If you've ever felt stuck in the same old routines while secretly craving growth, but also resisting
it at the same time, I used to fight change like my life depended on it until I realized
that the magic happens after the resistance.
In today's episode, I'm sharing the exact steps that help me stop self-sabotage when
change feels too big.
It helps me stay grounded even when my brain is screaming to like abort mission.
It helps me take small, fearless steps, so no toxic positivity required.
This isn't just about pushing through, okay?
It's about creating safety first, so change becomes something you embrace and not just
endure.
So if you're overthinking your next move, feeling restless but paralyzed at the same time,
and you're ready to trade stuck for, okay, let's try this.
And today's episode is definitely for you.
But before we get into today's episode, I just want to talk about something quick.
Now a lot of you know that I have a Patreon called SoulAlignSelfCare Insiders.
I am in the process of changing the name just a little bit.
Now everything still looks the same over there, but I'm going to be calling it SoulAligned
Life.
It just feels more aligned.
And so I just want to ask you the question.
So if you've ever felt stressed, overwhelmed, or just disconnected from yourself, that is
exactly why I've created this space.
So after my stroke, that was caused by stress, anxiety, and burnout, I realized something.
Self-care is not selfish.
It's survival.
But most self-care tips, they're just kind of like band-deeds.
Now I'm not saying they're bad, you know, you know, having a bubble bath every day is definitely
beneficial, but you actually need tools that can help you rewire stress, that heal the
stress in your body so that you feel calm, aligned, and thriving every day.
So that's what my Patreon SoulAligned Life is for.
Every week we get guided meditations, breath work, and affirmations.
We do moon rituals and journal prompts.
We have somatic and other self-care practices each week to help heal your body.
And then I'm also going to be sharing some behind the scenes of how I'm living a slower,
more intentional life.
So this isn't just another subscription.
It is a sanctuary.
It's a place where stress doesn't get the final say, where you connect with yourself without
feeling guilty.
And honestly, it's the stuff that I really wish I had when I was burning out.
So if you're ready to finally breathe deeper, stress less, and live like your souls in
charge and not society's expectations, then click the link in the show notes and join
us over on the Patreon.
There's a free trial right now.
Okay guys, let's get into today's episode.
You're listening to the SoulAligned Self-Care Podcast.
I'm your host Tina Stinson and I had a stroke at the age of 39 from stress and burnout
that shook my world.
Now I'm laying it all out.
The deep level self-care practices and mindset shifts that I needed that kept me healthy, balanced,
and thriving.
Join me in this intimate space as we explore healing, resilience, and a soul's journey to
alignment.
This is where real conversations about deep level self-care happen.
Let's get into it.
Hey guys, welcome back to the SoulAligned Self-Care Podcast.
I'm your host Tina Stinson and I want to welcome anyone new that's coming to hang out with
me and I want to welcome back everybody that comes and hangs out with me every week.
I'm so honored to hang out and spend time with you.
This week we're talking about change.
We're talking about how we can embrace change and then thrive.
And I am going to share with you three ways that I do this.
And there's also a couple of other things I'm going to share with you.
You'll find them in the show notes and that's going to be two meditations that you could
check out to support you.
And there was one other thing I can't remember.
It'll come up as I move through this and I look at my notes.
So change can be really, really scary.
And I have to say, I always fight it, like I said in the intro.
I have these conversations with myself and my head as if I'm talking to a child.
So I say things like, you know, you always fight this but you know on the other side there
is magic or growth.
Like whenever I have something that's hard or really, really scary, I know if I get on the
other side of that and I move through it that it's going to be magical for me.
It always is.
So I always reminded myself of this.
I also asked myself the question, why do you fight change?
Because when you fight change, you feel so stuck.
So it's really counterproductive and I have these conversations with myself all the time,
which are helpful.
Obviously I help myself move through it.
But these are the things I say to myself.
And to anyone else that I'm working with that feels stuck because I know these things
to be true.
I always feel great when I push myself out of my comfort zone.
I always grow.
I always have new experiences.
I always have new opportunities.
I always meet new people.
It's so wonderful.
So why do we fight it?
I know I fight it.
Why do we fight it?
One thing I know is that your brain is meant to protect you.
So if where you've been has been enough to keep you alive and it's been safe, so at the very
minimum, right, then your brain says, okay, let's stay here.
It's completely safe.
This is a good place.
Let's just keep her here.
And your brain doesn't give a crap.
If you're not happy, it doesn't give a crap if you're thriving.
It just cares that you're alive.
Okay, that's the goal.
Getting yourself out of your comfort zone and moving into new things can be really difficult
because of this.
You're going against your own self-preservation skills.
So the first step is just noticing this in your own life.
Notice when you're doing this.
One way to know you're doing this is when you feel stuck, when you feel frustrated, and
you feel bored, okay?
I feel like as we go through life, we have ebbs and flows, times when we feel stuck and times
when we grow.
And this is so normal.
And we also, you know, times when we're experiencing a lot of growth.
I also believe that these times when we feel stuck, sometimes mean it's right before we need
to grow, but also could be a time when we actually need to rest.
It might be a time where we need to, like, go, you know, talk to ourselves, our inner selves,
and find out what direction we want to go in.
Slow down, meditate on it because when we don't slow down, we don't really give ourself
a chance to, you know, experience our life in the present moment and really decide which
direction we want to go in.
Alternatively, our body knows, intuitively we know, we know the right choices, we have everything
we need inside us, we just have to slow down long enough to pay attention.
So sometimes when we feel stuck, it's because we need to do this.
One of the first things I do to embrace change is to be kind to myself.
I let myself have this rest.
I'm not going to stay there too long, right?
I'm not going to allow myself to stay there too long, but I feel like when you take
the rest and you pay attention and you tune into your intuition, it will not keep you
there.
It'll naturally flow out of it.
But I do know that it's not good to always be hustling.
So staying in a place of rest and introspection, intro, I can't say that word, but you know
what I'm trying to say?
Staying in that place can be really good for a short amount of time.
We need to give ourselves a space in the time to reflect and to imagine what will come
next.
When you give yourself this space, the stillness, we can see more clearly the direction we
need to move in.
So if you're feeling unsure of where you're going in your life, give yourself time and
space to reflect and meditate on it.
The first step, okay?
Step number one, be kind to yourself, embrace the time of rest and meditate and reflect
on what you want and need.
Then figure out how to move in that direction, even if it's just a little bit.
Because I've spent so many years in survival mode, now that I feel safer in my body, I'm
not very willing to be uncomfortable.
I do realize I can't always be perfectly comfy and still grow and expand and thrive.
So how do we move out of that comfort zone, which I pointed out is a good thing sometimes,
right?
But still feel safe in our bodies.
How can we not feel triggered when doing this?
I have found, but have not mastered this yet, that keeping myself grounded, present and
secure is the best way for me to feel safe in my body.
This way, I can embrace change and actually enjoy the process.
So I'm going to share with you how I do this.
And so this is the second step.
Three ways to keep yourself grounded in the present moment.
The first way that I do this, which I feel is almost instantaneous is to get out in nature
as much as possible and actually touch the ground, right?
Sit on the ground, put your skin against the ground, put your bare feet on the ground.
As soon as I do this, it's almost like my body, you're actually getting energy from the
earth, okay?
That's a fact, okay?
They have grounding mats that they sell.
They have grounding bed sheets that they sell because this is something that actually helps
us.
But it's free.
It's right outside.
So when I stand, like when I do gardening, a lot of times when I'm done gardening, I sit
gardening.
I sit on this little rock wall that I built for my herb garden.
I take my boots and my socks off and I just put my feet in the ground.
And the immediate response that I feel when I do this is like my body just wants to take
a deep breath and like, sigh.
So it's kind of like, okay, you know, like it's like this release almost.
And so I try to do this every day.
Now, it's not possible in the winter.
I mean, it's possible.
I don't want to do it in the winter, I guess I should say.
I've also heard that grounding this way can help with jet lag, right?
So the next time you are going somewhere where you're going to experience jet lag, when
you get off the plane, ground yourself some out, even if you just touch a tree or something,
you might look weird, but it might help.
Now the second thing I do to kind of bring myself back into the present moment is a few
times a day.
I close my eyes and I just take a few slow, deep breaths.
I check in with the way I feel.
I ask myself what I need.
I check in with all my senses, right?
This brings you back into the present moment and brings you out of your head into your
body.
And I have a meditation for this and that's one of the meditations I'm going to be sharing
with you at the end of this podcast.
Well, it'll be in a show notes.
It's called take five meditation.
Now I do this so often that I just set reminders on my phone three times a day to do this and
when that notification goes off, if I'm not in a moment like I am in right now, like I'm
obviously not going to stop in the middle of the podcast and do my take five meditation.
But I really, I do.
I stop and I just check in with my energy.
I call it an energy checkup.
So I just check in.
How do I feel?
What do I need right now?
And I kind of shift if I need to, but it keeps me more in the present moment and gets me
out of my head and it also stops stress and it's tracks.
Like if I'm really stressing and I'm kind of looping, I have like a stress loop or an anxiety
loop going on, it pulls me back out of that, right?
And into my body so I could be like, oh, okay, wait a minute.
I definitely need to do something right now to release the stress or to release this
anxiety.
What can I do right now that will help?
Maybe I'll take a few deep breaths, maybe I'll do meditation, maybe I'll go for a walk.
What do I need?
So that's how I stay in the present moment.
So I ground in nature, I bring myself back into the present moment and then the third
step is to protect my energy.
So I usually do this by doing a quick meditation or visualization.
I clear my energy and protect it.
You could do this in the shower in the morning.
Which just like imagine yourself like when you're in the shower, the water is washing off
the energy of like the day before and then visualize protection as the clothes that you
put on afterwards or skin cream or a white light just washing over you as you get out or
just whatever works for you, you can't really do it wrong.
It's about clearing your energy and then protecting yourself, putting up that barrier
that's going to keep out anything negative but let in, let in the positive and just by
making that statement, you could make that happen.
So be creative and create your own process.
You can't really get it wrong.
I also have a meditation for this.
It's called clear and protect your energy.
That's also going to be in the show notes if you want to take advantage of that.
The last step, the third step, okay?
To get yourself to move forward.
Even if you don't know exactly where you're going, you don't have to always know exactly
where you're going.
Of course we could never think about a time in your life when you've had great success,
right?
Think about the starting point and all the turns and the twists that happened along the
way.
You could have never planned or guessed that, right?
So it's not always important to know every little step, okay?
But one of the ways you could start the movement is by journaling.
Thinking about what you want and then start to make small changes in your life to help
stir things up.
Journaling is one of my favorite things to do because I feel like you're having this conversation
with your subconscious or your absolute closest friend in the world, yourself.
That's your closest friend.
I learned so much about myself and I also, what's underneath my fear with this process.
I'm usually able to reduce the fear and get inspired.
It feels fun.
It feels exciting and it builds momentum.
So I'm going to share with you a few journal prompts that you could use.
Okay?
And if you want a written copy of this, I will also put a link in the show notes for the
blog that I wrote because the journal prompts are in the blog, okay?
And also the meditations are there too.
So first journal prompt.
If life was perfect for me right now, what would a week in my life look like?
Okay?
This is supposed to be fun, so make it fun.
I want you to pretend that you don't have any limitations, no monetary limitations, no
social limitations, no family limitations.
Just write out in great detail what it would look like if it was absolutely perfect.
Okay?
Now, the next journal prompt is, if my older self could tell me the perfect path to
take right now, what would that path?
What would that look like?
So this is like what I'm talking about, like talking to your higher self or talking to
your subconscious or talking to your universe or spirit or whatever you want to call it.
Okay?
It's about getting the information that is already there.
Okay?
It's all every moment and time has already happened.
It's all happening at once.
So this imagination that you have, the previous question, everything you wrote down is
in existence, in your memory, in your mind or so to speak, not memory, in your mind because
it already exists.
So asking your older self, your higher self or whatever you want to call it, the question
of what the perfect path to take right now is, that information is available to you.
So what would that path look like?
And then if you really get stuck, then ask yourself the question, if my higher self or
my older self knew all the answers to everything, what would that be?
Just try to start to like, like kind of tap into your intuition and that interknowing that
you have.
Now the next question is, and I kind of like this question, but some people don't.
So if any of these questions don't align with you, then don't do them.
Just pick one that works for you or do all three.
Now the next one is, what would your eight year old self want you to do right now?
Okay?
Now the reason I have this question in here and the reason I like this question is it's
to kind of embody some playfulness on your journey.
We need way more of this.
And the reason I say eight year old self is because a lot of times as we move into those,
you know, preteen years, that's when we really start to feel limited as women.
Now I don't think men experience this as much because in our society, we constantly build
men up, but in society, we constantly kind of limit women and push them down and kind
of place them into these little boxes.
Now this is happening a lot less and I love that, but it still happens.
Okay?
So eight years old, and this is not some scientific experiment that I heard about.
It's just something that works for me.
So go back to the age where you still were like had those big dreams and nothing was really
like limiting those dreams when you thought big and you thought nothing could stop you.
From me, it was eight years old.
That's when I remember still just being like the world is like my oyster, you know, kind
of thing.
And so that's why I use that age, but use the age that works for you.
Okay?
Now, the last thing is not a journal prompt, but it's something that I do with a lot of
my clients, not all of them, but and I do this for myself.
And I call it the hundred list and it's something very similar to what I experienced when I
work with a coach, Melanie, layer.
And I can't remember what she called it.
I called the hundred list, but this is a list of big and small things that you want to do
in your life that you haven't done yet.
And I have to say it's really, it's quite hard to get to a hundred.
And so I do this like as an ongoing list.
And I feel stuck, I look at it, I cross things off that I either don't want to do anymore
or I've done already.
And then I add new ones and I pick something new to do like that week.
It really helps me start to feel motivated and excited.
And so it's a really great thing to have like this ongoing list to have it in your journal.
And nothing is too big or small.
Okay?
Nothing.
Right?
And I think I shared this before, but as an example, one of the things on my list was to
get all new cotton or organic cotton socks, like to replace all my socks and you know, to
only expose my skin to like organic cotton because your feet absorb so much, right?
And so that may seem really silly to some people or ridiculous, but that was like one
of the things I wanted to do and I still haven't completely done that.
That's still on my list.
Okay?
So as you could see, nothing is too big or small.
Another thing that was on my list was to get a lemon tree.
Now I've kind of gotten to that point because I was just down in Charlotte, North Carolina,
and my daughter bought me a lime tree and I'm so excited about it.
It has little lime, little baby limes all over it.
And I still want a lemon tree, but the lime tree is going to be a really good experience
and I'm very excited about having my own fresh limes because I know when I grow food,
for myself, it always tastes, I swear, 100% better than anything you buy in the store.
And that is no lie.
Hands down, it always tastes so much better.
So this is a great start.
These four things to create a little momentum.
So when I say make some small changes in your life to stir things up, what do I mean?
Okay?
So you know, you did the journal prompts and then you're like, what's next?
Like I still feel so stuck.
I kind of have an idea where I want to move into, but I don't know exactly how to create
more momentum.
So I start getting off my butt and doing something to get there.
And you know, I want to like emphasize again, to be kind to yourself, go back to that first
step, to be kind to yourself because it's really, it's not about reaching an end point in
life, right?
It's about, I got to hate to sound cheesy, but it really is about the journey because once
you reach that end point, you're always like, what's next?
You know, that's where you're at.
And it's about all the experiences on the way.
So how can you make the experiences along the way even better, even sweeter, even more
enjoyable by creating the safety in your body, by creating this, you know, this place where
when you're doing stuff like this, you actually enjoy it.
And it's not, you know, a ball of anxiety the whole time.
Okay?
So sometimes in order to like start to create that momentum, get the, get the wheel rolling,
you just need a little something, okay?
You need, you know, you see everything, everything we do in our life, every decision, every, you
know, all our movements, where we go, you know, who we talk to, who we spend time with,
every decision creates a path that we will go on.
And every time we choose something, the path adjusts, we change the trajectory of our life
every time we make a choice, okay?
So like, like when you're writing your bicycle, you're going straight and then all of a sudden
you're like, oh, I'm going to turn right here down this block because it looks really, it
looks like a pretty ride, you know, and then maybe you'll run into an old friend or maybe
you'll pass this ice cream shop and you'll stop and get ice cream and then you'll meet
somebody and whatever.
Like every time you make a new decision or new turn, you're changing your path.
So when, when we do the same thing every day over time, we just get more of the same results
in our life.
And that's when we can really feel stuck.
Sometimes it feels good, sometimes it's a really good place, but sometimes you're like,
okay, I'm sick of this.
Like I need to grow, I need movement, I need change.
So even just doing little things differently, it doesn't have to be this big change.
So like changing what you eat for breakfast, changing what you wear every day, maybe you want
to change your style, maybe you want to get a new haircut, maybe you want to wear a different
makeup, maybe you want to wear no makeup, maybe you want to dye your hair, maybe you want
to not dye your hair anymore.
So going to a different coffee shop every day, maybe going to an independent, small business
coffee shop instead of one of the bigger coffee shops to get you more in cup, maybe driving
a new way to work, going to a different yoga studio or trying a new workout or a new path
for your daily run or walk, okay.
These are new movements that you can make that are very, very easy to do that will create
new possibilities, new opportunities and new meetings in your life, okay.
You're going to change the trajectory and you're going to almost like, you know, just doing
these small things, you'll be able to like knock yourself off the hamster wheel of life
where you got the blinders on you and just going, going, going, doing, doing, doing,
okay.
It's going to wake you up, okay.
You just start to create movement in a new direction.
So by doing all of these things together, the three steps that I talked about, you create
the safe, inspiring space for yourself to create and brace the change that you need
in your life.
So you're creating safety in your body, you're protecting yourself while you're still
embracing that change I'm moving forward.
Also, if there's a change in your life that you feel is being forced on you, like you might
be saying to yourself, Tina, like, I'm not stuck, I'm just being forced to move in this
direction that I hate.
What do you do then?
Well, you do exactly the same thing.
We can't control everything.
We can only choose the way that we're going to respond to it.
In this process, you could use as part of your response, okay.
So this is how you're going to respond to that change.
So you're moving into the space that you're not enjoying very much.
So how can you make, help yourself feel safe in your body?
How can you like move yourself in a different direction, even though you're moving in that direction?
What do you want instead?
You're going to do those journal prompts.
And then how can you start to move in a different direction, taking those little steps?
Okay.
So I really hope that this helps because it really, really helps me a lot.
And I hope that it helps you move forward.
I hope it helps you rest a little bit if you need rest.
I hope it helps you connect with yourself better and ask yourself the questions that you
need to ask so that you know where you want to go.
It, you know, I hope that this helps you move through change.
It's never perfect, but it's a place that you can create for yourself where you feel supported.
And you're creating this for yourself.
That's what's so wonderful.
As some of you know, I am a meditation and breath working instructor and I create recordings
for the Insight Timer app and the aura app.
And this is where you could find both of the meditations that I talked about.
And I'm going to share you with you a link in the show notes for the Insight Timer app
that'll go specifically to that meditation and the aura app that will go specifically to
the other meditation so you can have a little taste of either one.
But if you go over there and you like the way it feels on either one of those apps, be sure
to follow me and show me some love with maybe a rating or a testimonial over on apps when
you visit.
Okay.
And so as I said in the show notes, you'll find the link to the Patreon that I talked about
at the beginning.
And the two meditations, I thought there was something else I can't remember now.
That must have been it.
I'm so sorry.
But be sure to enjoy your week.
And if you want more support, definitely head over to the Patreon.
Okay guys, love you lots and I will see you next week.
