Episode 6 Transcript | Coach Kendra

EPISODE 6

Who Comes First?

TRANSCRIPT

Hey guys, welcome to A Lifelong Habit of Exercise. I'm Coach Kendra and this is Episode six. Today we are going to be talking about putting yourself first. This is a topic that many people are either very comfortable with, or very avoidant of. These are some of my favorite topics. As you may know by now, putting yourself first can look many different ways. Last week I mentioned briefly about how I think I'm a good mom, because I put myself first. There are many people who may disagree with me and think that good moms will never put themselves first. So, who's right for me?

I am, and for them they are. Putting yourself first is all about balance and what works for you. I am not here to tell you that you need to put yourself first in every situation. And I'm definitely not here to tell you to never put yourself first. But I am here because I want to talk to you about why you put yourself first, and why you don't? I've always been pretty good at putting myself first. Maybe not always for the right reasons, but for the most part, I've been able to think of me first in many different situations. Does that mean I'm selfish? Some would probably say so, and that's okay. I'm okay with that. I don't think I'm selfish at all. I think that when you put yourself first, there's so many layers to it, and putting yourself first means that you get to take care of your health and well being first. This is extremely beneficial because who knows you better than you. Let's think of like on a flight, there's the in case of emergency protocol and on this, I mean, most American flights, I don't know about international flights, but most of us flights have this in case of emergency protocol where you get on the flight You're in your seat and they go over what the kind of in case of emergency protocol is, just in case. And one of the things is that if the oxygen mask falls from above, you must first put your oxygen mask on, and then assist someone you're traveling with who is unable to do their own. So it's basically saying that if you're not good, you can't possibly do anything to help others. So you put your mask on first, and then you can help others. It's also interesting to me because in most situations, they specifically talk about you putting your mask on first and then assisting any children that you may be traveling with. And it's interesting to us that in regular life, we take our children and what we do if we're parents, we use our children as a reason not to put ourselves first and we use are just like I said in the last episode, that I I think I'm a good mom, because I do put myself first. But a lot of people think that when they have kids, they're supposed to always put their kids first.

So it's interesting that this in case of emergency protocol for a flight actually does a lot of times specify that you should put your mask on first and then assist any small children that you're traveling with to put theirs on. And the other thing I really want to talk about is, that's another example of this, and it's actually another parenting example is that: I recently went through a divorce and in Arizona, if you are getting a divorce, and you have a child involved, you must take a parenting class. So in the parenting class, one of the things that stood out to me very much is that in order to raise an emotionally healthy child, you must first be emotionally healthy yourself. And this is one of the points that they kind of harped on and really highlighted during this class. And it is, you must first be good yourself, you must first be emotionally healthy yourself in order to raise an emotionally healthy child. So these two examples, do talk about children and being able to put yourself first and then being able to help others. But it's interesting that certain things like this, hint at it and show the value of putting yourself first. But overall in society for a long time, we've associated putting yourself first with being selfish, or being uncaring, and it has been very black or white. And I think more recently, we've started to see that shade of gray, where just because you put yourself first doesn't mean you're self centered and heartless, or just because you put yourself first doesn't mean that every decision that you make is only going to benefit you and only you. So it's been nice to kind of start seeing that shade of gray but for a long time, and a lot of us still associate, putting ourselves first with being selfish and uncaring, because for a long time, it has been very black or white. And one of the reasons that we put others first or some of the reasons, I guess, that we put others first are because we think that it is the best way for us to take care of them. That doesn't have to be children. That doesn't have to be anybody and specific in particular, but a lot of times why we put others first is because we really do think that that's the best way that we can care for them. We think that they need us. We think that's how we can show them that we love them, or that we care for them. So we put them first. Or another reason is is that we want to avoid their opinion of us or other people's negative opinions of us. So we want to avoid there or other people's negative opinions of us and so we put them first because we think that that's what we're supposed to do. Like I said, like society for a long time, it's been very black or white. Like, if you don't put them first, then you're a bad mom, if you don't put them first and you're a bad wife, if you don't put them first, then you are a bad friend. And I think that is one of the things that we do we put them first because we want to avoid other people's opinions of us those negative opinions or their negative opinions of us. And what we're really doing when we do that is we're taking responsibility for other people's emotions. And remember, like, emotions come from our thoughts. The thoughts that everybody has in their own minds are what leads to their emotions. The thoughts that I have in my own mind are what leads to my emotions. The thoughts that you have in your mind are what lead to your emotions. So when we think this way, and we think that they need us and that, like this is how we showed them, we love them and this is how they know that we love them and that we care for them or if we're just avoiding their opinions of us their negative opinions of us. All we're doing is we're taking responsibility for their emotions. And we have responsibility for our own emotions, and they have responsibility for theirs. Now, that doesn't mean that we just show up, like a complete butthead, or we just show up rude or we just show up anyway like that. Because it's like, "oh, they're responsible for their own emotions." We still get to decide how we want to show up our emotions. Remember, we're responsible for our emotions, and we get to feel those emotions and we're the only ones that fill our emotions. So I'm not saying like, we show up completely different. I'm just saying that don't try to take responsibility for their emotions. And when we put others first a lot of times, that's what we're trying to do is we're trying to do something in order for them to feel a certain way or in order for them not to feel a certain way. But remember without their thought they have no emotion. So they have to have a thought about whatever it is that we do.

And so they're responsible for their own emotion, good or bad.

When we put others first, like if we were thinking about this, like, where I say we put others first, because we think that that's how they'll know that we love them. What if we think about that with ourselves, too? If we're putting others first, what are we showing ourselves that other people need me more than I need myself? What are we showing ourselves when it comes to that? That they're good enough for me to put them first, but I'm not good enough for me to put me first. Just an interesting thing to kind of think about what are we showing ourselves when we put others first. Our emotions are the emotions that we're responsible for. Yet these are the ones that we tend to neglect the most. I want to say that again, our emotions are the emotions that we are responsible for yet, these are the ones that we tend to neglect the most. And I want you to make sure to listen to that. But a lot of us are going to want to beat ourselves up about that. Because neglect, we neglect our own emotions.

But I want you to know that that's okay if that's been the case in the past. It doesn't have to be that way anymore. Remember, we're responsible for our own emotions. So it's okay to care for others. It's okay to love others. It's okay to show them that care. It's okay to show them that love. But doing so out of a place of love for yourself. Doing that out of a place of care for yourself, not out of a place of I want them to feel my love.

Your love will never be able to be transferred to that. You can do things, but their love, they have to be able to have a thought about whatever it is. Putting yourself first may not mean like right in the moment where there's a decision that has to be made of like choice A or choice B, am I going to do this where I put you first? Or am I going to do this where I put me first? And I think that's a lot of why people also struggle with putting themselves first because, again, it goes back to that like cut and dry black and white, where we think it's gonna be this decision where I put myself first or it's going to be this decision where I put you first. For me, putting myself first means I plan my week out. I make sure that all my free time when I plan my week, I do that first I plan my free time first. Like that includes for me spending time with my daughter. That includes for me exercise and that includes for me sleep.

These are all times where I can breathe and I can refresh. There are times where I'm not working. There are times where I put my phone down. There are times where I get to just breathe, relax and refresh and enjoy my free time. For others that might not include exercise to you, that may be something that you feel you have to do rather than you want to do. But for me exercise is included for this because I know for me, it's a time where I get to take care of my future self. Me planning my week ahead, normally takes care of that choice A or choice B. Like how we think of putting yourself first is it going to be I put you first or is it going to be I put me first well me planning my week ahead normally takes care of that because then I'm like, Oh, I can fit this in here, and I can fit this in here. And this is all of my free time and this is where I can fit the other stuff in.

And then I'm not really faced with many am I gonna do Do this or am I going to do that? I already know.

When we take time to put ourselves first, we don't have to depend on someone else to take care of us. We know what we want. When we don't take care of ourselves. We're left looking and searching for others to figure out and hope that they find out what our needs are.

And you know what, sometimes this works.

And other times this may seem impossible.

And that's why that's so difficult is because the hard thing about like leaving our care for someone else to do is that when they're unable to take care of us, or they just choose not to take care of us in the way that we expect them to, then we have all kinds of various emotions like disappointment, sadness, hurt, frustration, anger. But when we take care of ourselves first, then it's like, "Hey, you know what, like, I have already taken care of that I'm not looking or depending on you to take care of me for something that I know that I've already needed or taken care of."

And I want to like, be careful, because some of you guys are probably like, okay, it sounds like you're saying, don't let anybody love you or care for you. And that's not what I'm saying at all. Like, I'm actually saying the complete opposite. I'm saying, like, don't depend on someone else to love and care for you. When you know exactly what you need. And you're responsible for your own emotions. They get to do whatever you want, and you get to, like, just enjoy that. But they get to be responsible for their own emotions. If they want to show love and care for you. They get to do that. Just like if you want to show love and care for them, from a loving and caring place. You get to do that too. But you don't have to wait for them to take care of you. Or you don't have to wait for them to do anything as far as your emotions go. You get to do that on your own. So when you put yourself first, you're able to take care of yourself and you're able to show up how you want to show up. And then you get to just kind of enjoy what other people bring to the table. You get to enjoy your time with other people, because you've already taken care of yourself. So for example, I'm going to kind of change this in the way that I put that. Like, for example, think about if you go to dinner, like say you're going on a date or going out with friends and you're going to dinner, and you're going to dinner at 6pm. And by the time at 6pm. You normally have two meals, but you're completely starving because all day long, you haven't eaten anything. And it's about to be 6pm you normally have your two meals by this time. When the meal comes like say you go to the restaurant, you're able to sit down and your meal comes Are you going to overly enjoy that meal? Absolutely. You haven't eaten all day. you're starving. You are going to absolutely enjoy that meal. But what happens if you show up to the restaurant you haven't eaten that meal, you haven't eaten all day at 6pm you haven't eaten anything and you're normally eat two meals before this time. You show up, you're starving, and you get to the restaurant, and the other person never even made the reservation. You were depending on that meal. There's so much of a difference that then shows up. Because you didn't take care of yourself first, all day long. You didn't take care of yourself. You were depending on that one meal and that was it. You put all your eggs in the basket. Now, if you go to dinner, and you've already eaten your two meals previously, you ate breakfast, you ate lunch, just like normal. And now you're going out to dinner either on a date or with friends and you're out to dinner and you go and you get to sit down and you enjoy that meal. Are you still going to enjoy that meal? Absolutely. Just like you would have if you were starving, you get to enjoy that meal but now, say that you show up and there was no reservation made. Now, it's not as big of a deal because you weren't depending on that meal. Now you get to take your time, find something else, do whatever it is, but it comes from a completely different place because you already took care of yourself. Now you get to just eat dinner and find something else to eat.

When you put yourself first, when it comes to exercising, a lot of times we depend on things to fall in place. We want a trainer to tell us what to do. We depend on other people to stop having things for us to do. Like that's the time that we are supposed to work out but yet something always keeps popping up. So we want them to stop like stop making things for me to do at that time. Or we want someone else to want to exercise with us. Or we want someone else to check in with us to make sure that we did our workout for the day, we want them to be our accountability partner. We want them to tell us what to do we want them to do this. We want other people to put us first, when it comes to exercising, rather than us put us first. We want someone else to take care of our needs. For exercise, like Yeah, do we have to actually do the exercise? But yes, but we want someone else to be there for us. We think it'll make it easier. We think it'll mean more. If someone else if someone else if someone else helps me if someone else tells me what to do if someone else is here for me, if someone else walks with me if someone else does that, what if we just put ourselves first and took care of our own needs when it came to exercise?

When it comes to exercise, what if we stopped depending on everybody else to take care of that need to help us take care of that need?

And what if we decided that we were going to just put ourselves first? I want you guys to remember that putting yourself first may look completely different for everyone. And in the next week I want you to figure out in what way can you put yourself first this week? Until next time.

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