098- Self-Care
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Summary:
On today's episode, we discuss our self-care routines and feelings toward the idea of self-care. This episode is just as much for us as anyone because we don't have this figured out either! We talk through some tools and self-care methods. On our Ask a Pet Biz Coach segment, Natasha answers the question, “Should I even bother starting a pet care business in 2020?”
Topics on this episode:
Our history and feelings around self-care
Our current self-care
How do we want to improve?
Tools and areas of self-care
Natasha O’Banion Ask a Pet Biz Coach
Main take away? Get an accountability partner today and start making some healthy changes!
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
care, pet, pet sitter, people, business, healthy relationship, life, build, reminder, habit, figuring, confessional, episode, learning, forced, run, busy, Meghan, client, add
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan
I'm calling and I'm Megan.
And this is petsitter. confessional,
Meghan
an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter brought to you by pet sitters associates. Hello, and welcome to Episode 98. Today we're going to talk all about self care. We thank you so much for listening to this episode. And if you are not subscribed, please feel free to push the subscribe button in any podcast player. So we're going to be expanding Today on our q&a episode from Episode 93. And we wanted to talk a little bit more about our own self care, because we kind of went short on that answer. a caveat to this entire episode is we do not Have this figured out. There are tons of resources, books podcasts on the topic, but we have not specifically covered this topic on our podcast. So today we thought we would. This episode is as much for us as it is for anyone else. This is something that we need to be reminding ourselves daily of. And I was even apprehensive to really discuss this because I don't have a good grasp on this at all.
Collin
It's okay, it's okay. It's one of those things of we wanted to talk about this because, as Megan said, we're not the experts. We're still figuring this out too. And we just want to share a little bit about our journey and how we are dealing with this now.
Meghan
So what does self care mean to us?
Collin
Other than me, not really just liking the term self care. I think it ultimately means having a healthy relationship between work and personal life. Notice how I didn't say work life balance, because there's you can never have those Things in true balance, one is always going to have to take precedence over one than the other. It's having a healthy relationship and understanding about how those two interact.
Meghan
Yeah, self care is really an overused word. So a lot of times it sounds very cliche and very millennial talk. When we say self care, it's a bit more than just taking a break. It's really about focusing on your entire person, your mind, your body, your soul. So also, we wanted to note that self care isn't forced, being forced to sit still by someone because they think you're too busy is not self care. Self Care is about doing things that make you feel good.
Collin
Yeah, that fulfill you that nurture that feed you, not what's being forced upon you. So what's our current relationship? What's your current relationship with self care, Megan?
Meghan
Honestly, I would say it's unhealthy. I always want to be doing and I always want to be going. I really hate slowing down. I'm like the Road Runner literally all the time. It fulfills me though and it gives me purpose. And I love having tons of irons in the fire, because it's what keeps me going and what really wakes me up in the morning and get and fuels my passion for everything. So this episode is mostly so I can go back and listen to it over and over again until I get my self care to where I want it to be. Which may never happen but at least this will be a good reminder of things that I can incorporate that I enjoy. We are always learning and growing and changing, but you can definitely be happy and healthy and content with where you are in life.
Collin
My current relationship with it is pretty tenuous, I definitely swing wildly between doing absolutely nothing. And then try and like make up for that really quickly over the course of a couple days and really just not do anything and lounge around and in try to disconnect from from work and other projects that we have going on. And then I go back and forth. I still really do find a hard time balancing. And more importantly, I think remembering that it's I me that I need to take care of and step aside and step away from certain things. Because I want to get things done and I don't like it's it's tough for me to remember that I need to step aside on a regular basis, not this infrequent, erratic basis, but building in this regular routine.
Meghan
And so over the past 10 years, I wanted to talk a little bit about that over the past 10 years, I would say that I've actually gotten worse. So 10 years ago, we were in college, we didn't have very much going on. And now I am married. I have young kids, I have multiple jobs and life is just really crazy. My my screen time. My screen time is embarrassingly high, and I rarely make time for myself. However, I know way more about myself than I did 10 years ago, even five years ago. And among all of the chaos that we have going on in life, I have learned to be introspective, because I walked this journey called life with you, Colin, and you remind me that I am different than you and I can see where I'm different. And I know myself more because I'm with you.
Collin
Is that just because I drive you insane? Because we're so different?
Meghan
Well, yes. But
Collin
I hear that and i do i hundred percent agree with with what you just said. And I realized that part of this learning more about myself over the past 10 years has been the fact that it's been spent with you, and that it has been forced myself to be introspective about why I do certain things, why I believe certain things why I act in certain ways. That's been really helpful. It's really helped me come a long way and understanding what I need. Personally, I used to think that self care was a bunch of mumbo jumbo. It was something that the Frou Frou people did that people sold in books and talked about randomly. But as we've gotten busier and busier, as we've been able to grow and mature, I have had those days of waking up going. I am not at 100% right now, and I hope nothing suffers because of it. And as we've added more things to our plate, the fact of being increasingly busy, has forced me to become better at looking at myself and figuring out my weaknesses, figuring out my strengths. And one thing that I will say that recently has been very good and that has changed for us is our kids are now going to school Monday, Wednesday, Friday in the mornings. And that means that Megan and I can go for an hour so grab, grab coffee and just talk in the mornings get caught up on what each other is doing that has been very fulfilling to me just to Reconnect and to understand what's going on right now.
Meghan
And so before we get into the meat of the episode, what are we going to do better? Where do we want to be?
Collin
Oh, yeah, there's a lot for improvement. Obviously, I am one of the things that I really enjoy and have found enjoying is doing a lot more or at least more frequent and consistent weekend trip getaways. And those coffee dates like I had mentioned, on one of the big things for me personally is getting back on the bicycle and doing more bike rides. I used to do that an awful lot, especially when we lived in Texas, it was very easy to do that the weather was more conducive for that year round here, not so much. So making an intentional reminder to set some time aside, whether that's 15 minutes for a quick trip around the block or maybe a longer one. It's not really about the time spent away. It's the fact of doing that act of that gives me some mental space and some mental separation from everything going on.
Meghan
I would like to be able to put down the phone more Like I said, my screen time is pretty embarrassing. And I also would like to not have FOMO. You know, when I put the phone down, I want to then reach for it again because I don't want to miss out on something. And that's I feel like that's the millennial in me. But I need to get away from that because it's I don't have a healthy relationship with my phone. So instead, I would like to be meditating, praying more, I would like to be going outside more. I talked about a few episodes ago that I love being outside. And that's true. So I would like to do that more. Why are we talking about this?
Collin
Did you know that people still think it's ridiculous to talk about self care? We love badly Yes.
Meghan
Because we have actually been yelled at on the internet by some angry people. And we've talked about this and they say that it's childish, and you just need to be able to handle it. And if you can't handle it, when you're a pet or house sitter, then it's not the job for you.
Collin
Yeah, it's it's shocking to us that there is still so much pushback on talking about self care that how important it is to make sure that you are okay. spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, that there are people out there that when you talk about this a people will say it's not necessary and be that people will actively push back against it and said, Oh, it's just me just part of being an adult is dealing with this part of being an adult is struggling through this and suffering and getting in the middle of the grindstone, all of that. And we want to take a step back and say, No, like that doesn't have to be part of it. You can it is okay, to step back, take a few steps back, to reassess how you're doing, and do things that you enjoy,
Meghan
especially as pet business owners were like the number one topic in this industry is burnout. So before we get into the systems and such as self care, we wanted to give a quick shout out to our sponsor pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals. Your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. pet sitters associates is here to help for over 20 years of pet sitters associates has provided thousands of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet care industry or you want to make your passion for pets into a profession, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom and running your business. Learn why pet sitters associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at pets at LLC comm you can get a discount when joining by clicking membership pet sitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at petsfit llc.com.
Collin
So if you need systems, there are a lot of different ways out there to get a system in place. And in really the biggest thing here is understanding that it's going to be different for every single person. There's no one size fits all system as far as getting a habit to stick I would say that the first thing that you need to do is to find, understand and remember and remind yourself why you need self care. Basically, what is your motivation behind it before you can get into apps and reminders and body systems and anything like that? You have to understand your motivation going into this, otherwise nothing will ever stick. Like we said at the very beginning, self care is not something that is forced on you. Actually, that goes completely against what self care is all about. So you have to find your motivation and understand why it is important to you. There are apps that can gamify it send reminders, there are journaling programs that you can get involved in. As I mentioned, you can get a friend to help you externalize the help and help remind you to build some motivations around it. But it really just boils down to whether you find it important for you or not. When you find that it's important. You will make time for If you never make time for it, it never was important to you in the beginning,
Meghan
we wanted to move into some areas that you can focus on for some routines in self care. The first one is physical. So this is to live to move and breathe your body. You can develop a regular sleep routine, like you should.
Collin
Yeah, I cannot stress how helpful and important having a good sleep routine is. You can get apps that track it on your phone or smartwatch, but it's consistency and figuring out what works for you. Not everybody needs eight hours. Some people need more, and some people can be fine with less.
Meghan
You also want to aim for a healthy diet. So make time for meals. The lunch hour is typically the busiest for most of us we're dog walkers and 11 to 2pm is the busiest time for us but plan out your meals. So you weren't just grabbing some chips or just a random piece of fruit to snack on
Collin
and then get some exercise. Now this may sound interesting because if we are doing lots of walks and we are being active, we may say, Well, I already do exercise already exercise enough. But this is before or after work. This is exercise that's not walking, not walking the dog is making it different using a different activity to start separating out the time and movement, this muscle memory, these these connections that our brain starts making of when I'm walking and walking with a dog, when I'm walking, I'm at work, finding a new activity, whether that's swimming, that's yoga, that's weightlifting, something different to get your body moving in a different way will also help your mind separate will also build start building some of these boundaries and barriers between when you're working on your job. And when you're not.
Meghan
The next routine you can have in place is a psychological one. So this means learning, thinking growing, you can keep a reflective journal. So I personally hate journaling. But it does force you to sit down and write your thoughts. feelings. Even if a pen and paper doesn't work for you, it's too old school, pull out the Notes app on your phone and just write stuff down.
Collin
Also about learning and growing here, you can seek out and consult with a more experienced pet care provider to see how they have grown. If there's a pet sitter or dog walker group in your area, maybe ones that have large businesses or just been in the business for a while, or maybe even somebody that we've interviewed, that you'd also like to talk with, reach out to them, get their advice, get their contact information, start building that relationship, to learn about certain aspects where you're struggling, maybe they struggle to build in this community to continue to grow for both personally and in your business.
Meghan
You may also consider engaging with a non work hobby. I know a lot of people do puzzles and before kids I loved doing puzzles Yes, and now I don't because they're gonna get messed up but little fingers like to play but you can do puzzles. You if you're an artist, you could painting you could maybe even do pod gastein a, but make time for relaxation. You can also make time to engage with positive friends and family. So these are friends and family that have not only a positive outlook on life, but that respect you and respect how you view the world.
Collin
Right? They may not understand or fully get the struggles of being a pet sitter dog walker, but they can still encourage you they can still love on you and feed into your energy and your emotions.
Meghan
And speaking of emotions, the third aspect of a self care routine is emotional. So this means to love to care for and to be in a relationship with yourself and others. So again, developing those relationships that are supportive to you that respect to you that support you come alongside you and be your cheerleader. And then if you are a journaler right, three good things that you did each day that will make you feel good that will send that dopamine into your brain of I did a good job today. I am I am worth it, I am worthy. And then you can talk to a friend about how you are coping with work and life demands.
Collin
I'll also add that this emotional side tends to be the one that drains us the most here in the petsitting community, the pet care professionals at aspect care professionals, we are emotionally invested, we care so much we we spend our day caring for other things for other people. So this this tank, this emotional tank tends to need to be filled up and bolstered maybe a lot more than the others, especially with with what we deal with on a daily basis.
Meghan
And something that helps me emotionally is to either go to the movies, which really isn't an option these days, or just to stay home and watch Netflix, watch a good TV show that makes you laugh, or watch a movie that makes you happy cry, happy tears, but it's just a good way to put some separation between you and your crazy busy life.
Collin
And then the last one, the last grouping of things that we can be doing for our self care is the spirit So this is connecting with essence, purpose, and meaning. And this can be done in a lot of different ways you can engage in reflective practices like meditation. Now this doesn't have to be the full on. I'm gonna sit and meditate for 12 hours. This can be in the car while you're waiting to go into a client's house. This can be in the morning before you go to start your visits or maybe at nighttime when you come back to, to bring yourself down to recenter yourself from the busy day while you're in your driveway. Also being connected with others going to church, mosque, temple, this provides huge amounts of benefits, not just an additional community to be plugged into, but have spiritual leaders and guiding and people praying and talking about you and thinking about you and reaching out to you as well. There's another support group there.
Meghan
And we recognize that all of these are couched in the pandemic going on right now. This looks very different self care can look very different than it did six months ago. Churches are not really open. Yo even yoga studios are not really open. And so we're having to do a lot more meditation and prayer by ourselves versus in a group setting,
Collin
or reaching out across with zoom or FaceTime or Facebook groups. Most things that we're talking about here, when we're mentioning, getting together with a group of people can be done online can be done virtually, it's not exact. It's not the exact same way because you're not being able to see somebody's face or give them a hug. But part of this is just connecting and sharing stories and building these relationships, through storytelling through sharing of emotions, and all of that can be done in an online presence.
Meghan
If you have struggled with self care like I have, it can be really difficult to put yourself first. A way to do that can be making a list of your priorities. So keep it short. It doesn't have to be a full page of your priorities but you can say your business, you can say if you're a runner, you can say I want to run a mile a day. If you want to eat better kind of plan out your meals, or how you want to eat better. And then asking for help from your family and your community so they can keep you accountable. It's also helpful to keep a balance between treating yourself and treating others. We are in the service industry. And a lot of times we just give give given a gift. And we don't really ask much from other people, or ask much of ourselves. And so finding that, again, healthy relationship between giving yourself what you want, and giving others what they expect from you.
Collin
And remember that when we talk about putting yourself first, sometimes, yes, that will mean doing things that are difficult, but benefit you in the long run. So this may mean saying no to an extra client that you just don't quite have time for. But maybe if you got rid of that lunch date that you did with your friend once a week, you would be able to take on the client. No, we're looking back at our priorities. We're saying no That's hard. We don't like saying that that's a hard thing to do. But we are maintaining these things that we've liked and that we value because in the long run that's going to benefit us,
Meghan
one of the hardest parts about self care can be sticking to them. So how do you get motivated to take care of yourself?
Collin
Start small, thinking about where you're going to be five down the road, five years down the road can be pretty
Meghan
daunting.
Collin
Yeah, pretty daunting. So maybe it's just I want to drink a cup of water. First thing in the morning. It's very small, very small, but we're just starting to build we're trying to get this roller coaster started.
Meghan
It takes an average of 66 days to create a habit. So there's a technique called habit stacking, where you add something small against something that you already do. So say you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is brush your teeth. We should be brushing our teeth every morning anyway. So you have already created that habit from years ago when your parent when you were a kid Your parents said, Hey Johnny, it's time to get up and brush your teeth. So if you want to, as an example, drink a cup of water first thing every morning, you want to stack it on top of a habit that you already have created. Right, so
Collin
we're taking this pre existing thing that we already do, or that is already built into our daily schedule, a weekly schedule, and we're adding something on top of that. So in the example of drinking a cup of water and brushing our teeth, we are brushing our teeth every morning. And so on top of that, in addition to that, we add drinking up a cup of water. So we get up we go brush our teeth, and we know that the trigger to drink the cup of water is now brushing our teeth. Taking these things that are pre existing in your daily schedule, and you're adding something to it. It's this trigger. It's this reminder of when I do this, I know I have to do this next thing. When I put my car in park at a client's house. I am going to sit and meditate for five minutes when I am clipping the dog's leashes together because that's something that We all do, I'm going to be running through the top three things that I am most thankful for today.
Meghan
And so as you continue to create habits and establish habits in your life, then it gets a little easier to create new ones and continue the habit stacking process. Above all, in self care, it's about having a plan that helps you to stick to them, and habit stacking. So write out the daily or weekly plan that you want. And keep it in a place where you can see it. If you want to write it on your bathroom mirror, or if you want to have it on a sticky note and put it on your dashboard in your car. Those are great ways to keep it at the forefront of your mind. Also think ahead of time, what barriers you may have for keeping these self care plans. So get ahead of those and think of ways that you can block them from happening. So for example, you want to eat three square meals every day, but you walk dogs from 11 to 2pm. So maybe having a later breakfast around 10 And a later lunch around 3pm, so that you can still have those balanced meals and stay consistent. And not just like I said, grab a bag of chips.
Collin
As we mentioned earlier, you can get an accountability buddy and accountability partner for what you're wanting to do, like making sure I reach out and let us know how we can support you, as you begin to build these habits, telling somebody what you will do helps, because now you have this external reminder, you've gotten it off of your brain and you've uploaded it into somebody else's who's putting it on their calendar and building reminders and systems like that as well. Megan, you had a recently really good example of this.
Meghan
Yeah. So for the month of August, I wanted to run a mile every day. And this is something I've been thinking about since about May. I just haven't done it. And so finally, one day in late July, I told Colin Hey, in August, I want to run a mile every day and you have really helped me do that. And, and kind of helped me to kind of put on my shoes and get out there. And I mean, it's only one mile. And that may sound like a lot to some and not a lot to others. But it's a lot for me. And so you have really helped me stick with it. So thank you. You're welcome. So tell us what your self care plan is, we challenge you to do just one thing this week for yourself care that you weren't already doing. So what will ours be?
Collin
Yeah, I am thinking back through those types of routines that we talked about. We had the physical, the psychological, emotional, and spiritual. I think the one thing that I'm committing to this week that self care for me is to do at least three bike rides.
Meghan
And I would like to continue to do the one mile run every day.
Collin
There you go. You are now our accountability partners in this as well. And so
Meghan
we would love to be yours as well. So let us know what your self care goal is for the week.
Collin
And now let's hear Natasha answer this week's pet business coach question. Should I even bother starting a pet care business in 2020?
Natasha
Yeah, we love to pick your industry. So the back care industry interpret business is such a broad question because there is online services people are doing right now vitamins, you have these MLM companies, you have online coaches, trainers doing courses, you have groomers who are doing courses as well. So you have so many avenues to getting into the pet business. As we know, as a dog walker and a pet sitter, you will have to be flexible, you will have to understand what pivoting looks like. So if you do want to become a dog walker right now, and your business is not supplementing your income instantly, you want to just kind of prepare for where we are, you know, we don't know what's going to happen outside of pandemic. So if you're coming in, say, Hey, I'm going to be a six figure business in six months. We're like, Alright, well, what's your COVID playing with this? You know, how are you going to get reached? How are you going to get theme? So I would just say coming in, coming in the industry with a full game plan on what services you want to offer? What services can complement which other what can supplement income Having a plan and that's something that I would recommend doing while we were postponed or pre COVID that will come in this is obviously an amazing business it was previously a billion dollar business we're waiting on the new numbers now to see where where we fall. But there's there's a little bit for all of us.
Meghan
If you would like Natasha to be your personal pet business coach, you can go to her website, start scale sale calm and use the code PSC 20 for 15% off her coaching packages. Thank you
Collin
all for listening to this episode, we would like to thank our sponsor, pet sitters associates and all that they do to support us. If you have any questions, comments or feedback, you can send that to
Meghan
feedback at pet sitter confessional comm or our website pet sitter confessional comm we are on every social media platform at petsitter confessional
