It goes far beyond the getting up, brushing your teeth, washing your face. It goes far beyond putting your deodorant on in the morning. It goes beyond making your breakfast in the morning. It goes beyond drinking your water when you wake up in the morning. It goes beyond the self maintenance tasks that we do each day. Self maintenance tasks we do on what I call autopilot. We just move and go through the motions of it. We do them. And sometimes we don't even recognize that we're doing them because we wake up and we're just like, oh, gotta go, gotta do it. Gotta do it. It's part of your daily tasks.
Speaker 1 00:08:49 Self-care is different from that. And oftentimes people view self-care as a luxury because it's something that is completely aside from what we do each day. It's different. But self-care, again, are those tasks that you do to pour into you and pour into your mind, pour into your soul, pour into your body. It is a space where you feel cared for and you're filling your cup, you're filling your bucket, you're being a bucket filler, not a bucket dumper for yourself. And when you're prioritizing, including self-care, and it allows you a space of maintaining your internal sense of peace, you grant yourself permission to care for yourself. You are worthy of taking the time to care for you. You deserve that time, that task, that thing. You deserve that opportunity to give yourself that you deserve it. Absolutely. It's not selfish to pour into you before you pour into others.
Speaker 1 00:10:04 You cannot pour from an empty cup. There ain't no way you can pour from a cup that is empty on dry. It's just there's nothing in there. taking care of you is part of the season of me, the season of prioritizing our needs. It's part of that self-care budget. It is a totally side from maintaining ourselves daily. But when you prioritize taking care of you, that sense of peace that overcomes you is gonna feel so good. And you deserve that feeling of extremely internal peace and joy. It allows you the space to grow as an individual. It allows you the space to be kind to yourself. It allows you the space to embrace and be in that present moment with yourself.
Speaker 1 00:11:10 So I ask you, how will you pour into yourself? How are you going to take care of you? What are you going to do to prioritize your needs? What is self-care gonna look like for you? And how are you going to budget for your self-care this year? How are you gonna meet yourself with kindness and gentleness this year? How are you going to take care of your heart this year? It's the season of prioritizing me. As we end our talk today together. I want to take a moment just to take a deep breath in and out. 3, 2, 1. Just take a moment to just embrace your breath and be present and join me as I say these affirmations. I am worthy, I am loved. I am enough.
Speaker 1 00:12:24 I am whole, just as I am. I have unlimited power. I treat myself with respect and honor. I view myself through kind eyes. Say these affirmations as many times as you need throughout your day. And don't forget to take those moments to just breathe and be present and fill your own bucket. That's our show for this week. Thank you for listening. You can find all the resources and links from this episode in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this episode, which I know that you did drop a rating and review. Let the people know how much you enjoyed it. And then go ahead and follow us on Instagram at Soul Sista Botanica. We'll see y'all next time.
