Beauty in the Break

Giving Yourself Flowers: The Truth About Real Self-Care

• Cesar Cardona & Foster Wilson • Episode 22

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Self-care has become a buzzword, but what does it really mean? In this conversation, Foster and Cesar dismantle the myth that self-care is something you buy, and reveal how it’s something you build from within. From exercise and rest to asking for help and receiving compliments, they explore the small, daily acts that nurture your mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

Whether you’re a recovering perfectionist, a new parent, or someone trying to slow down in a productivity-obsessed world, this episode invites you to reconnect with what truly matters: listening to your body, honoring your needs, and cultivating inner peace. You’ll walk away inspired to create a self-care practice that’s grounded in love, not obligation.

In this episode they explore: 

  • The hidden link between self-talk, healing, and emotional regulation
  • Why asking for help might be the most radical act of self-love
  • Breaking free from societal values like productivity and perfectionism
  • Learning to receive compliments as a spiritual practice
  • How rest, stillness, and listening to your body change everything
  • Building a community-based, interdependent model of care

Cesar mentions his struggle with “learning how to learn”, which is explored deeper in Episode 2: The Beauty of Letting Go. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.

If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps!

Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram. 

Cesar Cardona:

Foster Wilson:

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

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Foster:

We never ask ourselves these questions. We never really take a time to sit down and ask ourselves, what are my values? What do I need? What fills my cup?

Cesar:

At least a hundred times. There was a thought that came up and said, She's gonna look at you and think, he's dumb. This is not the person I expected.

Foster:

Massages are great, body work is great, all of these things are great, but they're not the answer to self-care. Because I want you to be able to give it to yourself at any given moment. Hello and welcome to Beauty in the Break. I'm Foster.

Cesar:

And I'm Cesar.

Foster:

This is the podcast where we explore the moments that break us open and how we find beauty on the other side.

Cesar:

So whatever you're carrying today, you don't have to carry it alone. We are here with you.

Foster:

Thanks for being here and enjoy the show. Hello, beloved, and welcome back to another episode of Beauty in the Break.

Cesar:

Wherever you are right now, I am very happy that you are here.

Foster:

You know, the other day you said something to me, and I thought it was kind of mind-blowing. We were working on your finances, and that was a hard thing for you to do. And you said, looking at this financial stuff is self-care to me. And I thought that was such an interesting thought because I have never heard anybody talk about self-care in that way. That self-care is doing something for yourself that you know you're gonna feel good on the other side of. I would like to sort of debunk self-care today and talk about what it really can look like, not what society is putting on us, not what consumerism is telling us we should be doing, because it's become such a word in the zeitgeist of like, oh, you need self-care. You need and I'm a little tired of that.

Cesar:

Yeah, we should be spending more time on the internal self-care. I think that comes first. I think it's the bigger one.

Foster:

Well, self-care has been targeted at women in particular, I would say. That's what I hear when I hear it. I think about people saying, oh, self-care is getting your nails done or getting your hair done or going to the spa or something like that, which is society trying to put something on us that is, again, external, tangible, and like feeding into capitalism in some way. When society hasn't been able to answer the problems of, I feel overwhelmed, I'm not happy in my life, I feel burdened because society is not giving us that. They're not giving us the answers to how to unburden ourselves. They're saying, go do this one external thing and maybe you'll feel better. Go get a massage and you'll feel better.

Cesar:

It's like a temporary solution to the situation. That's what it feels like.

Foster:

Yeah. I was lucky enough to have a massage when I was on my recent vacation. I was like, I'm giving this to myself, and that was cool. And you know what? Like, it didn't change my life. Massages are great, body work is great, all of these things are great, but they're not the answer to self-care. And I want to like reframe what self-care even is because I want you to be able to give it to yourself at any given moment.

Cesar:

That external self-care is secondary, but we've been putting it as the primary, forgetting entirely about the little things that we can do every day that are still more impactful than a massage manicure or a concert or whatever it is.

Foster:

Yeah. And that can be something that's part of your routine, that's something that makes you feel good about yourself. But if you don't talk to yourself in a positive way, if you're not able to receive compliments from people, those are the things I'm talking about that will really change your internal system to feel like you are caring for yourself.

Cesar:

Yeah. What is your first go-to for self-care in this day?

Foster:

Right now is exercise. Okay. Being outside in nature and moving my body in particular, like hiking, walking, exercising uphill for me is what gets me to a better place mentally for the rest of the day and maybe the next day as well.

Cesar:

Your demeanor and mood after a day you've hiked is totally different from if you haven't. For the most part, you're a good even keel, but after those days in particular, there's like a healthy spice to who you are. There's so much, again, vitality, I should say.

Foster:

And my journey with exercise has been really tumultuous because in my days where I was my eating disorder was activated the most, I also had a very big inner critic voice that was going, you should be doing XYZ exercise, whatever it is that felt the most challenging, the most grueling, whatever I didn't want to do really. And if it was something I didn't want to do, let's say at the time, I was doing a lot of HIIT training, high-intensity interval training. And I loathed that shit. I loathed it. I didn't like getting up early. I didn't like going and doing that. And I just kept having that voice say, Well, you should. If you don't like it and you don't do it, that means you're lazy. So you should go do that. So I had all of this effort at exercise that I should be doing, not exercise that filled me up or brought me joy. And then in my eating disorder recovery, one of the things that I had to do was strip away all of the shoulds. There were rules set up from years and decades of eating disorder brain at work saying you can't eat this, you can't eat that, you can eat at this time, you can't eat at this time, you can eat when you're this hungry, but not when you're this hungry. All these rules, and that applied to exercise too. So in eating disorder recovery, I stripped away all the rules, and I actually didn't allow myself to exercise at all except for walking for probably two years. Walking brought me outside into nature, and it allowed me to find some kind of meditative, mindful place in myself that I was observing nature. I was feeling the wind on my face. Just the movement of walking that was like, I'm doing this for me. It's not for the inner voice that's telling me my body is wrong. Only after several years did I actually find the gym again, find weightlifting again, find you and I have been boxing now. I just kept hanging on to things that made me feel good. But I had to strip it all away and rebuild it from zero to find something that worked for me.

Cesar:

You gave yourself this blank canvas to paint in the manner which you want. It also sounds like some because you're using such rigid words like should or should always be this way or never do this or can't. Someone just gave you a canvas that was already painted originally. Right. And that inner critic is like a thing for every particular person. When you wipe that clean, does do you still see it coming up for you now? Or did it completely go away?

Foster:

Occasionally it will come up when I think, oh, did I work out yesterday? Oh, then I should today. But more so I will notice like if I go two or three days without some kind of heavy movement, like usually a hike, I will feel it mentally. And that's more my barometer now for I gotta get my body going again. Okay. And that will clear, help clear up some of the cobwebs in my mind.

Cesar:

Okay. Okay. The act of doing that is a self-love, and then also the way you're talking to yourself. So when that voice still still does come up, that should, how do you respond to that?

Foster:

I usually say, Well, that's not me anymore.

Cesar:

Cool. Ah. That's cool. I love that. That's a great line to give yourself. You're doing these little micro um updates to yourself. These little micro updates. Oh, thank you for that, but that's not who I am. Yeah, that's fantastic. And it's not holding on to you. You're not pushing it away, you're not, you're meeting it where it is, and you're going forward. That's lovely.

Foster:

What is self-care for me, and that, you know, that's one of the pieces of it. Exercise, to me, I'm gonna say again, that's just me. That could be different for everybody, right? So that's not exercise is not gonna be everybody's version of self-care. But I am gonna hang on to the fact that that version of self-care is free. I can go outside and I can walk. I can, if you live in an area that has hills, you can walk up a hill. That can be a hike, you know. But I do go to a gym, but I don't have to do that. I can I can exercise and move my body and sweat right where I am, using my body, squats, things like that, whatever it is, that's free. And I'm not participating in any of this capitalistic idea of what I need to do or I should do for my care of myself.

Cesar:

Right.

Foster:

It's for me. It's unique to me.

Cesar:

Right. Even with you hiking as is a physical external thing, it's not the external that's giving you the activation. It's your decision of I'm going to do this knowing that it's going to benefit me on all categories. My mental, my neurons, my muscles, my heart, my lungs, my dopamine, my serotonin, I mean, like in so many ways. It's way beyond just the fact that you're gonna hike. And then you you curated it along something that doesn't feel forced to really go inward about it. It is the hiking, it is the meditation, or the breath work, or the reading, or the free riding, or any of those things. But what it really primarily is is a conversation you're having with yourself. Right, right, right. And what is that result from there? What is your thought about something? How are you responding to it? And then your thoughts become your beliefs, and your beliefs influence your actions, and your actions go out and affect your life, and then you know the cycle comes back around. You're hiking, yes, but you're also taking a moment to think to yourself how do I frame how I'm thinking to myself, how I'm treating myself, just from you to you. What if you couldn't hike that day, but you have the thought of, I'm glad I want to hike, instead of I should be doing something else? Like that's a beautiful thought on its own. And I think that's the, in my opinion, that's the core of self-care. How you're talking to yourself. That's the deepest level, and in my opinion, also the most important level.

Foster:

How we think about ourselves mentally is the adjustment of self-care that we need to exercise, that we need to exercise.

Cesar:

Or whatever the external, whatever the new thing is. Yeah. Yeah.

Foster:

Yeah. We need to speak to ourselves about ourselves in a way that is caring. That's really the thing. That's not the physical external massage or nails, whatever. Those are outward projections of what's going on inside. And so the band-aid of like get the external thing done because that will fix the internal. That's why it's not working. It's not working for people. They don't have the time, they don't have the money, they don't have the resources to go do those things, or they go do those things and they really haven't fixed anything internally, and they still have the same problems.

Cesar:

Agreed.

Foster:

What about for you? What does self-care look like to you?

Cesar:

My two main self-care things are reading. I just love it. I'm reading three books at this moment, and I just adore it. Because I'm in my own space, I'm in my imagination, I'm taking information in, and because for years I had trouble doing it. So I got back into this rhythm now of enjoying it. That for me is self-care because I'm learning again. And I had such trouble learning for such a long time. Learning from things that aren't my own life. I could do something and say, oh, this worked for me, this didn't work for me. There's a learn. Great, fantastic. And then there's a whole thousands of years of stories being told of how things have been and that has worked universally. And I can learn that now because I my memory or my retention or my anxiety wouldn't hold. The second thing for self-love for me is knowing when to stop.

Foster:

Yeah.

Cesar:

I was very indulgent in most things. Whatever it was, I'm gonna keep doing until I'm just wiped out clean. But this show has grown in popularity a lot. We are very busy with all of the work here. I'm busy being a public speaker, teaching growth mindfulness to teach people how to learn how to still themselves while still growing externally. You're working as a doula, you're we're parents as well. We are inundated with a lot of things. There's not one day that I tell myself, but I gotta do this, so I gotta stay. No, when I'm done, I am done. And I give myself that time.

Foster:

Yeah. In my work every day, I work with new parents, people who are about to become parents. This time of postpartum and early parenthood is a huge transition for a lot of people. And what I teach my clients is that we have to completely reframe the way in which we think about our life in this time, right? So what we're getting from society, especially here in the US and in other modern cultures as well, there are four things that we care about here in America. And they are predominantly productivity, be productive. That's a value that we have, success, being successful, being wealthy, having a good career, gaining in whatever it is that you're doing, individualism, this pride that I can do everything by myself or my nuclear family, that we're self-sufficient and we don't rely on anybody else, and we've got it all together, right? This is what we're told. And efficiency. How quickly can we do something? And you've said this a lot. We get so efficient. We have all these tools to make ourselves really efficient in the world. We have phones that'll send emails while we're walking down the street and all of these things, and yet we still don't have any time. It didn't buy us any more time. So it's a hamster wheel. It's a loop.

Cesar:

Cosmic irony of it.

Foster:

So if you think about your values right now, how many of your values are these things that have been given to us by society? There is a time in my life when I, especially in my 20s, when I was like, you know, building a career and trying to raise children and doing all these things, that I would have said these were exactly my values in my life. Productivity, efficiency, success, individualism. Yeah, that's it. I didn't get that from me. I got that from the external world. Okay, so all of these parents that I'm working with are about to have a child, and what they don't know is that those values are completely unattainable.

Cesar:

They're all external, by the way. Yeah, they're all four of those major values are only external.

Foster:

Yes.

Cesar:

They're cutting out 50% of your human experience.

Foster:

Yeah. They're about to get into a period of their life that is slow, that is not productive at all. Let me tell you, no newborn is sitting here getting shit done. They sleep, they eat all day, they lounge around, they make more work for you. They're not efficient. There's no success to be had in parenting. There really is no such thing as success, right? What we actually need in postpartum, and the reason I'm telling you this is because it is applicable to everybody. What we need in postpartum, in these early six to eight weeks now, there's an argument that postpartum is really forever because postpartum means after birth. But what we really need is slowing down. We need to reject individualism and embrace community, relying on friends and family to bring us food for the basic necessities, to do our household chores that we can't do because we're sleep deprived. We're down to survival mode here. Eat and sleep and drink. That's all we've got time for. Not looking at success, just looking at what do I need to accomplish in this very moment, right? What is this baby telling me they need? There is no one more present than a newborn baby. So we have to completely turn our values upside down and reject what society has told us or say, thank you so much for that. That's not gonna apply here. Maybe some of those things will come back or maybe they won't, but what are my values? What do I care about? Maybe that's family. Maybe my core value is connection. How can I find that? All of this to say, we never ask ourselves these questions. We never really take a time to sit down and ask ourselves, what are my values? What fills my cup? What do I need? Is it 15 minutes of just being in total silence and being alone? If you've had a, if you have a colicky baby, you might really want 15 minutes of silence, right? But what fills me up? Let's ask ourselves these questions of what are our values? And then maybe we can get to a place of understanding what we need to care for ourselves.

Cesar:

When you express this to some of these parents, how do they respond to that?

Foster:

It's really challenging. I would say this is true for a lot of modern American women in particular. And then, you know, we have listeners all over the world. So, but in America in particular, and our culture does influence a lot of people. We have, especially women, have a really hard time asking for help, receiving support, and slowing down. And so there's a lot of resistance to these ideas.

Cesar:

That's so interesting that you say that, and I clearly see it. Ironically, men have similar problems.

Foster:

Yes, okay.

Cesar:

Asking for help.

Foster:

Yes, okay.

Cesar:

Constantly. So are we just an entire country of people just not asking each other for help?

Foster:

Yes.

Cesar:

Not receiving things from people. And wouldn't it be more self-help and self-loving for yourself to turn to someone and say, Could you help me, please? How non-vulnerable can we get in this society, perhaps, is the question.

Foster:

Yeah, because we're told that doing it all alone, all by yourself, individuality. Very, very attractive. That's the goal here is to be completely self-sufficient.

Cesar:

Which is a farce, by the way, it's not possible. No, nobody is self-made, no matter how many times they put somebody on Time magazine. You're not self-made. We live in a society where we are all interdependent of each other. So we're already living with that mentality we have to do. So we're striving to grab light in our bare hands. It's not gonna happen. But you keep trying it. How many times in a dream have you tried to like grab something or run really fast and you couldn't do it? That's how it feels because we're always pointing outward, always trying to go out there. So if you're clients or mothers that can't do this, that is the most important, the most profound job of any human nature, of anything in nature, giving life and passing that threshold to this newness, whatever it is, even outside of giving birth, you are met with nothing but newness, which makes you have to slow down. So first thing you do when you walk into a building that you haven't been before, you stop and you look around. Metaphorically speaking, it's the same thing with every new threshold you cross. That's where the relying on the people comes in.

Foster:

Yes. And we don't want to. And you're right, it's not just women, men too. It it it couples, and no matter your gender, we don't want to ask for help. We want to, we wanna be strong and do it ourselves. And I think I try to normalize this for people. It's like you absolutely cannot do this alone. You cannot do this without experts. You have not lived in a village your whole life. You've not seen people breastfeeding your whole life, you've not seen how we care for newborns, what nor normal newborn behavior is. You need elders in quotes, right? You need people who've done it before, whether that's a professional or mom friends or an aunt or your mother. You need people around you who have done this so that you can go, is this normal? And then I would take that out to anyone, no matter where you are today. I want to give you the permission. You cannot do this life alone. You need your community around you. You need to ask for help. And it is an honor when someone asks you for support, what is your first thought?

Cesar:

Yes, how can I help them?

Foster:

Yeah. Most people feel that way. And so it's actually quite an honor to be asked for support. And I think we all actually want to help each other. So many people are afraid that they are a burden to others.

Cesar:

So tying that into self-care, you are asking others for help. There's an external part there still. But the self-care part, the part that matters the most is what? You being vulnerable.

Foster:

Yeah.

Cesar:

You recognizing what you don't know, you being humble with yourself, you being patient with yourself and saying, I don't have to have all the answers. You relieving that ego from yourself. That's the self-care part.

Foster:

Yeah.

Cesar:

The talking to the self again. That because that's where it starts. How you're speaking to yourself.

Foster:

Yeah. That act of asking, no matter what the other person says, that act of asking is self-care right there. Because it's rejecting this idea that we have to do it all by ourselves. I want to be interdependent. I want to be in community with others. And that will allow me to utilize my skills to help other people if my if I'm also able to rely on other people. That's a it's symbiotic. And a lot of people are not, myself included, are not able. It's very difficult to receive support from many people. To actually take someone's kind gesture out of their own volition and receive it. And that can be as simple as a compliment.

Cesar:

That's exactly what I was going to say. It's as simple as a compliment.

Foster:

Yeah.

Cesar:

When you get compliments right now, what do you, what do you say? Not when I say it too, because I tell you like a thousand times an hour. But like if you're out somewhere and someone's like, oh my gosh, your eyes are beautiful.

Foster:

Well, I think now I've learned to say thank you so much. But really, I've watched you say that and kind of copy you because my internal voice will wants to say, no, I'm not. Or no, oh, that's you, you're so beautiful, or just kind of.

Cesar:

To give it back, right? Yeah. I think that's the big one. Most people are like, thank you. You get a compliment, you get some help. Immediately you're like, I want to give it back to you. I want to tell you, I want to say it back to you because you feel like, well, well, I haven't given them a compliment, so I have to, I have to reciprocate. I yes, that is fantastic and beautiful. Let's let that first compliment land first.

Foster:

Receiving someone's compliment is a gift to them.

Cesar:

Well said. Yes, absolutely. It truly is because you're hearing what they're saying. You're being present with how they took the time to be a little more vulnerable in this life and wanted to express to you what you mean to them.

Foster:

Imagine if I said to you, you're so handsome, and then you said to me, Oh no, no, I'm really not. You've just negated my opinions. You've just basically said, You've told me that I suck and my opinion isn't true, and and no, thank you, you're not welcome here. That's terrible, right? So receiving the compliment is a gift to somebody else.

Cesar:

Right, right. And then going back to the first part that you said of receiving help.

Foster:

Yeah.

Cesar:

Which is a big thing.

Foster:

It's hard.

Cesar:

Say more on that, please.

Foster:

Asking for help and receiving help. In rearing children, it can be asking for a neighbor to play with your kids for a bit while you run an errand. It can be asking someone to pick up something on their way home. I happen to live very close to my brother, which is really fortunate. And I think I was out of like coffee or something. And my kids were like in the bedtime routine and I'm home alone with them. And I couldn't go out to the store at that moment, but I knew that not having coffee the next day was gonna really screw me up. And so I asked him, hey, I don't know if you're out and about or whatever, but could you possibly pick up some coffee and drop it off at my door? And that was so hard to ask. And then I also was just like overly apologetic for even asking, like, thank you so much. And this is my brother, right? But I wouldn't have done that to anyone else, but I felt like I could ask him, and he did, of course. I still had all this sort of shame and I was clouded with all of this like apologies for even asking for this one simple favor. Yeah.

Cesar:

When do you started talking to me about finances? Is when I knew from the very beginning it was something I needed to tend to because no one ever taught me anything about finances whatsoever. Not to mention I'm not good at math on top of it. It's just not my strong suit. I knew from the very beginning when we started talking about this that I would inevitably get to a point where I would say, All right, it's time to knock this thing out. The self-love is knowing I'll get there and two not rushing myself. Okay. Because it took me a little while, it took me longer than I wanted to, and that's okay. I'm not going to give myself guff for that. And then when we got to this point here, we're doing the work, and I can feel all of the dread of I don't understand this, I'm gonna look like an idiot. We went through my finances and what I spend stuff on. It took what, three hours for us to go through this, four hours maybe. At least a hundred times, it was a thought that came up and said, She's gonna look at you and think, he's dumb. He doesn't know how to handle money. This is not the person I expected. Not the person that I thought I was with. Like I expected all of that to come out from you, and you've never given any instance of that. I just kept remembering, I appreciate what you're saying, inner critic. Thank you so much. However, this is self-love. I'm taking care of myself here, and I've given myself a method when I do these things. One, I will always try it on my own. Because for the most part, I've taught myself everything on my own. That's the first time. If it doesn't work out that first time, I will go and ask help. And that is something as big as asking somebody to help with finances or a business proposition or a friend of mine who's an entrepreneur asking for business advice. Something as simple as let me find where the salt is in this place. I I I can't find it. Excuse me. Could you tell me where the salt is, please? And then after that, that help, which is step two, the third one is making sure you acknowledge exactly what just happened. I will look at that person at Trader Joe's, or I will talk to you about it, or the entrepreneur or whoever, and look them in the eye and say, Thank you. I really appreciate this. It sets in motion this self-loving cycle of I trust myself enough to want to find this out on my own. I love myself enough to say to know that I don't have to know everything, so let's get you some help. I love myself enough to have humility to ask for help. And then I also want to establish it in the ground, put roots in the soil by thanking the person because there's more humility. All of those things I have I have triple stacked self-humility when it comes to me learning something, and in particular finances in this case.

Foster:

Yeah, that is self-love. I wonder if self-love is also delegating, allowing yourself not to be the best at everything, you know, especially as mothers. I will just say, speaking for myself, maybe it's everybody, but I think we feel like only I can do these things really well, and I'm not gonna let anyone else do it. So I'm gonna do all of the things. And my dad always says to delegate anything that's not your strong suit to somebody else.

Cesar:

Absolutely right.

Foster:

And I would actually put a little caveat in there, which is to say what you did, which is try to learn how to do it yourself first, really understand it and then outsource it to somebody who's better than you. Yeah, I think there is sometimes a little bit of an inherent problem in only outsourcing and not understanding.

Cesar:

Sure.

Foster:

There are people who outsource their finances because they don't want to look at their finances, and they'll outsource it to an accountant to take care of all of that for me because I actually don't, I'm scared to look at it.

Cesar:

I had that thought when you were showing me that stuff. And I had the thought and it was like, that's not a cool thought. So then I just turned it into a joke. I was like, I can just hire somebody. This is so easy to just pay the person.

Foster:

Right.

Cesar:

Yep.

Foster:

But that's running away from the problem. So you can look at it really closely, do your best to understand it, and then outsource it to somebody else. Delegate it. Uh that it that doesn't have to be somebody who's paid. That could be something else. That could be when my dad comes into town, he's really good at fixing things. And I'm terrible at fixing anything. I can't hang a picture on the wall. You'll just find my frames just leaning against the wall because I don't know how to hang it.

Cesar:

I thought that was just your style. I thought you were just an avant-garde frame framer.

Foster:

I will pretend that that's my style, but what it really is is that I cannot be bothered with a hammer. But when my dad comes--

Cesar:

No offense to all the hammers out there listening. Geez.

Foster:

But I've got those tasks stacked up. And when my dad comes to town, he likes to help me and he likes to fix it. I could ask that of somebody else who really likes to hang things too. We have a friend who loves travel booking. Well, she doesn't, she's not a travel agent, but she loves looking for a flight and booking a hotel. And great. We've just asked her to do it and she's more than happy to do it. I'm like, why are we asking her to do this? Because it's not our strong suit. We can do it. But that's kind of a that's kind of a fun way to like play on each other's strengths and really understand what your individual village has to offer. And that means that you have cool things to offer too. And the thing Things that I'm really good at are like happily give it away to anybody who wants it. Yes, of course. Because it's so easy to me. Finances are so fun to me. So fun. It's so weird. Close. But I am happy. I will sit down with anyone and be like, you want me to teach you how to budget? Absolutely. You're gonna why don't I pay you to teach how to budget? I find it that fun.

Cesar:

Technically will, because if you help me save money, I'm being paid. Yeah.

Foster:

So yeah.

Cesar:

Yeah, truly, truly, truly. Whenever I think about things I do for self-care are the first two that I mentioned, but my default thought is I just stop and stand in the sun. I close my eyes, put my face to the sun, and just hold on to that moment. That is everything for me. That is everything. Just the light from the sun is my my world. And I guess pun intended, because it is. The active side for me feels like the biggest amount of self-love for me. It's easier for me to just produce, to make something, to create something. But now I'm finally learning how to make sure it's coming from me. Not just making something, but breathing something into existence. That requires me to have to discipline. That requires me to have to learn the things I don't want to learn, like financing, math, focusing on on reading again, on rehearsals. As a musician, man, I didn't rehearse almost ever. It was I just didn't. And now as a speaker, I realized every moment can be a rehearsal. And I started to fall in love with the system of doing something rather than the something. And those are all treats to myself. And at least once a day I will try to find something to recap and think these actual words to myself. I'm really proud of myself for finishing that book. I'm really proud of myself for not getting upset at somebody in the store. I'm really proud of myself for choosing the right words when I was talking to somebody that I disagreed with. I handled that really well. That is the deepest self-love that you can give yourself.

Foster:

How you talk to yourself. Yeah. Yeah. I I think what you're talking about also is expression. Right? And made me think that one of the things that I do that is self-love and self-care is I have a friend that I voice note with constantly. And usually when I'm driving or hiking, I am either listening to or sending a voice note to her that is epically ridiculously long. Like we're talking eight to 20 minutes. And it's me expressing myself. And I hear that you're saying that as well, that's putting your self-expression into your work is for you. And all of these things that we're talking about are free, by the way. They don't take a ton of time and they don't take any money at all, right? You're talking about standing in the sun and feeling the sun on your face. That could be 30 seconds if that's totally free. It fills you up. For me, also, the idea of rest has been something that has been a journey of the last five years, probably, of discovering when I feel safe to rest, when my mind will actually shut down. Now that I'm sober, there's no, there's no alcohol to like demarcate a point of rest. Now, now I'll have wine and now I will relax. So I have to really choose for myself the times in which I can rest. Just the other day, I clients in the morning and I came to be with you in the afternoon, and I was really low in my mental health. I mean, I can't even put words to why it was, but I felt like I was stuck in this mini depression. And my mind had all these things that I wanted to do. I wanted to edit our show next episode of our show. I wanted to prep for a call I had the next day, and I had a full weekend of events happening. And I was terrified that I was gonna feel this way tomorrow and the next day when I had all these really important things that I love doing. I wasn't in a space to do any of them at the time. My whole brain and body was shut down. We had to talk about it because I really was like, all I want to do is lay here for hours and just decompress and rest. And I hardly ever give myself that. And I think a lot of like quote unquote busy people, right, are busy with lots and lots of things going on. A lot of things are juggling on their plate. We just don't give ourselves time to rest and to enjoy this life of ours that we've worked so hard to get here to. And so the best framework I could put in my brain, and it I think it worked, was like just think about the next six hours, the next 24 hours. Don't even go to tomorrow. Just be right here with this feeling that I can't do anything but lay on this couch and do something really, really low energy. And the next day absolutely took care of itself and I felt differently. But I was catastrophizing how it was gonna go into the next couple of days.

Cesar:

It was even less than that in some capacity because you laid down and just stretched way shorter than six hours. Yeah. And then you got up and did a little bit, and then you rested again. You gave yourself the space because I remember you were saying how much your thoughts were telling you all things, and they all felt valid. And that for me is my when I have depression, when I have bouts of depression, that's one of my ways in. I can tell that all my thoughts all have this deep validity, and I can't pick or choose whatever. But you just gave space to every one of them. You had to rest for a little bit, then you ended up a little bit of moving around. I think you grabbed your phone for a little and then you laid on the couch for a little bit. You gave yourself all of those things. That's self-love.

Foster:

Yeah.

Cesar:

Hearing it, not pushing it away, not succumbing to it, just giving to it.

Foster:

And it was not easy. It was the hardest thing. It was so hard for me. I'm trying to say it out loud so I can learn from that experience and do it easier next time. But that was really, really difficult because I had really wanted to get things done.

Cesar:

Yeah. So that's your habit too, by the way. You you you're generative of a person. You like to create, have an idea, activate on it. You like moving around in that way. That's a talent of yours, too. So it's hard to want to lean away from it when it's so validating because you do it quite well.

Foster:

But if I didn't give myself that rest, I would have taken that depression right into the weekend, right into all my plans. It would have just extended it because I'm pushing it away, pushing it away. So one of the self-care things, also I think that everybody can ask themselves if this means something to them. Am I listening to my body? Am I listening to what my body needs in this moment? Whether it's nourishment, food, thirst, exercise, movement, rest, learning, reading, you know, what is it that your body really needs? If you don't have any self-care practices right now, take 30 seconds of your day just for you. Just start with 30 seconds of quiet, of silence without your phone and begin to just feel into what is the next thing that's gonna bring me joy that's just for me and just for my own self because I love myself. Because knowing yourself, that's self-care.

Cesar:

That's beautiful. That's beautiful.

Foster:

Thank you so much for listening today. We're really glad you're here.

Cesar:

And as always, please be kind to yourself.

Foster:

If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it. That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most. And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty in the Break wherever you get your podcast. We'll see you next time.

Cesar:

Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona. Our executive producer is Glenn Milley. Original music by Cesar & the Clew.

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Cesar Cardona

Host
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Foster Wilson

Host