EP 49: Self Care, Self Love, Boundaries, & Mindfulness with Jane Kilian | Part 2

Today's episode is part two of a two part conversation. If you haven't yet, be sure to listen to part one, which aired last week. Enjoy.

Okay, so I wanted to backtrack just a second to kind of like bring some of what we've talked about right now full circle for the listeners. So a lot of words or terms that we have been touching on so far during our conversation are, you know, mindfulness, self love, boundaries, self care, and I just would love to hear your perspective on how all of those words just work together. Yeah, so I feel like there is such a holistic way that we can heal ourselves and that comes from moving our body, moving our mind and moving our spurts, and we do those in different ways. So I feel like we have to do the meditation and Being mindful so mindfulness from you also is being just an awareness of how you are feeling in that moment, in that week, in that month, like where are you at right now with your emotions as well, so being mandful of the way you speak to yourself, being manful about the thoughts that are going through your head.

Where are they coming from? How fast are they coming at you? Like, can you start to slow your mind slightly with meditation, to kind of like clear those you know, clear all those thoughts up, being mindful about what you eat. Like no one's saying you have to put the cake down, like I had some earlier, like it was enough. still eating birthday cake, but just being there's also no cake police, exactly, and literally, I literally said that last week I sat there. I have a thing with the police. Can you tell?

That is hilarious. But like there's there's mindfulness with your mind and it's mindfulness with the things that are around you as well. So just being mindful of what you are consuming, whether it is food, whether it is products you're putting on your body. And I'm not like I don't buy only Vegan, only this, only that, and I don't eat Vegan, but I have not of Vegan friends and I do try eat more plant based than anything else. So it's how you consuming everything, even social media. I mean you can keep watching and consuming all day long, but do you actually think that's going to be good for you? Is it going to be good for your self esteem? Is it going to be good for yourself worth? Is it going to be good for you know, just being around that much technology all the time. So everything that is around you and you're consuming it's all got to be consumed in a mindful way. So just noticing how you are gravitating towards one thing, how you have neglected something else, how you are sitting down and having your tea, being mindful in that moment. Maybe for you, mindful meditation is actually taking your tea or coffee in the morning, sitting outside quietly and listening to the birds. You know, that is a quiet contemplation.

So that's what mindfulness about as well. So I'm not looking at it as a big, scary mindfulness is huge. How am I going to be mindful? Just looking at it and having mindful moments in your day where you stop, close your as and take ten deep breaths. You know, that's being mindful, being mindful of yourself more than manful of others exactly. And it's, you know, going back to what you were saying about the cake, about the social media, you know, what we're talking about right now is not a you know, we're not telling our listeners, you know, don't eat the cake, don't scroll on Social Media, but it's all about just being intentional. You know, if you are going to eat the cake, that's great. Actually enjoy it and, you know, be present while you're eating the cake. If you're going to scroll social media, you know that's a great break for you to take during the day. Just be intentional with that time, you know, being mindful of it.

Don't let yourself get sucked into that black hole. That is inevitable leg gonna lead to feelings of, you know, comparison and I'm not good enough and my house isn't organized enough or tidy enough or big enough, you know, whatever it is, it's just all, you know, being intentional with what you're choosing to do. And the cake isn't bad, the social media isn't bad, just as long as you're, you know, being yeah, in moderation.

Yes, and that's what I've told my clients for years. A I leven, eight twenty laugh, so and so can you. So even if we look at Social Media and an eight twenty, where, you know, like being mindful of it and giving yourself the break, you know, eating healthy eight percent at the time and then to any percent at the time you're having your blood and you're doing what you want, like having that mindfulness around and exactly what you're saying about sitting and actually appreciating it, like sit and eat it, like don't like shove it down and then you're like, oh, did I even enjoy that? Like the wind so quickly, like actually save right, like make it like a mindful moment that you're enjoying what you're eating, what you're drinking, what you're watching, you know, and just don't be I've got a friend that there was a video that her sister took of her and she put on her stories and one there she's like this is what happens when she's actually watching her stories, and it was just her scrolling and double tapping every picture and everything she saw. She's just like scrolling down and not even watched as a double tap, double tap was going so fast it looked like it was in, you know, fast motion. So being mindful of what you're consuming on social media and also, in the same way, I mean you and I can appreciate this, as content creators. If you like what you see, comments, like be so present and mindful in that moment that you actually leave that person a comment. It could be five emojis, but it could be like I love what you're wearing today, or be so present in your social media, you know, break that you actually connect with people, because that is what we meant to be doing on social media, is being social. So being some mindful of it that you actually stop to actually comment on your friend's post instead of just lacking it, because it's a trend that I've noticed now. It's like everyone lacks it, no one comments. So maybe be more present and mandful in that moment that you actually do connect with someone. Yeah, because, you know, put the shoe on the other foot. How wouldn't it be so much more meaningful if a friend commented on a photo that you posted instead of just liking it? Yeah, you know, like that feels good. So that's you know, that's a win win situation. It's a win for you because you're being mindful with your time on social media. It's a win for your friend because you're giving them that jolt of happiness when they get to read your comment. Exactly.

So I think that that's what I envisioned with mindfulness. So it's not just meditation, which obviously is a big part of it, but it's being mindful with your whole laugh and then self lave for me is loving yourself as your whole self. So love in the land side and the shadow side. So the shadow sides, that part where we just push it down, we don't share the world. But once you acknowledge that part of you and you start to bring more lat it by lacking it more, it really does help to allow you to love yourself in a complete way and then living authentically. So you shouldn't have to walk on eggshells around your partner or your friends or your family. You shouldn't have to change who you are. You shouldn't have to hide who you are. You shouldn't be scared of what you're gonna say or do and who it's going to upset. You should be able to live as authentically as your pure self and not have to hide who you are. So that is a massive part of self love is, you know, being okay with showing exactly who you are and living your truth. So for me that is loving yourself every size, every stage and just it's obviously going to be different when you are going through the journey, but loving yourself in different stages in different ways and just keeping up with your self care the boundaries the mindfulness to put all that back into yourself. The self love is giving yourself the love that you are giving out to everyone so free, but you don't give to yourself. So just pouring that love back into you.

Yes, I'm giving you like the preaching hands emojis right now. And again, I have to say again, I just feel like our messages are so similar, which just makes me so happy. I love that we're getting to have this time to chat together. Yeah, I love I think it's there's so many people that need to be receiving the you know, the same messages. And I said, I actually said to my friend today who is an astrology and I said to I love that. You know, you could go to two different astrologies, or three or four and have a reading and they're saying the same stuff but in different ways. And I think that's the same with all of us, is that we're saying the same things but we say them in different ways. That resonates on a different level or reason it is differently with different people. Um, and the more of us that are spreading these messages, the Beta, because people are is going to just sink in more because they're gonna suddenly be like. Yes, I have heard that before. I must be hearing it again for a reason. You know exactly. It's a sign.

Okay, so one more thing that I wanted to pick your brain on. That I really think. I think happy community is going to resonate with is, so I guess. So let me backtrack. So we've been talking a lot about self love and something else that you teach is just you know, how movement allows you to love your body even more. Right, and so I'm wondering if you can talk to us just specifically how movement plays into this working from the inside out.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so many years I was obviously focusing on the outside, the outside, the outside, and not back dealing with the people's issues on the inside, which actually I shouldn't have realized, because people that are trained, and this is where personal trainer, Hatressa, who ever, you, end up being the psychologist as well, because, I tell you, I cannot. I should write a book, but like obviously an honestly, but like I cannot even explain. I mean I even had like a husband and wife and she would only let him come to me because he was off, you know, doing other things with other people. But like what she would tell me, and then he would tell me and I'm like, Whoa, I'm not your therapist. Yeah, I don't get paid enough for this. Literally, I literally said that to a few of them. I was just like well, so and exactly, that they weren't dealing with the inside. They were trying to buy, dealing with the outside, but they weren't dealing with the inside, except when they're trying to talk to me about it. But the thing is that when you are focusing only on how you look, you are doing it from an ego level. When you're focusing on how you feel on the inside, you're doing it from a lot of its subconscious, to be honest. But you're doing it from like your higher self, from your your true self, and this place where you really need to come to gather your thoughts together yourself and to that love back into yourself, and it's going to make you so much happier and essentially healthier when you're working from the inside out and it really helps to shift energy.

So if we look at the movement not as an Ego, away of just the way you look, if you picture if you're having a bad day, you're feeling really low, the best way to actually shift out of that is by moving your body. So if you put on a song that you love, you're dancing around four or five minutes, you will feel so much better because you're getting shifting that energy out of your body and in the same way, you're actually releasing those endorphins and it's just happy hormones making you feel so much better as well. So if you're having a really bad day or you're feeling really bad about yourself, just look at movement as shifting that energy. So if you have are feeling really low, just picturing there's like this Gunky, sludgy energy that's inside you. And by moving your body you're breaking it down and dissipating it and it's out of your body. It's moved, shifted, it's like flown away. So I like to always just tell people just picture it as shifting the energy, shifting the way you're feeling about yourself in that moment. You're shifting about how you're feeling about your job or your colleague or your relationship, or you have a fiber's so and so and you're feeling like that inside of you. Go and move somehow. Doesn't matter what you do. Do something, if you want to do a sense education for yoga quickly or whatever it is. You don't actually understand how it helps. Just by moving that little bit, go outside, Walk Barefoot on the grass, you know, doing all little things, just moving your body and getting out of your head into your body. It really does make a huge difference.

Ah, I love that, especially what you said about, you know, the ego, and just when we're working from the inside out and incorporating movement from an inside out perspective, it's just, you know, letting go of the EGO in a way.

Yeah, because with exercise or with you know, training any kind of workout. If you think of it, when you go to the gym, you are the feeling nervous because there are people there that you know. Are they going to judge me? Are they going to look at me? Do they think I'm doing something stupid? Or even here I found there's certain gyms here in urban and it's probably around the world, where the girls really get really dolled up and feel like they have to wear makeup. I mean, there was one girl at the gym where I used to work that used to come at farther in with full makeup. But you're beautiful, please don't do that. But it is. It's an ego thing where we feel intimidated, we feel a little bit insecure, we feel like we have to do these things, and I've always found even for myself personally, going to the gym or trying to lose weight, there's an ego thing. It's about how you look and we're not focusing on how we feel like getting to that route of their problem. So you really have to drop that ego and that's what I love about Yoga. Just so that everyone knows, I was never fully into Yoga, like I'm not like this full on Yogi chick who has always been into it. I've kind of ebbed and flowed and only about the last of years, to be quite honest, and I never stuck with it, like I'll do like six months and then I'll stop and then I start again. So when I had this like cool, this pull, this felt like a push, to be honest.

The last year, January, end of January, I was just like kept getting these messages and it was just like you need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this. I'm like, well, I'm going to do this. I'm never going to teach yoga, like, honestly, I don't want to go and teach a flow class all the time. But I just got such a being and my bonnet obviously was divinely guarded, that I had all these sons and it was just a big push to do it. So I did my teacher training. I started on the first of February last year, and then we meant to finish in June, but, you know, because of Covid and then in South Africa, here we had riots in Durban and it was just yeah, so we had to finish. We finished only I think early October, but it was just such a push to do it and I now realized why. It's because I wanted to focus on beginners. I'm just someone who doesn't really do things normally, so it makes total sense that I would then focus on beginners, because no one here is doing it to actually teach you the foundations of Yoga. And for me it's so now because Yoga in general is not about ego. It's about dropping that ego. You're getting out of your head and into your body. You cannot do yoga like you do a workout of the gym. You know, you can go to the gym, you can walk around, you can go literally do a forty five minute workout and leave and not even know what you did. You just kind of go from going through the motions. Yeah, but then Yoga you have to listen to what the person is saying. You have to feel in your body how that movement feels. You have to listen, look, then you have to feel, because you have to see what you meant to be listen to what you meant to be doing, try and put your body in that position, look and then feel how it feels like, how your body feels in space. So you cannot have an ego when it actually comes to Yoga because you have to listen and pay attention to be present in that moment. So you have to really be out of your head, where I think ego comes from. It's like such a head thing. It's not a hard thing and you have to get out of your head into your body. So I really love that it doesn't bring ego into it and you kind of drop that ego, and that's why I love beginning Yoga as well, because there is no ego because everyone is learning and they are here to learn and they want to learn and they it helps people to not have ego when they go to a class then as well, when you go to like an intermediate class where's of the vynassa flow, because now they know how to stand, they know how to do the poses and they're not intimidated when they go to those classes how to do it, and I think that's what ego also maybe you resonate as well. I feel like people who have a lot of ego are actually very insecure and that's what it's kind of like.

Yeah, I love that about yoga is that there is no ego. And my Yoga Teachers said Yoga is a work in, not a workout. Uh like that. It will work in. And so as you're sitting there talking about it, it's just making me think. so, I teach group fitness classes as well, and so, but something that's very unique about Yoga is how it does force you to be mindful with just like again, you know, like bringing this, like tying up all of the what we've been talking about so far. Yoga really does kind of put you in this place where you have to be mindful because if you're not, like you might fall type of thing. You know, like if you're not, you know, thinking about squeezing your abdominals to like help with stability while you're, you know, going through a flow or practicing some pose, then you know you're not going to be able to do it. And it's just bringing intentional thinking into exercise or movement. You know, you can't be passive with Yoga, because it's just not gonna work anytime you can be passive and when you're lying in Chevasna at the Chevasna, yeah, yeah, yeah, or maybe even child's pose. But if you wanted to feel really good. You can't be passive.

Oh my gosh, this has been such a great conversation. Just again, thank you so much for joining us and just for sharing so much of you know, your passion with the thin happy community. I'm happy to be in, happy to help. Oh okay, so I have one final question for you that I ask every guest. Do you have a life or happiness hack that you find helpful and that our listeners might want to adopt for themselves?

Oh, yes, okay, so we look at our phones like in a ridiculous amount of times. I mean, if you actually go and see, you can actually go on an iphone and see how many times you touch your screen, and most of us is probably like five hundred times a day, and the very singly high number. Yeah, so use your luck screen to your advantage. Get a mantra. Yeah, I want to manifest something like it's really cute to have a picture of your child, but it's even cuter and more mindful if you actually put a Mentra on your lock screen. So it could be something that you're battling with. So it could be I'm enough, it could be like I am confident, it could be anything. You can create your own mentor you can find one that you like put it on your luck screen, even if you try like almost also, if you want to create your like a vision board, you could do it in like an instagram story template so that it fits on your lock screen of your phone every single time you look at your phone, which is a lot then, because we read and we read our notifications, let's be honest. So if you just pick your phone every time you'll see either your mentor or either your reminder to, you know, give yourself a compliment, or you'll see your vision board and the pictures there that will remind you to manifest it and to think it into reality.

That I really, really like that one and I just want to tell the listeners. So if you want to, you know, create a Vision Board for your lock screen, you can go to a website that's called CANVA.com It's C A N V A and there's a free version of it that you can go in there and search the templates for Um to be like instagram story size, which would fit on your lock screen, and you can use one of those templates to drag and drop pictures from a vision board and and you can download it save it to your phone and put it up as your lock screen. That is genius. I love a lock screen.

That is genius. And if I get right now, is with my dog and my daughter, but you know, a mantra across them or just below the yes, yes, I am not opposed to that. Man. Now, if you're go into the womy side of what like the Astro side. So with astrology there's also astro geography, which is the astrology of place. So we all have lands in different countries. So if you like, if you're just drawn to Mexican food all the time and you don't know why, you probably have a land, like a positive astrology land through there. So my Jupiter lant is through Sydney and your Jupiter is about expansion. So not just money, but people would literally throw money at you there. So I have a picture of Sydney harbour bridge, because man is in Sydney. And then man says I am abundant, I am aways protected and I am highly favored. I love that. I love that. What a good hack. That's a good one. I make you feel good. Yeah, yeah, okay. So I know that the listeners are dying to know where can they connect with you. Where can they find you? So it is unselfishly me on Instagram, facebook, and then my website is unselfishly me dot com, and then my um my podcast, is called unselfishly me as well, and you're gonna be on my yeah, yes, me too, me too, you guys. So it's not hard to remember. All of her stuff is unselfishly me.

So podcast and yes, yes, awesome, awesome, all right, you guys. Well, that is a wrap. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. If you did, send it to a friend, if you feel so inclined, post about it on your social media. You tag both myself and Jane. We would love to connect with you, to start a conversation with you. And you know, if you're enjoying this podcast as a whole, don't forget rate it, review it, subscribe. It really does help get the word out and while you're at it, go give Jane's show, unselfishly me a listen as well. So I will be back next week with another episode of the think happy podcasts and I will just see you then. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for joining me for this week's episode of the think happy podcast. If you just can't get enough. Find me on Instagram at think happy that's C o, and online at Thinkhappyco.com. See you next week.