Self-Care: All or Nothing?

March 6, 2025 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Drop that thinking.

One of the biggest obstacles to self-care isn’t time, energy, or motivation—it’s all-or-nothing thinking.

All-or-nothing thinking traps us in extremes:
🔹 If I can’t work out for an hour, why bother at all?
🔹 If I don’t stick to my diet perfectly, I might as well quit.
🔹 If I don’t have 30 minutes to meditate, it’s not worth it.

This mindset keeps us stuck. It convinces us that if we can’t do everything, we might as well do nothing.

But what if we did something—no matter how small?

Take Sara. She planned to work out for an hour, but had to stay late at work. Instead of squeezing in a shorter workout, she skipped the gym entirely. That one missed session threw off her momentum, and she didn’t go back for over a week.

Or Kevin, who believes meditation only counts if he does it for 30 minutes. So when he only has 10 minutes, he skips it altogether. Days go by without practicing at all.

Or Charlie, who is either 100% on her diet or completely off. After eating two unexpected cookies, she tells herself she’s failed—so she ditches her plan for two weeks.

These patterns don’t get us closer to our goals. They hold us back.

What if we dropped the all-or-nothing thinking?

What if Sara saw that a 20-minute workout was still valuable?
What if Kevin realized 10 minutes of meditation is better than none?
What if Charlie reminded herself, “Two cookies don’t erase all my progress”?

The truth is, progress isn’t about perfection—it’s about consistency.

Showing up for yourself—even for 5 minutes—matters.
✅ 10 pushups and 10 squats, twice a day.
✅ A 5-minute walk in the morning and another in the evening.
✅ 5 minutes on the bike in the morning and 5 minutes of stretching at night.

It may not seem like much at first, but these small moments build trust in yourself. They build momentum. And before you know it, you might feel inspired to find more time—because you’re already in motion.

And if one day, all you have is 2 minutes? Do something. Keep showing up.

Let’s stop making self-care an all-or-nothing game. Let’s make it realistic, sustainable, and part of our lives exactly as they are right now.

Your Turn:

Where in your life might you be engaging in all-or-nothing thinking?
Do your self-care goals fit your real schedule and energy levels?
How can you adjust your approach so you actually follow through?

💡 Dig Deeper: What changes might you need to make in your life to better support your self-care practices? (Hint: making those changes IS self-care.)

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 45-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

Your boundaries with YOU

November 14, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Build trust.

We’ve been talking about boundaries with other people for the past few weeks. Let’s talk about boundaries with ourselves today.

What this looks like is keeping commitments to ourselves or keeping our word to ourselves.

If we are the keepers of our own boundaries with others and we take the actions to maintain those boundaries, we can do the same with ourselves.

We may want to set a boundary for ourselves around the following:

Boundary between work and home (for those who work from home)
Boundary for when we look at or check our phones
Boundary for how much time we spend on social media
Boundary around time spent watching streaming shows
Boundary around how much sugar we eat
Boundary around how much caffeine or alcohol we drink
Boundary around how much active time we have
Boundary for when we choose to go to sleep every night

We can make plans for all these boundaries. What creates boundary violations with ourselves is when we don’t stick to the plan.

We worked two more hours than we planned to.
We have one more drink than we planned to.
We scrolled on social media for 45 minutes longer than we planned to.
We ate two cookies instead of one.
We went to bed at midnight instead of 10:30pm.
We didn’t exercise like we planned to.

Many of us are very good at keeping commitments to others, especially if we don’t want to disappoint them or let them down. What happens when we don’t keep our commitments to others? They may feel let down and disappointed. We may feel guilty or disappointed in ourselves.

What happens when we don’t keep our commitments to ourselves? We are the ones who feel BOTH things–let down by ourselves AND guilty or disappointed in ourselves. We get a double whammy.

When we don’t follow through with our commitments to ourselves, we erode our trust with ourselves. This makes us less likely to even make plans for ourselves to commit to because we might think, “What’s the point? I probably won’t do it anyway.”

To build trust with ourselves, we can practice keeping commitments to ourselves with compassion. We make the plan (the boundary) and we take the actions to maintain the plan (keeping the boundary). If we miss the mark once, we don’t just give up. We give ourselves grace and practice taking action again.

It feels good to keep a commitment. The more we do it, the more trust we build with ourselves. And that can have positive effects on everything we do.

Your turn: What plans (boundaries) do you want to put into place for yourself? Are you willing to be committed to being the keeper of your plans (boundaries)? How would your life be different if you kept your commitment to maintaining your boundaries with yourself?

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All-or-nothing thinking

March 28, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Drop it.

One of the things that can get in the way of our self-care practices is all-or-nothing thinking.

All-or-nothing thinking is an unhelpful thinking pattern that we may be engaging in. We can recognize when we’re doing this when we’re thinking in extremes: we’re either a success or a failure. Our performance was perfect or terrible. If we’re not one hundred percent, then we’re a zero. If we can’t exercise for an hour, then we won’t do it at all.

That last example creates a majority of the reasons why most people don’t engage in self-care practices. Some people might have an unrealistic idea – an ideal – of what self-care looks like for them.

And when they can’t meet that ideal, they don’t do ANYTHING.

For example, because Sara thinks she has to exercise for an hour 4 times a week, when she has to stay 20 minutes later at work than expected one afternoon, she decides that she can’t exercise for a full hour before going home to make dinner, so she doesn’t go to the gym at all that day. And because she didn’t go to the gym that day, her gym momentum takes a hit and she doesn’t go again for a week and a half.

If Sara dropped her all-or-nothing thinking, she could’ve gone to the gym and exercised for 30 minutes – even 20 minutes would have been beneficial.

Or because Kevin thinks he has to meditate for 30 minutes every time he sits down to practice, when he finds himself with only 10 minutes one day, he skips his practice entirely. And his meditation practice momentum takes a hit and he finds himself skipping practice for several days because he “doesn’t have time.”

If Kevin dropped his all-or-nothing thinking, he’d recognize that meditating for 10 minutes can still be beneficial.

Or because Charlie thinks she has to stick to her diet 100% or it won’t work, when she finds herself eating two more cookies than she planned on Tuesday, she quits her whole diet for the next two weeks. Quitting won’t get us to our goal faster.

If Charlie dropped her all-or-nothing thinking, she could instead think, “OK, I ate two extra cookies today, but I can still stick with my plan for dinner. And tomorrow, I can stick with my meal plan too. I don’t have to give up just because I went off part of my plan today.”

It’s great to set ambitious goals for ourselves. But not at the expense of us meeting those goals. It’s about having realistic plans for the time we DO have, with the decisions we CAN make, and with the CAPACITY we have.

With any practice, consistency and commitment are important. Showing up is key. Even for 5 minutes.

So when we want to have a movement goal of exercising every day and we only have 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening to do something, we DO something during those 5 minutes.

It could be 10 pushups and 10 squats, twice a day.

It could be a 5 minute walk twice a day.

It could be 5 minutes on a bike/treadmill in the morning and 5 minutes stretching at night.

But we DO it when the time comes. We show up for ourselves when the time comes.

Showing up for ourselves consistently builds trust in ourselves to do what we say we’ll do. Even if it’s only for 5 minutes at a time.

And what we may find is that those 5 minutes build strength, energy, and motivation to extend our movement time. We might find ourselves wanting to make more time to build on what we started and do 10 minutes at a time. Or find a 30-minute time chunk each day. We won’t know what’s possible for us until we try.

And still, maybe it happens that one day, we don’t even have 5 minutes and we only have 2 minutes. We can still do SOMEthing during those 2 minutes to move our body around intentionally.

So we can drop the all-or-nothing thinking. We can start having more realistic ideas of what our self-care plan looks like. And then we show up for those plans. We show up for ourselves.

Your turn: Where in your life might you be engaging in all-or-nothing thinking? Do you find yourself wondering why you’re not engaging in the self-care practices you KNOW you can do? Are your self-care plans realistic or unrealistic to fit into your life right now? How can you create self-care practices that FIT into your life exactly the way it is right now?

Dig Deeper: In what ways might you need to make changes in your life to help support your self-care practices? (Hint: making those changes IS part of self-care.)

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When you flake on yourself

December 21, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

You deserve better.

Last week I shared about the second pillar of the 3 pillars of transformative self-care – how we speak about and to ourselves. Let’s talk about the third pillar today: how we treat ourselves.

We might think we treat ourselves pretty well. We practice good dental hygiene, we get a massage every once in a while, we take vitamins, we sleep for several hours most nights, we put food into our bodies regularly, we use the stairs sometimes or park farther away from our destination to get in some extra steps.

These are all beneficial things to do for ourselves. And what else can we do for ourselves to show that we care?

One of the strongest ways we can show ourselves that we care is by doing what we say we’ll do – when it comes to ourselves.

How would we feel about a friend or someone close to us who tells us they’re going to do this or that with us or for us, and then when the day comes to do it, they either call/text to say they can’t make it, or they don’t show up at all?

– After the first time, we’ll likely give them some grace but feel disappointed by the outcome.
– The second time they do it, we might start to question the validity of their words.
– If they do it a third time, we’ll see a definite pattern here and probably feel frustrated and give up on believing them. We might even start to think that they don’t really care about or respect us.

This would be a normal reaction to someone who seems to be unable to follow through on what they say to us – someone who flakes on us.

And yet, how often have we flaked on ourselves? Flaking on ourselves means saying we’ll do something for ourselves, but at the last minute, we change our mind and don’t show up for what we said we’d do.

When we do this, we show ourselves that we don’t take our goals and desires seriously. We’re not caring for ourselves, and sometimes, we’re not respecting ourselves. Is that how we want to treat ourselves?

If we want to start treating ourselves better by keeping our promises and commitments to ourselves, we can start to build trust with ourselves by taking small actions. “Today I’m going to walk around the block at 3pm.”

And then at 3pm, we do what we say. We get up and walk around the block.

When we do this, there’s a sense of empowerment, a feeling of accomplishing something and fulfilling a promise to ourselves – no matter how small. “It feels good to do what I said I would!” Celebrate that and remember the feeling. It will help reinforce following through with future plans.

This is how we start to strengthen the muscle of trusting ourselves more, knowing that we can have our own back. We can continue to make another small commitment to keep each day – it could be the same one! – until it’s just automatic for us to keep our word to ourselves. Until it feels uncomfortable when we don’t keep our word to ourselves.

It might not happen overnight, but it’s worth it to keep practicing. WE are worth it. If we haven’t been in the practice of keeping our commitments to ourselves, it can take time to build that up. Take that time.

When we get even better at keeping commitments to ourselves, we learn to treat ourselves better in multiple aspects of our lives. We start to know what it truly feels like to take care of ourselves and treat ourselves in the way we want and deserve to be treated. We learn how to have our own back, no matter what.

Your turn: In what ways do you want to treat yourself better? What commitments do you want to keep with yourself? What is one small commitment you want to make to yourself today that you’ll do tomorrow? When tomorrow comes, are you willing to build trust with yourself and do the thing?

Dive Deeper: If you still find yourself not doing the thing, are you open to asking yourself if this is something you truly want to do for yourself or is something/someone else telling you “you should” do it?

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Building trust with yourself

October 19, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

It’s up to you.

First, I’d like to celebrate this anonymous note from a fellow self-care seeker, received after last week’s post titled “How’s your body doing?”:

“Just a comment to say how timely this email was for me today. I work a full time job and part time in [another job] and had today off. I slept until almost 11:00. I have felt guilty about it since I got up hearing my husbands often comment “you slept half the day away!” rattling around in my head. I pushed back and remembered how poorly I’ve slept the last week and reminded myself that my body wouldn’t have slept that long if it wasn’t tired. I had an event scheduled for this weekend that got canceled. Someone else called and wanted me for another event, and I lied and said I had made plans already. I felt guilty for the money I’m giving up but also empowered by being honest that I just can’t do another 6-7 day work week. I’m 61 years old and just tired. So thank you for the affirmation that told me that my choices were indeed OKAY. I AM ENTITLED TO REST.”

Thank you so much for sharing this experience – I loved reading your empowering and inspiring words! Keep telling yourself the truth, listening to your body, and honoring what it needs and wants! And celebrate when you do.

Now, on to building trust with ourselves …

There are different ways we learn how to trust (or not trust) ourselves. One of these ways is by doing (or not doing) what we say we’ll do – especially when it comes to ourselves.

Most of the time, we do what we say we’ll do for other people. This is because we know the consequences of not following through: the other person will feel let down and disappointed and possibly change how they think about us, and then we’ll feel guilty for having disappointed them and think we need to make up for it somehow.

But what happens when we say we’ll do something for ourselves and then we don’t do it? Let’s say we put an hour on our calendar to do one of the following things: go to the gym, do a yoga class, take a walk, read for leisure, or cook a healthy meal.

But we end up blowing ourselves off during that hour by using that time to keep working, scroll on social media, go out for drinks instead, or do something else besides what we had planned for ourselves.

When we’re the ones not keeping our commitment to ourselves, we feel a double whammy – we’re the ones who are let down and disappointed AND we’re the ones feeling guilty about letting ourselves down. That feels doubly bad. And yet we might not even feel the need to make up for it.

Knowing this feeling, the next time we go to make a commitment to ourselves, we might avoid disappointing ourselves and feeling guilty about it ahead of time, so we might think, “Why bother? I’m not gonna do it anyway.”

And then nothing moves forward with keeping commitments and building trust with ourselves.

That’s how a defeating mindset begins when we think about making commitments to ourselves. We diminish our trust with ourselves when we don’t follow through on what we say we’re going to do for ourselves.

To build trust with ourselves, we can take small steps. “Today I’m going to walk around the block at 3pm.”

And then at 3pm, we do what we say. We get up and walk around the block.

When we do this, there’s a sense of empowerment, a sense of accomplishing something and fulfilling a promise to ourselves – no matter how small. “It feels good to do what I said I would!” Celebrate that and remember the feeling.

When we get even better at keeping commitments to ourselves, we build even more trust with ourselves. We start to know what it truly feels like to have our own back – no matter what.

Your turn: What is one small commitment you want to make to yourself today that you’ll do tomorrow? When tomorrow comes, are you willing to build trust with yourself and do the thing? If you still find yourself not doing the thing, are you open to asking yourself if this is something you truly want to do for yourself or is something else telling you “you should” do it?

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When you trust yourself

May 18, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Learn how.

There are different ways we learn how to trust (or not trust) ourselves. One of these ways is by doing (or not doing) what we say we’ll do–especially when it comes to ourselves.

When we’re the ones not keeping our commitment to ourselves, we feel a double whammy–we’re the ones who are let down and disappointed AND we’re the ones feeling guilty about letting ourselves down. That feels doubly bad. And yet we might not even feel the need to make up for it.

And then nothing moves forward with keeping commitments and building trust with ourselves.

To build trust with ourselves, we can take small steps. “Today I’m going to get up from my desk at 2pm and drink a glass of water and walk around the office/house for five minutes.”

And then at 2pm, we do what we say. We get up, drink a glass of water, and walk around for five minutes.

When we do this, there’s a sense of empowerment, a sense of accomplishing something and fulfilling a promise to ourselves–no matter how small. “It feels good to do what I said I would!” Celebrate that and remember the feeling.

This is how we start to strengthen the muscle of trusting ourselves more, knowing that we can have our own back. We can continue to make another small commitment to keep each day–it could be the same one!–until it’s just automatic for us to keep our word to ourselves. Until it feels uncomfortable when we don’t keep our word to ourselves.

When we get even better at keeping commitments to ourselves, we build even more trust with ourselves. We start to know what it truly feels like to have our own back–no matter what.

Your turn: You make decisions based on you and what you want for yourself; no one else can make these decisions for you. When you trust yourself to have your back no matter what the outcome is, there is no “wrong” decision. Just an opportunity to learn more about yourself and what you want or don’t want. What are you willing to do today to build even more trust with yourself?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help create a more meaningful life in which you start committing to yourself and show up the way you want? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

When you bet on yourself

October 6, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Let’s go!

“Leap and the net will appear.” – John Burroughs

I recently decided to take a big leap and move into my own space in San Francisco. The last time I lived on my own was when I lived in Manhattan–it was such an expansive and fulfilling experience.

I thought that I wouldn’t ever pay market-rate rent in San Francisco because I could live in family-owned property and pay below-market rent. But it also meant I had to share a space with housemates in a living situation I’ve outgrown. So I decided to take the leap and rent my own space that’s a bit of a stretch for me to afford right now. My reasons are that I want to be more independent, to have my own space for creativity and expansion, to experience something different, and to stretch myself to see what I’m capable of.

So I’m betting on myself to earn and create the income I need to make it work, so that I’m not just spending down my savings. I’m putting myself out there more and taking on new opportunities, saying yes to things, and most importantly, believing in myself to make it all work out. To have my back, to make aligned decisions, to trust in myself and my abilities, to have it take as long as it takes. So I’m also creating the net with the belief I have in myself.

I could have just stayed in my current situation and not taken the leap. My current situation is “safe” and familiar, but it doesn’t require more of me. I now get to rise up to a level that maybe I haven’t been at before.

I’m becoming a person who can support herself through this goal. The reward is not only being able to comfortably afford my new living situation. The reward is also who I’ll become and what I’ll learn by achieving this goal.

And that requires a lot of me–growth-wise and creativity-wise. And I’m up for the challenge. I’m willing to be a little scared and uncomfortable for a while, I’m willing to see what’s possible. I’m willing to go all-in on myself and to bet on ME. I trust myself to come through for me.

How do we make sure we take the actions needed to support ourselves? We create the feelings we need to fuel those actions. How do we create the feelings? We think the thoughts that create those feelings.

Right now, I’m thinking “I can do this. I’m going all-in on myself. I believe in myself. I can make it work no matter what. I’ll do what I need to do–and even have fun while doing it!” And all those thoughts create the feelings: determined, focused, excited, confident, motivated. And I’ll take actions based on those feelings.

Sometimes we think other things or people are supposed to come through for us to make our dreams come true. We do get to make requests of people, to ask for help, and to benefit from the generosity of others and the resources available to us.

And we are also the ones who are taking the actions to ask, to receive, and to say “yes” to opportunities that seem aligned. We get to decide what’s possible for us and what we need to do to make it happen for ourselves.

Others can help us along the way, of course, but if we’re expecting them to provide the BELIEF we need to have in ourselves? It doesn’t work that way. We need to be the ones who believe in ourselves the most–1000%. We need to be the ones to bet on ourselves and go all-in.

Your turn: What do you want for yourself that you’re willing to go all-in on and bet on yourself to make happen? What would you need to think and believe? What would you need to feel? And what actions would you take (or not take) to get the result you want? Are you willing to have it take as long as it takes? Who will you become along the way?

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Trust yourself even more

August 25, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

How you do it.

There are different ways we learn how to trust (or not trust) ourselves. One of these ways is by doing (or not doing) what we say we’ll do–especially when it comes to ourselves.

Most of the time, we’re used to doing what we say we’ll do for other people. Likely because we know the consequences of not following through: the other person will feel let down and disappointed and possibly change how they think about us, and then we’ll feel guilty for having disappointed them and think we need to make up for it somehow.

But what happens when we say we’ll do something for ourselves and then we don’t do it? Let’s say we put on the calendar an hour to do one of the following things: go to the gym, do a yoga class, take a walk, journal, read for leisure, or cook a healthy meal.

When we’re the ones not keeping our commitment to ourselves, we feel a double whammy–we’re the ones who are let down and disappointed AND we’re the ones feeling guilty about letting ourselves down. That feels doubly bad. And yet we might not even feel the need to make up for it somehow.

Knowing this feeling, the next time we go to make a commitment to ourselves, we might preemptively avoid disappointing ourselves and feeling guilty about it, so we might think, “Why bother? I’m not gonna do it anyway.”

And then nothing moves forward around keeping commitments and building trust with ourselves.

That’s how a defeating mindset begins when we think about making commitments to ourselves. We diminish our trust with ourselves when we don’t commit to what we say we’re going to do for ourselves.

To build trust with ourselves, we can take small steps. “Today I’m going to get up from my desk at 2pm and drink a glass of water and walk around the office/house for five minutes.”

And then at 2pm, we do what we say. We get up, drink a glass of water, and walk around for five minutes. When we do this, there’s a sense of empowerment, a sense of accomplishing something and fulfilling a promise to ourselves–no matter how small.

“It feels good to do what I said I would!” Hi five to self. Celebrate that and remember the feeling.

This is how we start to strengthen the muscle of trusting ourselves more, knowing that we can have our own back. We can continue to make another small commitment to keep each day–it could be the same one!–until it’s just automatic for us to keep our word to ourselves. Until it feels uncomfortable when we don’t keep our word to ourselves.

When we get even better at keeping commitments to ourselves, we build even more trust with ourselves. We start to know what it truly feels like to have our own back–no matter what.

And this trust with ourselves allows us to have our own back when making the bigger decisions and bigger commitments that we want to make, to have the lives we want for ourselves.

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