Episode 7 - Simple Ways to Invest in Yourself and Your Well-being

Self-love means accepting yourself as you are right now, embracing your feelings as they are, and prioritizing your physical, emotional, and mental health.

The last episode opened my eyes to so many things. We learned about trauma, healing, saying yes to yourself, and just enjoying the small pleasures. As Michelle said, it’s so important to celebrate our small wins, treat ourselves, look out for ourselves and enjoy our journey so it can be just as beautiful as our destination.

In this episode, I’ll be sharing with you exactly what helped me master my mindset so I could reach my personal and business goals, enjoy life (very important!), and make sure I’m OK. We’ll talk about juicy topics like boundaries, forgiveness and investing time in ourselves (and why it matters) then I’ll walk you through how to do a quick wellbeing reset. 

Just like the old saying goes, “You can’t love others if you can’t learn to love yourself.” 

It’s as simple as starting with the little things like decluttering, getting a subscription box for yourself (here’s an affiliate link to get a free months subscription), treating yourself to a little shopping trip, taking breaks from your screens, and taking care of your mental health as much as you do your body.

Always remember that you don’t have to wait because you already deserve it. 

Eleshia’s Essentials:

• I need to tweak my lifestyle to make sure that I am getting the best from myself.
• I get joy out of making people happy, but sometimes that doesn't always make me happy.
• I'm continually learning to create boundaries for my life and the lifestyle that I want to have.
• I'm investing in myself to invest in my business (and so should you!).
• I'm making sure that my workspace is beautiful so that I feel really good about it, and that will make me happy.

Connect with Eleshia:

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram

About the Show:

The Eleshia Show is an exciting new podcast that helps empower female business owners to put their well-being first whilst building their businesses. Tune in every Wednesday as my inspiring guests and I discuss strategies, share stories and experiences and dive into how you can build your business whilst trying to navigate real life. The host, Eleshia Harris is here and ready to share her decades of project management and wellness experience to help you start saying ‘Yes!’ to your business and life. 

Show Transcript:

Eleshia Harris: Hi, I'm Eleshia Harris, and I am your host of The Eleisha Show. I am also the founder of eleshialifestyle.com, and I'm so excited that you're here with me and I am here with you. I'm also really appreciative. 

Each week, I'll be sharing strategies and stories and insights to help you enhance your well-being and to build your business while still navigating life. Because sometimes, we often try and separate the two, and let's face it. If you are not well, you have no business. So let's try and work with these two things combined because we can, to enhance your lifestyle. Again, I'm really excited to have you here. I have wanted to put together a podcast for over two years. And so, here I am, ready to share. Let's get into this week's episode.

Hi and welcome back to The Eleshia Show. I'm so excited that I'm here with you today for a solo episode. And before we get into that, I just want to say, thank you so much for all of your messages and your feedback on how much you are really enjoying the episode so far. That makes me really happy that the collective conversations that I have been having with my guest and sometimes just solos have really been helpful for you. So, thank you for sharing. Continue to share. I love receiving your messages. It brings me so much joy. So let's get into this episode. 

So today, I just wanted to share with you some of the insights that I have learned, especially after my conversation with Michelle Rohr. And if you haven't listened to those episodes, those are episodes 5 and 6, and they are titled The Magic is YOU!, because it is. And I just got so much from that conversation. It made me really think about what things I need to just tweak in my lifestyle to make sure that I am really getting the best out of me, really getting the best out of taking responsibility of my life, making sure that I say yes to me now, and I'm not waiting. And why should we wait? If you've listened to that conversation, you know we went into a lot. We talked about trauma. We talked about healing your trauma. We talked about how you can really just say yes to yourself now and just enjoying the small pleasures. So that's what I'm going to talk about today. 

So I'm going to share with you the things that have really helped me with my mindset, helping me grow my business, looking after my family, enjoying life, and just making sure that I'm okay because that is really important.

So firstly, let's talk about boundaries, and I'm not a big boundaries girl. I say yes. Yes, yes, yes to everything. So I am learning not to say yes to everything, and I am forgiving myself for giving myself permission to do that. Saying yes is a learned behaviour. For me, I have always been a people pleaser. I get joy out of seeing people happy. I get joy out of making people happy, but sometimes that doesn't make me always happy or in the past, it hasn't. So I am learning to continue to create boundaries for my life and the lifestyle that I really want to have. So that's one of the things that I've been doing more recently. 

I am big on investing time in yourself. That is my tagline. "Invest in you to invest in your business." And even with the year that we've just had, I have found small pockets of time to just spend time on my own. And that is okay to do. I mean, we have so many things that we're juggling, but sometimes we feel guilty about giving ourselves some breathing space to just actually do something that makes you happy. So for me, that might look like just having time to read my favourite book or actually watch something on TV that I don't want to have the whole family watching. I'm well and truly into Housewives. That is my escapism, I know because I don't have to think about it. 

I also love any kind of program to do with property. So that is my thing. And I love spending time just doing that for myself. It doesn't have to be going to a spa or so forth. I just need some time to reset. And that's how I enjoy just having even an hour to myself where I can watch my program without any interruptions. So that's something that I really enjoy doing for myself.

Before 2020, I used to take solo days where I would take a whole day out and just go to a coffee shop and spend my working day in a coffee shop. Or I had just started doing solo retreats where I would take a night away from the whole family, and I'm lucky and I'm blessed to be able to do that. And I can't wait. I can't wait to do that again. I'm aware I used to just really immerse myself into thinking about what I wanted to do next for the next couple of weeks, just really, just engage with myself, just enjoy myself, have dinner by myself. That doesn't happen that often. So I would encourage if you can have a couple of hours for yourself or a night away when possible, or a day where you're not thinking about just your whole large to-do list where you're just actually spending time checking in on yourself. How are you feeling? What do you want to get out of this day? What do you want to do today? I would highly recommend that as just a quick reset, just quick well-being reset for yourself. 

A group of friends and I recently bought a flower subscription for one of our dear friends. And to see the joy of her receiving the flowers each month and the fact that she would send us pictures, that made me feel like I wanted to do that for myself. So I did. And I forget that they are coming. So I had a bouquet of flowers come just before my birthday. And I was like, "Oh, that's for me?" And again, that happened last week where there was a knock on the door, and I was like, "Oh, I've got flowers. Who were they from?" And I was like, "Oh, that's for me." And it just makes you feel good about yourself. And it's the small little pleasures. I mean, yeah, I think for me, it just made me feel good. So I would definitely be doing that again. When this subscription finishes. 

I also have a skincare subscription and you know that I'm really big on making sure that I know exactly what I'm putting on my skin, because the skin is the biggest organ, and you have to make sure that you know exactly what your products have in them, so they're not affecting your endocrine system, which also affects your hormone level. So I found this great subscription, beauty subscription box, that I get monthly. I don't always buy from them monthly, but I love being able to order products from them, try different products from them, and just get this beautiful box of products, come through the post and for a fraction, and when I mean a fraction, the amount of money that I've saved with this subscription is ridiculous. So I'm going to link an affiliate code in the show notes for you to get a free month. It's called Beauty Pie, and I am loving the products. It's the first time in a very long time that my skin has looked so good, and it's because I know what's going on with it. So that's really made a difference to how I'm feeling.

Right now, I'm sitting in my working space. I have got a candle on as Michelle said. I'm usually a diffuser girl, but I just wanted to make sure that you couldn't hear my diffuser going on in the background.

So for my birthday, a friend of mine bought me a beautiful candle, and I'm burning it right now. I've got my crystals here. Yes, I'm a little woo, and the space that I'm in, I am working on it little by little to make it feel like it's a beautiful space and that it's not cluttered. When I feel like I'm working in a cluttered room, it makes me feel like my whole brain is cluttered. And I can't think. So I'm trying to make it as nice and as serene and somewhere that is inviting, as much as I can so I can get as much out of the space. And I can just feel good. I can just feel good in this space. So that's one of the things that I've also been working on. I've been working on my space. So from that perspective, I'm making sure that my workspace is beautiful so that I feel really good about it. And that will make me really happy.

I am also going back to food prepping. So I lost track because April is my birthday month. And I launched a podcast, so there were a lot of celebrations. And so I ate a lot of cake, I drank too much Prosecco and, yeah, I feel like it's really time for a reset. So I am going back to food prepping. Because when I food prep, I feel like a boss. I've got my breakfasts prepped. I've got my lunch and my dinner prepped. I make sure that I'm drinking a great amount of water. So I'm really hydrated. And I start to feel at my optimum and make sure that I take my vitamins and so forth. And it just makes my body feel alive. And yeah, I love that. I make sure that I'm moving as well.

A quick tip for you with regards to hydration, because it's really important. And that's one of the things that really helps me with my brain fog, is when I'm really properly hydrated. I make sure that I have different bottles of water around the house, and I fill them up with the desired amount of water that I want to drink. So let's say I want to drink four liters. I have different nice bottles around and I fill them all up. And then at least then when I'm in different parts of the house, there's water and I make sure I drink all of the water in that bottle before I fill it back up. And that's really important because then you can really measure the amount of water you're drinking. So that's one of the things that I do all the time when I'm on my A-game because it just really helps. And moving, especially now we're in front of our screens all the time, make sure that you're taking breaks from your screen, especially when you're on those long meetings, make sure that you're taking breaks. So you're: 1) Moving your body, but 2) You're not damaging your eyes. Try and get protective glasses to ensure that you're not taking all of the blue rays in. That's really going to help, especially as you know, yes, the world is opening up, but a lot of us are still at our screens for a good number of hours. So try and get some of those protective glasses. They really help, especially when you remember to wear them. So, yeah, that's another thing that I would highly recommend. 

Also, get some things that are just for yourself. Things that you want to use just for you. For me, that's really important. I've got my own favourite mug, and I love drinking out of my own favourite mug. And if anybody else drinks out of it, I am not happy. I also love stationery. So I've got a beautiful journal that I write in. I've got a lovely pen that I use. And if you know me, you know I love purple. So yes, my purple pen is with me at all times. Yeah, these are the little things that just make me feel good. You know, when I come into my office space and I've got my pen, and my journal, and my waters there, and my crystals, and my diffuser, and everything is just smelling great, and I'm in that mode, it really does help with my mindset. It really does. 

And then one thing that I know that I definitely need to do, I don't know if I should be sharing this, but I'm going to share it anyway. Is, I need to do a little redo of my underwear drawer. So the other day, I realized that I was wearing a nursing bra. That was two and a half years old. My daughter is two and a half, and she stopped nursing when she was six months. Her choice, but I've still been wearing this bra. So that's one of the things that I'm going to do for myself over the next couple of weeks, is buy myself some nice underwear because I don't need to be living in nursing bras anymore, especially as they don't fit. You know? 

So like Michelle was talking about, when she said that you're digging out that old lipstick that you should have thrown away ages ago, or you're using that same shampoo that you know you hate but you're like, "Oh, I need to finish it." I'm doing a disservice to myself wearing these bras. I'm getting rid of those ASAP. 

So yeah, those are the things that I just wanted to share with you. Those are the things that came up with me with regards to just trying to ensure that I take better care of myself and some of the things that I've already implemented. I hope that you got something out of this that you can change for yourself. If you do, make sure that you send me a message and let me know what you're changing. And I can't wait for you to hear the next episode.

Take care. Until we speak again.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Eleshia Show. If you know somebody who needs to hear the conversations that we are having, please share it. Take a screenshot and send it to them. Also, I would really love for you to rate and review the podcast as this really helps. And I love to read your comments.

Lastly, remember you need to invest in yourself first because you are important and amazing.

Take care. Until the next time. Bye-bye.