How To Feel Good Being With Yourself [Episode #468]

This week’s topic is: How To Feel Good Being With Yourself

Our topic today is very much related to what’s going on for all of us right now, which is How To Feel Good Being With Yourself. This is an unprecedented time where we’re all home. Sheltering at home and spending more time with ourselves more than ever.

I think that there’s a lot of blessings that come with that. It can be very confrontational. There is a lot of talk around this topic and it’s great to share. I love to hear these timely topics come up so we can support each other.

It’s certainly not an easy time in many ways. However, I think that we can focus and shift on some positives here and hopefully come out on the other side stronger and more connected to ourselves, to our bodies, to our true beauty, to our voice and our authenticity.

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out!

Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/

[Questions Answered]

Ella – Nevada

I don’t think I’ve been this alone with my own thoughts in a long time. Do you have any tips on how to work out any negative thinking around feeling helpless?

Aubrey – Michigan

I really miss people. How can I fill my time in when it’s just me? I live alone.

Lily – Delaware

What do you do when you’re home Kimberly? I don’t have a yard and far from parks to walk and pretty much have the inside of my house, how can I not go out of my mind during this pandemic?

Grace – Hawaii

I feel so negative. Being quarantined has really forced me to take a closer look at my current situation. Please share some tips on ways to make it through right now.

Inspirational Thought Of The Week

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” – Leo Tolstoy

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Want to know what to expect from other episodes of the “Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder”? My passion is to inspire and empower you to be your most authentic and beautiful self. We offer interviews with top experts, my personal philosophies and experiences, as well as answers to community-based questions around topics such as health, beauty, nutrition, yoga, spirituality and personal growth.

The intention of the Feel Good Podcast is to well…help you really Feel Good in your body, mind and spirit! Feeling Good means feeling peaceful, energized, whole, uniquely beautiful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of your perfectly imperfect life. This podcast is as informative and full of practical tips and take-aways as it is inspirational. I am here to support you in being your very best! I have so much love and gratitude for you. Thank you for tuning in and being part of the community :).

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Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• How To Switch Your Mindset To Love Your Body More!
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• Self-Love with Grace Sylke

Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: Hey Beauties. Welcome back to our Thursday Q and A podcast where we love to hear what you are thinking and wondering about and how we can support you further. Our topic today is very much related to what’s going on for all of us right now, which is How To Feel Good Being With Yourself and this is an unprecedented time in all of our lifetimes where we are being home, sheltering at home and spending more time with ourselves more than ever. I think that there’s a lot of blessings that come with that. I think it can be very confrontational. I think that there is just a lot to talk about around this topic and it’s great to share. I love to hear these timely topics come up so we can support each other. It’s certainly not an easy time in many ways, but again, I think that we can focus and shift on some positives here in this time and hopefully come out on the other side stronger and more connected to ourselves and to our bodies and to our true beauty, to our voice, to our authenticity.

Leave a Review and Subscribe on Itunes

Kimberly: We have some great tips and tools that we’re going to share with you today. As always, before we jump in, I just want to give you a little reminder maybe especially that you are not commuting and you have some more time to please leave us a review on iTunes and it’s just a great way to give some love back to the show to exchange energy so to speak. These reviews can be very short and they’re free to do and pretty easy, just head over to iTunes and leave a review. We all know how important reviews are these days.

Kimberly: You can also subscribe to the show there and that way you have this constant flux of inspiration, good vibes, good information coming into you, which is really important right now especially to nurture our mental health and to keep our spirits up and just to stay feeling fresh. I think information and ideas are a way to freshen up our energy so to speak. I think it’s a really wonderful thing to do for yourself. And of course it’s free and there’s no reason really not to. Yeah, that being said, I want to give a huge shout out to our Kaitlyn who is my partner on this Thursday Q and A show. She has been with me since the beginning. She has prepared the question.

Kimberly: Hi Kay. How is your quarantining time going?

Katelyn: Oh, it is going over here. I have to say, I admittedly didn’t feel as affected until just this week with moving because I was busy unpacking and putting together furniture, and then just kind of leave me kind of settled in feeling a little bit more alone and being in a new place and not really being able to go anywhere. I do feel grateful that I live by the beach. I have been able to get out and do beach walks and exercise over there.

Katelyn: But yeah, I thought this topic would be timely because it is a little difficult to spend time with ourselves in a different way. Sometimes we’ll say, oh we’re really spending time with ourselves but it feels just with whatever things going on in the world, this feeling that I feel a lot of energy from that of the weight of what’s happening and trying to take a step back and think outside of my own little bubble. At the end of the day, we are still effected by our world and everything. So yeah, I’m definitely in tune with this topic and looking forward to what you’re going to share today.

Kimberly: You know what’s interesting, Kay, is usually when we think of retreats, being Westerners, we think of going on a yoga retreat to a tropical, beautiful place where we eat food and do classes with a bunch of people and it’s fun and we have beach time and it’s a nice, enjoyable vacation, but there are much more stringent retreats that the Zen Buddhists and other yogis have been talking about for hundreds and the thousands of years. Not hundreds of thousands, hundreds of years, thousands of years about being alone. Vipassana is a kind of meditation practice that’s 10 days where there’s times where you come together and you may hear a little bit of information, but most of the time you’re alone without distraction. It really does create a lot of growth in a lot of people.

Kimberly: Just for me, spending time in certain Asheron’s in the Himalayas and in India, it’s not easy to be confronted with being with yourself, but I will say as we’ll start to get into, it can create tremendous growth and tremendous healing because this is a time where all these just lots of distractions. I mean, we can still watch TV all day if we choose to or be on the internet all day. But if we choose, this can be a time where we start to really connect with ourselves. We can start to become aware of tendencies, of emotions, of feelings, of patterns, of needs that we have that we’ve never really acknowledged of so many different things. I think this is a really potent opportunity and just like at any opportunity, we don’t have to take it, but as we’ll get in to today, right now, I think that there are some practices that we can put into place to help facilitate this growth.

Katelyn: Absolutely. I was actually watching like a documentary series. I forgot what channel it was on, but it was featuring different areas of the world. There was this one in South Korea where they have this solitude center where you can’t have your cell phone. You’re just actually alone with yourself and you’re removed from work and all of those things like where you actually have that time and space because a lot of feel like we feel like we’re alone, but I know for me, I’ll go on my phone and troll around and kill time doing stuff where that actually means I’m not sitting with myself, so just to bring that up. A lot of times I think people think they’re alone, but a lot of times I’m avoiding being alone with myself.

Kimberly: Yeah. I used to, as soon as I would get in the car, I would call a friend and it would be a time to fill. This is before I had Bubby and I was driving around LA. Now, I can just see that I really like that alone time. A lot of times now I don’t turn on the music and I’m just there. I shared this with you-

Katelyn: Like, purposeful alone time. Yeah.

Kimberly: Yeah, yeah. I think that there’s levels. I think we continue to grow. That wouldn’t have felt good to me a couple of years ago, but we’re all on this journey that keeps evolving, so that’s where I am now.

Kimberly: Anyways, Kay, we’re just rambling on. Let’s hear some of the questions.

Question 1: I don’t think I’ve been this alone with my own thoughts in a long time. Do you have any tips on how to work out any negative thinking around feeling helpless?

Katelyn: Yes. Yes. Okay. We have Ella living in Nevada. I don’t think I’ve been this alone with my own thoughts in a long time. Do you have any tips on how to work out any negative thinking around feeling helpless?

Kimberly: Hey, Ella. First of all, giving you a huge virtual hug out there in Nevada. Hope you have some beautiful places you can walk to. I’ve been around the Red Rocks and I know the land there is really beautiful and has almost a spiritualness to it. I really love Nevada. So first of all, sending lots of love there. I do love this question. I think that as I was mentioning earlier, it’s a challenging time, but there could be great healing and growth that happens from this. So you said two words that really jumped out at me in your question. The first was thoughts/thinking, and the second is feeling. So I think this is a really great time for us to pay attention to our thoughts and to our thought patterns and our feelings, and they’re actually very, very different. Thoughts can go on and around and around. We can get into loopholes. We all do it. It’s patterns. Katelyn and I were just talking about this earlier today, weren’t we, K?

Katelyn: We were.

Kimberly: Your thoughts can trap you because they can keep you feeling justified or validated. They can keep a fear cycling around in your life. This great book that I reference quite often called Letting Go by Dr. David Hawkins, that’s one of the first distinctions he makes, is between thoughts and feelings. Feeling is actually useful. Feeling our feelings requires us tuning into our body, and if we can stop thinking consciously for a while and tune into feeling the sensations in our body and where they arise, that’s where the beginning of healing starts to come from. We want to deeply feel our feelings. It’s sort of like eating something that doesn’t digest well. It has to pass through, otherwise it gets stuck in there and it can become toxic and just poison our bodies.

Kimberly: As Dr. David Hawkins says, it takes about 10 minutes to deeply feel a feeling, and then it starts to cycle through. It starts to come out of you almost like a thorn or a splinter. And when we can start to have space like we do right now with this self-quarantine to actually pay attention to our feelings, this is a skill that we can take with us past this quarantine. This is how we can really grow.

Kimberly: The steps are, number one, to distinguish between thoughts and feelings. You know, the thoughts, it’s in your head. You just notice when you start to think, “Oh my gosh, I’m so helpless. What am I going to do? The world is crashing down. Everything’s changing.” These are thoughts, thoughts, thoughts. Try to put the pause button on the thoughts for a moment and re-tune into your body. You can do a short meditation. We have free guided meditations for you guys, or just simply close your eyes, take a couple of deep breaths, and feel what’s going on in your body, and start to create that awareness.

Kimberly: Sometimes I do a scan from the top of my head all the way down. I tend to hold a lot of tension in my gut, which is why I think I had so much constipation for a long time. I also hold things in my throat in my chest, heart area, so I would start to identify where it is in your body and start to let yourself feel things. And when you feel them, then, number one, they start to pass through, and number two, you realize it’s not as bad as you thought, because while it wasn’t so great passing through, sort of like when FDR said, “The thing we have to fear the most is fear itself,” when we start to become comfortable with our feelings, it means we’re growing. It means, when Carl Jung talks about the shadow side, we’re actually shedding light on different parts of ourselves. Old wounds, tendencies, old fears that are being triggered now by this whole situation can start to come up. We can start to reacquaint ourselves to learn, to let healing take place.

Kimberly: But the first step in that is really deeply feeling. So we can all spend time doing that, as confronting as it is. It does require some courage, but again, it’s tremendously healing. I would couple that with also journaling, so just you can write out what you were feeling, what came up, where you felt in your body. You know, the patterns of thoughts that triggered it, and you could just start to learn and grow. So this is a process, Ella. I would say we’re going to probably be quarantine at least for a couple more weeks, so just start to get into this flow and realize everything is going to be okay, you’re going to be okay, but definitely let yourself have that space to feel what’s coming up, and just know that there’s a deep healing that can come from it as well. And check out that book. You can get it on Amazon, online or wherever, and that also offers a lot of great insight between thoughts and feelings and how we can heal.

Katelyn: That’s such a good point to bring up also, because a lot of people don’t even know the difference, right? Even just me, I’ve heard that a bunch of times. I’ve read his book, and it was a good reminder for me. Sometimes we just get stuck in the story we tell ourselves in our thoughts, and don’t disconnect that we could release the feeling, but sometimes our thoughts don’t let us because we just keep playing that roundabout. So that’s super helpful for everybody just to … I was taking a note while you were talking to Steven, for me to put my post-it on my bulletin board. “Thought versus feeling.” I think that’s a good quick, tangible check-in for everybody.

Kimberly: Yeah. The thoughts will never end, so a million thoughts can keep coming and coming and coming. Whereas if we tune into the feeling, there is a beginning and an end. It will get to the end of the well. It doesn’t last strongly for more than a finite time frame. Whether grief, or anger, or sadness, when we deeply feel into it, Hawkins says that the lifespan of a deep feeling is usually, the intensity is about 10 minutes. Whereas I can sit here and justify why you such and such wronged me, or I was right and they were wrong, and that can go on for hours and hours and days.

Katelyn: Right. Right.

Kimberly: So the feeling part, and listen, it doesn’t mean that there is an action we need to take or a conversation we need to have or whatever, but we can come at it from a much more calm level, rational place if we first process the feeling and not get caught up in the tornado of thought.

Katelyn: Yes. Everybody I think needs that reminder. We could do a whole show just on this topic alone for sure.

Kimberly: Yeah.

Question 2: I really miss people. How can I fill my time when it’s just me? I live alone.

Katelyn: It’s deep. So let’s see how we can help Aubrey, who’s living in Michigan. “I really miss people. How can I fill my time when it’s just me? I live alone.”

Kimberly: Hey, Aubrey. Thank you so much for being part of our community and for your question. I totally understand. It is definitely strange and different and challenging to not be able to go to dinner with people, or just meet up for tea, or just see people at a restaurant or a park, and so I acknowledge that it is definitely, as I said, a challenging and unprecedented time. At the same time, what I love about this question, what I love about what it brings up is this idea that we can grow to be more connected with ourselves and to love ourselves more, and to like being alone with ourselves.

Kimberly: I used to fill every second where I didn’t have to be by myself. Like I said, I would be on the phone when I was in the car, or I would schedule all these get togethers. I would have people come over to get ready to go out. I mean, it was really packed with a lot of people around, which is lovely and wonderful, but it is a form of distraction. And there was a quote that I started, Recipes for your Perfectly Imperfect Life, it was from some of the notes of Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao, but it was basically, “In order to let go of yourself, you have to accept yourself.” Something like that. I’m paraphrasing.

Kimberly: It was this idea of, like you said, K, sometimes we think we’re alone, but we have all these other distractions, and it’s really wonderful to start to know yourself more, which sounds really funny, because they’re like, “Well, I’m here all the time.” But to actually really connect with yourself, to feel the feelings in your body, just like I was speaking about with Ella. To meditate, to breathe, to connect with your body, to connect with its needs. I think that if we devote some of our time every day consciously to doing that in a loving way, it could be part of your morning routine and your evening routine to just meditate and breathe for a couple of moments, to sit with your body, maybe to put one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly to connect with yourself physically.

Kimberly: I think that that’s really foundational, and again, we can come out on the other side feeling really connected to our body’s needs, all the cornerstones. So food, body, emotions, and spirit. We can connect more to our food needs, and when we get to know ourselves and what our body’s really craving and really asking for. We can connect with our bodies, where we feel sensations, the way that our body wants us to move at that time. Emotionally, we can start to know our feelings, and spiritually we start to connect with ourselves below the surface, below just what we look like, but to really our soul and our unique expression of life.

Kimberly: And then that’s first, and then secondly we are social creatures. There is this aspect, we are tribal, we do thrive being connected with other people. We do learn from other people as well. So I would encourage you, Aubrey, to find supportive communities online. There’s a lot of Zoom yoga classes happening right now. I’m doing an Instagram Live, Solluna Circle Time, every day at noon Pacific Standard Time, so you can check that out, where you can ask me questions and we can feel like we’re sitting together. Of course we have our online Solluna Circle program, which has a private Facebook community as part of the offering. You can make it more of an effort to reconnect with friends and family and to FaceTime with them. Especially if you live alone, seeing people on the phone can feel really comforting, and supportive community is huge right now for mental health and stress. So besides being comfortable with yourself, I definitely recommend carving out some of that into your daily practice and putting some effort towards that as well.

Katelyn: I think those are such helpful tips. So many people are technically alone at this time, and even if you’re not alone and you are living with others during this time, that creates a whole other element. I know all my friends with children, that adds another element. So we are definitely here for everybody in the community, as Kimberly mentioned, on the lives, and over on mysolluna.com. We’re still publishing content on a weekly basis. You can sign up for our newsletter and get those in your inbox several times a week so you have something to look forward to there, and it just really takes a shift, right? And during this time and we are dynamic, and if we stay fluid we’ll all get through it together.

Break

Katelyn: All right Beauties, we are going to take a break and then Kimberly will be back and she’ll answer the last two questions.

Kimberly: All right, Beauties. I am back from our break. I love this topic, how to feel good being with yourself, which is really, K, the essence of true beauty. I think that this is some foundational healing that can create more confidence in our lives, because when we feel natural with ourselves, when we like ourselves, when we feel good with ourselves, I think that we become more confident and more magnetic, and there’s this easefulness that people want to be around. So again, as we spoke about earlier, it’s for sure a challenging time. It is a self-imposed sort of isolation retreat, but there is a lot of strength that can come from this time and this opportunity. So I’d love us to reframe it in that positive light as well, even though obviously we know it’s challenging, but there’s a lot of positives here too, K.

Katelyn: Yeah, I agree. I think when you learn how to love yourself, I know even for me, like I started working with you over six years ago, and I transitioned to working from home, and I was working in the city, and it was very busy and stuff like that, and I kind of went through this transition years ago, and I had to make shifts about things I didn’t like about myself to really love myself. There was just parts of me and things I did, how I treated people, that would eat me up inside, and I just didn’t like myself. And now I can go, I always act this way so I can feel good about myself. I don’t feel bad about talking about people behind their backs, or, doing certain things I used to do at my old job or just in life. So everybody, I think we can look at it as, “How can we grow?” I mean, that’s my type of personality. I’m always looking to evolve. So taking a positive in whatever way you want to, you choose or don’t choose during this time, you definitely can find some seeds of hope, and just some positives during this difficult time.

Kimberly: Yeah. It is really peeling away layer after layer. When we take away all the distractions, we very much are left with ourselves and it’s confronting, but again, I keep saying this, it’s like doing one of those real hardcore yoga isolation retreats that is beyond just the comfy fancy hotels and the beautiful meals. But this is, wow. Distractions can fill up our day, and then years go by and we don’t really get to grow. So we’ll see what the rest of the questions are about, but-

Question 3: What do you do when you’re home, Kimberly? I don’t have a yard and I’m far from parks to walk, and pretty much just have the inside of my house. How can I not go out of my mind during this pandemic?

Katelyn: Yeah. I think we can dig more into that and phrase it in the position of the questions. But we have a great one from Lily who’s living in Delaware. “What do you do when you’re home, Kimberly? I don’t have a yard and I’m far from parks to walk, and pretty much just have the inside of my house. How can I not go out of my mind during this pandemic?”

Kimberly: Lily, I love this question. I think that there is the physical space of your house, and then I think there’s the internal infinite space inside of you, right? So no matter where we are, we have ourselves. We have a lot to work with. Practically speaking, I will say what I do is I set up my day. I do create some systems and some scheduling so it feels structured to an extent. So I do feel that within structure, we can feel safe and we can feel positive and we can feel productive. So I still do my morning routine, everything from making my bed and doing my tongue scraping and my face washing, and I change out of my pajamas, and I do my hot water with lemon and my probiotics and my GGS. So that gives me a structure.

Kimberly: Then depending on what’s going on with Bubby, we have our playtime in the morning, and then when he’s napping, I usually do podcasts or I do some more recording work and just like that. I’m in different rooms of the house. I encourage Bubby, like, “Oh, let’s play in your room. Let’s go outside. Let’s go in the living room.” So we do move around, which I think a change of environment, even if you’re stuck inside, you can maybe be in your kitchen, you can be in your living room, you can meditate in your bedroom. You can set up digital boundaries about how much you’re on your phone and on the internet, and really limited to certain times of day so you don’t feel like your attention and your time is just being sucked away by other people and things that are beyond your control. You can actually consciously set that up, and have an evening routine where you take care of your body and your mind and your emotions and meditate, do a whole thing.

Kimberly: So even if it’s just a kind of a basic framework, I do think it’s good to set up a schedule. Some people I’ve heard saying they change things up every four hours. For me it’s a little bit more frequent than that. Being a mom, being with Bubby, just some more dynamic time frames where we’re playing outside, wherever, in here. He naps for like two hours, sometimes three hours, so that’s when I really do crank.

Kimberly: So what I also do when I’m home is I … You don’t need space to read, to write, to feel creative. I think this is a great time to work on a new project or a new hobby. I know, K, you talked about a new craft where you’re pressing pieces into paper, like jewelry or crystals or whatever. And Jon, my husband, actually took up online ukulele lessons.

Katelyn: Oh, that’s so cool.

Kimberly: He got this little ukulele and then he was actually showing me last night this online program, and it was like $8 a month to get on, and you actually learn … There’s a guy doing a video and underneath there’s these very simple chords. So he’s using this time to teach himself ukulele. In my spare time, I’ve been taking a lot of baths and reading again when I have more time, because I love to read. It’s one of my favorite things. I have at least three or four bucks that are on my list, and that helps me feel inspired, and that new information and new ideas are pouring in.

Kimberly: So like I said, Lily, schedules, digital boundaries. Maybe sit and think, “Hey, what’s one thing I could learn to do right now?” Is it a craft? Whatever you’re interested in. It could be working on sewing something, or a new makeup technique, or beauty masks, or instruments, or books. We can still get things delivered. You can still order a bunch of stuff online and use that time too. So yeah, I would say, Lily, try to reframe it as, “I’m going crazy,” to, “Wow, this is such an amazing opportunity to work on a new hobby or some new skill, and I’m going to use some of my time for that.”

Katelyn: It always feels good to be creative. I actually set up my bookshelves that I was able to put out a bunch of my art stuff that I hadn’t had since I was divorced and moved and everything was in boxes, so it felt really good. So I agree. It’s so great to tap into the arts or whatever feels good for you during this time.

Kimberly: I agree.

Question 4: I feel so negative. Being quarantined has really forced me to take a closer look at my current situation. Can you please share some tips on a way to make it through right now?

Katelyn: Yeah. Whatever makes you happy. All right guys. We have one more question from Grace, who’s living in Hawaii. “I feel so negative. Being quarantined has really forced me to take a closer look at my current situation. Can you please share some tips on a way to make it through right now?”

Kimberly: So Grace, sending you lots of love out in Hawaii. I know that definitely when we’re confronted with distractions fall away, we can be confronted with negativity that is underneath the surface, and things that we haven’t perhaps paid attention to or we’ve pushed down, we’ve not dealt with. This is a confronting time, like I said, for sure. So I will say, just like I was saying first with Ella, it’s a great time to feel your feelings and to not push things down, because it’s almost like constipation of your emotions, and it doesn’t go away. It just ends up clogging, and they can come out in different forms, whether it be inflammation or pain, insomnia, anger, anxiety. So we really want to process what’s going on here.

Kimberly: I think that it’s also really great to connect with nature. Especially if you’re in Hawaii, if you can connect with some plants, gardening, I don’t know if you have room to do some herb boxes, or you can go for walks outside. But I have found that connecting with nature really does have a soothing effect, because there’s the science of the negative ions that are given off from the earth surface. There’s the science of the mood elevating properties of sunshine, and we can’t deny that we are part of nature, and so just simple ways to connect, I think, helps to create balance.

Kimberly: I would encourage you in your spare times, maybe it’s meditating outside, or like I said, doing some gardening, which I have felt really healing for me right now during this period. Me and hubby and Bubby started our garden back up, and we have three big planters and an herb box, and just going out there sometimes … We all feel it. Sometimes I feel cooped up. I start to feel frustrated. I definitely felt more emotional and frustrated last week, as Kay, you and I were talking about, than I had the whole time. I’m also nine months pregnant. I have a lot of hormones, so there’s a lot of things going on, but I know that if I go outside and take a little walk, or I go into my garden, there’s something about nature that helps us feel really present and kind of sooth those feelings, those patterns, those moods.

Kimberly: The other thing is I think music is such a powerful vibration, so one way that I like to shift my mood is to listen to different Spotify radio stations. So I’ll find a song I like and go to that radio station. I’ve been particularly into wordless music. Let me just pull this up right now on my Spotify. Garth Stevenson, there’s this song called The Southern Sea, which I find really soothing. He’s an amazing cellist, and beautiful, and so I’ll go to that radio station, and I find that shifting the music channel helps me shift the channel in my mind.

Kimberly: I also, like I mentioned, take a soothing bath. I’ll do a meditation. I’ll just breathe. A guided meditation can be a great way to break out of this negative pattern, Grace. Changing your environment, even if it’s from one room to the next. Putting some heat in your body. Having a ginger tea so that you feel connected back to your body. There’s all these little things we can do, but I just want to say that sometimes it is healing and powerful and important to let the negativity rise up, to let the feelings come up. Feel it. Don’t just push it down. And then again, create positivity, and nature time, and music around the rest of your day so you’re nurturing positivity, but at the same time we’re not distracting away from not feeling anything at all, if that makes sense.

Katelyn: It totally makes sense, and I think it’s really helpful to have these tangible tips and ideas and suggestions for people to take. And I’m sure from your suggestion, things will roll in their mind as it has for me, and everybody else, that you end up making your own … I almost call it like a comfort toolbox. I love the toolbox analogy of just you have the things that you can do when you don’t feel great, and even if you don’t feel like doing them, they do end up making you feel better.

Katelyn: I couldn’t agree more about the outside space. I have a little garden that I set up plants, and they just make me happy, right?

Kimberly: Yeah.

Thought of the Week

Katelyn: There’s just something about having something live and living, especially in an apartment, just feels really, really nice. So thank you so much for sharing all these amazing tips and helpful suggestions, and as always, we’d love to just see if there’s anything you’re thinking to round out today’s theme.

Kimberly: So I was thinking about this idea of time as a really precious commodity. And you know, sometimes we’re so busy that we complain that we don’t have enough time, and now there is a lot of time on our hands, and it’s confrontational. And then we say, “Oh, we don’t like that either.” So this quote comes from Leo Tolstoy, who wrote War and Peace, and he writes, “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” So I like it because I think sometimes when we hear the word warrior, we think about some bloody battle. But just like in the Bhagavad Gita, this analogy of Krishna talking to Arjuna, it’s the battle taking place in ancient India, and it’s an analogy for the battle of life, the battle with yourself to grow, the battle to love yourself, the battle to overcome the senses that pull us in different directions.

Kimberly: So remember that time is a really powerful ally right now. We can kind of lament it, and feel like, “Oh god, I’m so bored.” Or, “I don’t like it.” Or this opportunity to really take a positive approach with it and use this time to feel, to journal, to meditate, to learn a new skill or hobby, to set up our day, to start connecting with our bodies. And this isn’t going to go on forever, so I say enjoy the time as best you can. Use it to grow. Think through some goals that you want to create for yourself right now. It could be, “I want to learn to play the flute. I want to be more comfortable with myself. I want to grow in confidence. I want to learn to cook some healthier dishes.” Whatever it is, and self-regulate. Look at those goals, work on them a little bit here, a little bit there, and you’ll come out on this other side feeling satisfied.

Kimberly: I just think, “Hey, in a couple months when we come out, we look back on this time what are we going to remember from it? What are we going to get from it?” One thing I’ll say personally is I have really felt an increase in gratitude for my family. Especially John, my husband, just how he’s come into my life and helped me grow. How he is with Bubby. The way Bubby teaches me so much about life and patience, the other warrior weapon mentioned here. So I feel that, again, when we refocus on the core, core things in our life, we can grow, and hopefully really come out stronger on the other side of this.

Kimberly: I wish you guys all the love. I hope you take away some of this show and apply it to your own amazing life. I know it is a challenging time, but I think it can be a really beautiful time in some ways. I wish you all the best. We have so many resources to support you right now. As I mentioned, we’re doing our Instagram Live every day at noon Pacific time at @_kimberlysnyder. Come over, connect with us, share. We have our free ebook of The Four Cornerstones, which is a really great resource for tips, recipes, practices, for getting started. We have our online Solluna Circle program. We have supportive products like our SBO probiotics, our skincare. We have free guided meditations, free recipes. There’s a lot, and we really want to be here for you, so thank you, thank you so much for being in our community, and we send you a huge virtual hug.