When Your Needs Are Always the First to Be Postponed | 004

You're listening to the Sacred She Reset podcast.

If you're a woman in midlife who's done doing this alone and

ready for real conversations, real wisdom, and real radiance,

you're exactly where you need to be. I'm your host Sharia Shana.

Your path to radiance starts here. Welcome back, beautiful

sisters, to Sacred She Reset, Awakening Your Radiant Wisdom.

I'm Shari Ashana, your host, and this week we're going to dive

into the hidden costs of always coming last, and the overarching

comment, "I don't have time for myself, lordy, lordy, lordy. So

I have heard these comments from myself before, and plenty of

other ladies that I know, and so they never go, "Oh, I'm

abandoning myself. You never hear that sort of languaging. We

have a tendency to say, "I'm busy. It's not the right time. I

can't afford it. Everyone else needs me. I'll focus on myself

when things settle down, honey. But for some women, things do

not settle down in 20 years. There is always another

deadline. Yes, I'll do that when I retire. That's like I remember

hearing my parents say, "Oh, when I retire, I was like, "I

don't think I'm ever going to retire. What is retirement?

Always be doing something. We have something happening. Why do

we retire? To me, retirement is retire everything. Anyway, being

a little crazy here, but there's always another deadline.

There's always another person to support. There's always another

bill. There's always another transition or a crisis, and

another reason why your needs must wait. So today we're going

to speak into that about time and money, but also about the

deeper belief beneath both of those. There is no room for me.

So for years, whenever I had surgery, recovery became

something I needed to complete. It was a cycle of going through

major surgery after major surgery, and I don't know if

it's different now because it's been a long time since I've had

major surgery. But I had this recovery period of six, 812,

weeks. It was crazy. So I would do what was necessary in this

cycle, I'd get through those the recovery period, however long it

took, and then I would return to life. I would return back to

travel and work and moving, back to proving that I was fine. I

want to share a little story here because I remember one of

my surgeries. I remember, I don't know what number surgery

it was, but I I must have been. I don't think I'd yet started

traveling overseas, so I was I was under the age of 21. I

wasn't living at home, and I remember I had a major surgery,

and I just all I would just do was go shopping.

I wanted to go out and get myself a couple of potato cakes

and go shopping, and get in the car and drive. And I remember, I

literally must have been a week out of a major surgery. And this

particular time was I'd been cut on my lower abdomen, right

through, right through the wall and the lining there. So I was

like bent over, like crooked. Couldn't hardly get. I couldn't

get up straight. I hadn't yet retrained those muscles and

those that part of me I hadn't healed. And I remember just

getting this bee in my bonnet about needing to go shopping and

needing to go down there, and just I needed to get out of the

house. I needed to be just doing something, and so I spent all

this time getting ready, having a shower, yeah, getting excited,

and I remember I made it to the car in the driveway, and that's

as far as I made it. I sat in the car. I think I sat in the

car for maybe I don't know. Must have been an hour or so. Sat

there absolutely exhausted, and then when I built up enough

energy, I, you know, hobbled my little crooked body back into

the house, pride all crumbled and disappointed, and went to

bed and ended up falling asleep. So, trying to prove I'm fine,

I'd like just override constantly, always overriding

myself. So, I did not understand that recovery and restoration

were not necessarily the same thing. I know that now. Recovery

meant I could function again. Restoration would have required

me to examine the life and patterns I was returning to, and

I wasn't doing that back then.

But I did not yet know how to do that. I really didn't. I had to

kind of, like I said in the last. We have to hit the wall

and return, and hit the wall and keep repeating the same pattern

before we get it. I thought strength meant meant getting

back on my feet. I did not ask whether the same way of living

was continually taking me away from myself. So many of us do

this without having experienced surgery. We don't necessarily

need a big, crazy, chaotic life for this to happen. We just do

this anyway. We rest just long enough to carry too much again.

So we get to that point exhausted on a Friday or

whatever day it is, depending on what you're doing in your life.

You come home and collapse. You get a sleep up, and we do we do

the cycle all over again. We take the weekend away, then we

return to the same emotional load. We go to a retreat, then

become home and resume the same roles. We don't integrate

anything that we've we've learned or done. We just we keep

following these cycles up and down, up and down, and we sleep

for eight hours. We wake up inside the life that continually

drains us. Rest can help, but rest alone does not restore us

when we return to the same patterns that depleted us. I've

met many women who long for change, but believe there is no

time for it, and so the clock continues to tick, ladies. It

keeps ticking. It keeps, you know, that each time we put

something off, it's yeah, we're getting older. The clock's

ticking. We've only got so much life on this planet. We need to

grab it by the horns and live it and love it. But we need to take

care of ourselves. And so I find they're caring for children and

grandchildren. I do not have children. I've had fur babies.

I've got a beautiful partner that I take care of.

He's beautiful, a home, everything. I still have

responsibilities, but so many women have children and

grandchildren, and they love that role. But also, it's a big

responsibility. So, caring for children and grandchildren,

supporting aging parents-we most of us will be going through this

at some point. Managing the home, carrying emotional

responsibility inside our relationships. Now, just on that

note of relationships, relationships take work. I'm in

a beautiful relationship, and sometimes what happens from the

outside, people look in and go, "Oh, you guys, you're amazing.

But we've worked on this. There's a lot of responsibility,

emotional responsibility inside of this, and sometimes we carry

a lot of this if we're not if we're not in a relationship

where there's healthy communication, and and giving

and receiving and all the things, this is for another

episode. But I thought I'd just touch on that. And some of us

are building businesses. Hey, I like I know I know this one

super well, and we're navigating health changes, and this is all

going on at once, right? So this is all happening, all these

layers, and the lack of time feels real.

The lack of time feels-it's a real thing. Like we all, we all

have the same amount of hours in a day, and we've only got so

many. And so, what what is priority? What is what is

important compared to what can we do tomorrow or another time?

So, really, is it's valid, and we all experience this. And this

is not about telling. This is not about telling you as an

overwhelmed woman that you simply need to have better time

management. How many of you heard that? You need to manage

your time, brother, honey. Yeah, there's a level of that plays

out. I think there's a level that's important, but it's not

as simple as that. Like tell tell someone who's overwhelmed,

right? You, if you had come to me when I was completely

overwhelmed and chaotic in my life, that I need to be better

time managed. I, I just I didn't want to know any of that stuff.

So sometimes the structure of your life is genuinely

unsustainable, and there is also the question worth asking: How

did my needs become the one thing that can always get

postponed. That is huge.

Postponing our own needs, because when you say I don't

have time for myself, I feel like you we're describing more

more than our schedules, right? Don't have time for myself. It's

not about scheduling thing here. Do we're going to reframe that?

The important things is that we can shift and change these

things, and sometimes we just need this little nudge of a

reframe, ever so small. We often speak about time as though it is

something we discuss. Hiding behind the sofa, I just need to

find the time. Like, where the hell is it hiding, really? But

time is not only found; it is claimed, protected, negotiated.

Sometimes it is created by asking someone else to

participate. Sometimes by lowering a standard, so we can

have sometimes as ladies we have a very very high standard.

Sometimes by disappointing a person who benefited from your

constant availability, and I would imagine a lot of us have

been on both sides of that in our life. Yeah, and for some of

us, we've been on one side or the other more or less.

Sometimes, by saying this cannot continue the same way, is like a

big thing. You sit there and you're having that moment. It's

like this cannot continue the same way. Really, like what am I

doing? And that can feel really confronting because making time

for yourself is not always about adding something lovely to your

calendar. I know, for me, like if I'm talking an old version of

myself here, if I was chaotic, super busy, not able to managing

my like able to manage my own time, and then I'm going to put

this beautiful spa day on the calendar, or I'm going to put

this hike on the calendar, or whatever it is, you know, often

it. it it it that that wasn't enough. Like that wasn't it.

Like that's not the thing. So it may require changing the

arrangements that have depended on your self sacrifice. So it

means taking stock. We're going to take stock of our time. Where

are we? And I look at, I look at our energy and how much we

spend. Energy is-it's a currency. It's a frequency, just

like money, right? So, just like money, where am I spending my

currency and my energy and my frequency, taking stock of the

big picture, where you can pull back a little, you know, and and

start to sort of not be self sacrificing anymore. So the

question is, not only do I have time, it is what keeps happening

because I never make time, and again, it's that same thing.

Switching the question of, you know, do I have time? Go on the

calendar.

Do I have time? It's like what keeps happening. So looking at

the pattern where we're actually self-sacrificing. So it's

looking at the pattern of where we never make time. So, what

happens when we we're waiting? The cost of waiting. This is a.

It's uh. It's different for all of us, but there's a cost in

waiting and delaying, and it it's not a punishment, a cost.

Perhaps you become more resentful, and we were talking

about this in the last episode about when we work when we're on

our own all the time and thinking we have all the answers

and we can do it alone. The cost of waiting, you there's more

exhaustion, more disconnected from your partner, so you start

closing down. You're less patient, less creative, less

able to hear your own desires, perhaps your body becomes

louder, so those symptoms start like flaring up, those different

ailments and conditions, and the body starts yelling and

screaming. Perhaps you stop imagining a different future

because even imagining it feels tiring. You're like, oh god, I'm

exhausted just even thinking about what I want to create,

perhaps years pass while you keep promising, and I don't know

whether you've experienced this, whether you finally get

something that you've been put off and put off, and you be,

you're like, why did I even delay this? You know, once

you've had the realizations. But there's also a thing called

timing as well, where it needs to be aligned, and we need to

learn some lessons along the way. So we often calculate the

cost of taking action, the price of the session, the course, the

childcare, the hour away, the support.

We rarely calculate the cost of continuing unchanged. Question

here I have for you: What is the cost of another year spent

feeling absent from your own life? This is not a question

designed to frighten you. It is designed to bring honesty into

the decision and get to be real. Honest with ourselves, so let's

talk a little bit about reframing money because you know

we do. We often measure things on that that cost of taking

action and support by the price of the session, the course, you

know, the childcare, the hour away, and the other support, or

even the retreat we might want to go to, and our heart is just

calling us to go. We can make if it's possible, and if it can

happen, we can make it happen. By the way, so reframing money.

Let's talk about that. So money is real again. Another currency.

It's a frequency, and financial limitations are real. I'm.

This is all valid. I'm not saying, oh, you need to go, you

need to make that trip happen to that luxury place that's going

to cost you. Need you to remortgage your house. I'm, I'm

not saying any of that here. Um, this is all grounded in, and

this is, you know, what I'm chatting to you about is like

we're taking baby steps. Remember the other episodes.

We're taking step by step, and I will never tell you to spend

money that you do not have. Enter into debts that put

yourself in danger and prove that you are committed to your

healing. You know, commit to your healing. You need to do

this. No, this is all not coming from that. So empowerment is not

pressure. There's no pressure when we're empowered. When we're

making choices and decisions that are aligned for us, we

there's no pressure there. It just feels like we're in flow.

But the thing with money also reveals our priorities, our

beliefs, and our patterns-things that can be playing out from a

long time ago. So many of us have learnt to consider

investment in investments in themselves optional, while

everything and everyone else remains essential. So again,

it's that thing of putting ourselves last and putting

putting everybody else before us, so we spend on the

household, on our partners, children, in our business,

gifts, responsibilities, repairs.

But when it comes to our own support, we find ourselves

asking, "Do I really need this? Sometimes the answer is no. Not

every offering is right, you know, and that's where

discernment comes in. We don't want to be become a course

junkie or a retreat junkie. We some offers are just not right

for us; they're not aligned. Not every purchase is wise. Cracies!

I I've spent so much money on self development and training,

and some of those containers and trainings that I've done, I

walked away going, did did I really get value there? And so,

not, you know, I tried to pull the positive from everything. So

then, not everything is doom and gloom, and going, oh, I didn't

get value. I have, but I'm saying we do also make purchase

decisions that aren't always entirely aligned, and sometimes

the question itself reveals how much difficulty it is for you to

believe that you are worth the resources. So the invitation is

not to spend impulsively. I've been there. I remember little

story. I remember being very much in a space.

This was before I left to travel overseas, and I remember very

much being in a space of feeling. I've had this a couple

of times in my life actually feeling very, I had it feel like

I had this big void inside of me, and so I would shop, and I

would buy things, and I would have this momentary feeling of

feeling filled up, and my cup is full, and like a new piece of

clothing or this or that or new shoes or whatever it was, it was

often clothing, and i've I've had I've been in many situations

where I've maxed out credit cards and spent money that

wasn't mine, and then not being able to pay it back, and that is

not that's that's not helping the situation. That's not

something. This isn't a reason to now go out and get a credit

card and start spending ridiculously and spontaneously

on all these crazy things. It really isn't.

We need to still make wise decisions, and we still need to

check in with ourselves. And so this is us really checking in

with who we are and making decisions that are choices for

our highest good, and it making like a conscious decision rather

than automatically excluding yourself either. So there's this

beautiful balance in this dance that we do. So the other side of

it is, you know, because we can get stuck in the. Cycle. I know

I have done this in the past, where I've got stuck in that

cycle of thinking that I need all this money to improve

myself. But there's there's a lot of things that don't always

cost money or a lot of money. Like there's ways we can support

ourselves in this process where we can do things like finding

free community resources, attending support groups, going

for a walk. There's your journal, resting, borrowing a

book, listen to this podcast or a podcast, speak honestly with a

friend, make the medical appointment available through

your healthcare system.

Create a boundary to stop doing something that was never yours

to carry. That's a huge one. So money can expand access to

support, but the first shift is often recognizing that support

is allowed. Okay, let's have a look at how short-term fear,

looking at short-term fear and long-term truth. So this is

another. I'm just offering you something here so we can flip

the narrative again. So short-term thinking asks what

will this cost me today. Long-term thinking also asks,

"What could this give back in my life? So again, like I said in

the previous episodes, we're flipping the narrative, we're

changing the question, we're just asking different questions,

and we're getting a completely different answer when we do

this. So by doing that, when we say, "What would this give back

to my life? instead of going, "What will this cost me today?

So that's like the negative. We're going to switch that to a

more positive. What could this give back to my life? More

energy, clearer decisions, a stronger relationship with my

body, greater confidence, less resentment, more presence, a

return to creativity. Wouldn't that be lovely? And a sense of

possibility. Sometimes taking an hour for yourself feels selfish

because you are only measuring what others lose during that

hour.

Again, switching the positive to the negative, so it's

retraining. We're retraining our whole system. It's not just our

neural pathways in our brain. We're training our bodies to

respond. You are not measuring what becomes possible when you

return more confident, resourced, and alive. So an

empowered decision is not always yes. Sometimes it's a no.

Sometimes it's not yet. Sometimes it is I need more

information. I need to discuss this with my partner. I need a

payment plan. I need a different form of support. I am not ready

for that step, but I am ready for this one. Let's say I'm not

ready for this X step. I'm ready for this one. So I've put

together four questions you can ask yourself, and I'll pop these

in the show notes as well. All of this will be there for you.

Those four questions: When you believe there's no room for

yourself, ask. And if some of you are following along, I'll go

a little bit slower.

I do sometimes have a tendency to get excited when I speak and

speak a little bit fast. So, number one: What support do I

really have but have not asked for? What standard could I lower

without anything terrible happening? What responsibility

am I carrying that could be shared? What is one form of

support I can honestly choose now? And so that next step

doesn't have to be an expensive one, and it doesn't need to be

dramatic. It just needs to be honest and truthful for you, and

in alignment for where you are now. And now a little reflection

for you. Complete this sentence for those that have been

following along. The space I am ready to reclaim is. You just

add your words in there. The space I am ready to reclaim is,

and some examples it might be your physical space. You might

just be reclaiming the physicality of where you are,

time, creative space, emotional space. You might.

Reclaiming a morning or an evening, or a conversation that

you've been longing for, a part of yourself that has been

waiting. What would it mean to stop treating your own presence

as the least important item on your list? And so today, the

space I am ready to reclaim is, and let it be your declaration,

not a demand that you transform your whole life overnight. So

we're not we're avoiding all of that. We're not doing that.

We're not pulling the rug. It's just a beginning. You'll find

the community link to Sacred She Reset Circle if you'd like to

join, and maybe you'd like to share in the community or reach

out or put some comments here. But everything will be in the

show notes. It has been an honor reclaiming and making the

declarations with you today. I hope this has been helpful, and

I look forward to be spending time with you next time. Bye for

now.