Life Kit - Hitting A Pandemic Wall? Remember To Show Up For Yourself

Episode Date: February 13, 2021

You can't fully show up for the people in your life until you know how to do the same for yourself. In this episode, we talk with Rachel Wilkerson Miller, author of The Art of Showing Up, about how to take care of yourself. (This episode originally ran in May 2020.)Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi there. There's been a lot of talk about hitting a pandemic wall. That point in this pandemic marathon when you're not really sure how you're going to make it through a day. It's a lot. So we have an episode from last year we think will help you keep going. It's all about ways to support yourself and preserve your energy. We hope you like it. This is Life Kit. I'm Shereen Marisol Maragi, and my guest today is Rachel Wilkerson Miller. She's the author of The Art of Showing Up. It's a guide for people who crave deeper relationships and more connection with friends and loved ones. Hi, Rachel. Hi, how are you? I am good. I'm in my closet with a cup of tea.

Where are you right now? I am sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee. On this episode of Life Kit, the art of showing up for yourself. Well, I think we've all heard that metaphor about, you know, you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you help anyone put on their oxygen mask. It's sort of a reminder that you have to take care of yourself if you're going to take care of other people. And I believe that. I also think that most people think that is true for everybody who is not them. And they sort of think that they're the exception to the rule. And it's so easy to say like, well, yeah, that's true in theory, but like, here's six different reasons why that couldn't possibly apply to me right now.

Grab a beverage and join us. Rachel Wilkerson Miller firmly believes that you can't fully show up for the people in your life until you know how to do the same for yourself. So where do you start? You can't properly show up for other people if you don't really know who you are and what your needs are and kind of have a sense of what your boundaries are because so much of showing up is about setting boundaries, respecting boundaries, and sort of working within a framework of here's who I am and here's what I can offer you in this exact moment. And so I think it's really important to just sit down and think about, okay, who am I? What do I want? What are my needs? How can I meet those? How can I ask other people for help and

support? And once you have a sense of doing that, it just becomes so much easier to be generous and kind toward other people. And right now, so many of us have a lot more time on our hands, solo time on our hands. And you have a ton of exercises in the book to really help people understand who they are better. What is a good get to know yourself exercise that Life Kit listeners can start with? Well, I mentioned this in the book. I'm a big fan of doing some form of a time audit. So I talk a lot in the book about time, money, and energy and how you spend those three things, because those are ultimately like your most valuable resources. So sitting down and thinking about how do I spend my time, money, and energy in a given

week? Obviously that's going to be pretty different right now than it was, but going through a week and saying, okay, how did I spend my time in really small increments? How did I spend the first 30 minutes I was up in the morning? What did I do for the next 30 minutes? And if you go through a whole day like that, you start to realize how much time and energy you're spending doing things other people want you to do and not really for yourself or you start to realize, oh, I have these big goals, but I'm actually only spending 30 minutes a week actually

on those. And the rest of the week, I'm just feeling guilty and like I should be doing it. So it helps you start to figure out, okay, where is my time going? And how do I want to make changes in that? But I really encourage people to not try to make changes right away. Just do the audit. Sit with what you're learning about yourself. Because if you try to jump in and make changes, it's really overwhelming. But I think it's good to just take stock for a few days, ideally a whole week, and figure

out, okay, what does my life look like? What is working? What's not? Now, what do I want to do? One that really I thought was helpful too, was you talk about listing your values and what's really important to you. And that's actually something I did. And I realized that what I have as my top values, I actually spend the least amount of time doing. Yeah. That was a huge shock to me. Yeah. I think most of us don't really think about our values in those terms, right? Like it's, it's sort of easy to think like, oh, obviously I have values and I live according to them. But I don't think until you sort of sit down and say, here's what those values are. Here's what really ultimately, if I can only do three things today,

here's what they like sort of filter into. Here's what I'm, what I'm working toward. You can start to realize how there's a disconnect in what you believe in, what you wish you were doing and then sort of what you're actually doing. And I think having values written out or, you know, somewhere in your mind as sort of a North Star when you're feeling overwhelmed and you're not sure what to do next, it can be really helpful to just return to that and say, okay, what ultimately am I trying to get out of this? What's most important to me can be so helpful for difficult situations. You're ultimately trying to help your readers figure out what makes them feel good, what makes them feel bad, what their values are. So ultimately, they can start doing less of what makes them feel bad. You're a huge proponent in

this book of doing less. You say do less. Do less. Just do so much less. And you mentioned the time audit. But is there like another way that you can, without, you know, tracking every 30 minutes in your day where you can pinpoint, here's what I can do less of? Yeah, I think you can probably, if you sit down and think about it, name a few things off the top of your head that make you feel really drained afterwards. I think just sort of taking stock,

however you record your life, we have phones with the camera roll, we have texts, we have emails, we have, you know, our phone call log, However you're keeping in touch with people, look back through that and just do a little thinking about what actually made me feel really good or do it at the end of the day. Like what are three things today that I felt really good about? When did I feel drained today? The patterns emerge, I think, fairly quickly and it's stuff you probably already knew on some level. Oh, this friendship always feels kind of bad. But once you kind of just focus on this question of what leaves me feeling energized, what leaves me feeling drained, these things kind of have a way of emerging and being really clear.

Another thing that you say that you can do less of and we can all do less of is hurting our own feelings. Yes. Can you give us just a few more examples of how we hurt our own feelings every day and then how we can stop doing this? Yeah, I think so much of hurting your own feelings happens online. A really classic example is like following somebody just to feel angry about what they're posting. And like that can be a guilty pleasure. That can be fine in small doses. But I think we all know when it becomes toxic. And like it's also fine to just not do that like it's also fine to say you know what i can do this a little bit but i can also not do it at all and maybe i will feel better i think

we know sort of when we are we are seeking an answer in that way that like it hurts so good so it's sort of like it's looking at pictures of your ex or their new partner or their new partner's family wedding, like just going deep in these Instagram or Facebook rabbit holes where you sort of have no business being and like, you're not, you're not going to find anything that makes you feel good. And you're likely to find things that make you feel bad. So figuring out, you know, what are the things that I do that I could, that I, that I just don't feel good about and I won't stop doing anyway. And I'm getting sort of this weird guilty pleasure out of it. Those are really like kind of the first thing that can go if you're kind of trying to reclaim some of your time or just feel better more often.

Um, we, I say this in the book, but like, there's so many things in the world that are going to hurt our feelings. Like we don't need to do it ourselves. Like why, why like give the help to, to the universe? Like we can just not and and feel better immediately I definitely do the thing where I go on Twitter and I fixate on every negative comment about a podcast episode that I did or a story that I did and so when you said stop hurting your own feelings it's like yeah I need to stop doing that stop reading the negative comments because it's not just the time I spend reading the comments it It's the, you know, hour after that I'm brooding about it. It's the way it like ruins your afternoon. Totally. It feels bad. It also, it can be like, you know, it can be shopping for things you can't afford. It can be sort of chasing things at work. Like it's, it's asking to be invited to a meeting

that you know you're not going to be invited to. It's sort of setting yourself up to be upset and then angry about the answer when you kind of knew what it already was. That's sort of setting yourself up to be upset and then angry about the answer when you kind of knew what it already was. That's good advice that I'm going to practice. Nice. So in the first half, you have a chapter called showing up for yourself when it gets hard. And you have advice on sort of the best ways to reach out to people when you need help and you need support. And one way sounds really easy, but it is not easy. It's to be honest. When a friend or a loved one calls you and asks you how you're doing, don't lie and say, oh, I'm fine. What should you do instead? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, it's dependent to some degree on the relationship. If it's, you know, a stranger on the street or, you know, the driver of your taxi asking you how you're doing, you don't necessarily need to pour your whole life story out to them.

Same if it's your coworker. But if it's somebody who's asking sort of because they care about you, you should just be honest. Like, hey, you know, I'm having a rough day. Like, I'm really, you know, struggling. I'm feeling pretty lonely or whatever the case may be. Just be honest with that person. And just something to sort of relieve that burden of having to keep a secret, which makes a tough time so much worse. If you're feeling like, not only do I feel bad, but I can't tell anybody that I feel bad. And people are typically relieved

by that honesty. It helps you form bonds. It's intimate. It's a relief. I think we're all struggling in different ways. And so when somebody finally admits it, everyone goes, oh God, you too? It's really nice to hear you say that because now I know that I can say that to you or I can say that to somebody later today because it just sort of reminds people, yeah, you have permission to just be truthful and be a little bit vulnerable with people. You also caution your readers not to take advantage of the friends and loved ones who show up for them. They're trying to support them through a hard time. So how do we unload or vent in a responsible way? Well, I think it starts with just being conscious that that's what you're

doing and making a point to not do that every time you see the same person or do that with all of your friends in sort of the same way. Like if every conversation you're having is the same vent, but just to a different audience, I think it's good to stop and think, am I just, do I just want to scream into the void or do I actually want to talk to this person and hear what they think? Another thing that I think is good to remember is that most therapy sessions last 45 minutes or 50 minutes. That's because that's kind of the amount of time that any one person should or can vent about something and another person can listen to it. So kind of keeping an eye on the clock when you're venting. And if you find that you're repeating yourself

and kind of just rehashing the same thing over and over again, say, okay, like, thank you for listening. Now, how are you doing? And I think that's the other thing is not only asking how people are doing in those conversations when you're venting, but maybe lead with that. Like, don't always be the person who starts the conversation with venting. Like, ask and genuinely listen to the answer how your friend is doing. Because I think we can all tell when somebody vents to us and then they're like, and how are you? And you're like, you don't really want to know that.

You're just saying that to be nice. So just like really think about like what kind of approaching it in good faith and making a good effort, not so that you feel burdened when you're going through a tough time of, oh, I can only talk about this for 45 minutes, but more that you're just being generally mindful when you're going through life. Because I think that creates good relationships and good bonds that then when like you're going through a really

hard time and you need to talk every day for an hour, like your friend's going to be totally fine with that because you have this like established trust that you care about each other and you show up for each other all the time. That's great advice. All right, Rachel, to recap, what are some of the most important ways we can show up for ourselves right now? night's sleep, whether that's working out every day, whether that's talking on the phone to your best friend for an hour, whether that's excelling at work, whether that's being with your family, like figure out what you need most and then figure out how you can make time to do those things first and foremost. And one more time, why is it important that we figure this out for ourselves before we make ourselves available to help our loved ones? Well, no one should be going into debt, whether it's emotional or financial, to support other people. We need to give what we have to give. Taking care

of your basic physical needs and also your emotional needs is going to keep you from getting burned out. It's going to keep you from resenting people. And it's going to actually allow you to fully show up for people and be generous and kind and have a good spirit when you do so. Thanks, Rachel. Thank you. And for even more episodes of Life Kit, go to npr.org slash life kit. We have episodes on all sorts of topics from how to deal with a tough time to how to appreciate poetry. If you love Life Kit and you want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash Life Kit newsletter. Also, we want to hear your tips.

What are you doing to cope right now? Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823 or email us at lifekit at npr.org. This episode was produced by Andy Tegel. Megan Cain is the managing producer and Beth Donovan is our senior editor. I'm Shirin Marithal-Maraji. Thanks for listening.