How to build a sustainable lifestyle that includes self-care as a new parent
In this episode of the Learn With Less podcast, Ayelet chats with Sophia Salazar, a self care advocate, life coach, mother, and co-founder of BirthBabyBody.
Sophia believes that pregnancy, birth, and motherhood is a unique opportunity to harness and share your creative power as a woman, and she is the co-founder of BirthBabyBody, whose mission is to end the cycle of stress, information overload, and feelings of “not enough” that are present in modern motherhood.
We cover Sophia’s background, and how she came to do the work she’s doing today, her definition of “self-care,” ways to create sustainable self-care habits, and the difference between “sustainability” and “balance.” Finally, Sophia shares her top tips and resources for practicing self-care in all areas of life.
QUICK ACCESS TO LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
BirthBabyBody: online education for modern parents and professionals
Emotional Agility, by Dr. Susan David (Amazon affiliate link)
TED Talk with Dr. Susan David on The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage
Learn With Less™ Curriculum, a parent education and parent support hub for parents, caregivers, and educators of infants and toddlers
Learn With Less podcast episode: Perinatal Mood Changes and Postpartum Mood Disorders, with Dr. Katayune Kaeni
Learn With Less podcast episode: Family Wellness and Self-Care for New Moms, with Shannon Shearn of Savage Wellness
TEXT TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE
Ayelet: Welcome to episode 78 of the Learn With Less podcast! Today, I am speaking with Sophia Salazar, a self care advocate, life coach, mother, partner and former motorcyclist, world traveler, photographer, New Mexican transplant, women’s college graduate and so many other things.
Sophia believes that birth, pregnancy, and motherhood is a unique opportunity to harness and share your creative power as a woman. She is the co-founder of BirthBabyBody, an online educational platform for pregnant and new moms. Sophia, thank you for being here. Welcome to Learn With Less.
Sophia: Thanks for having me, it’s a pleasure to be here!
Ayelet: So, I have asked you to come onto the show today to speak to us about self care and sustainability in early parenthood. But first, I would love it if you could just tell us a bit more about you, and how you got into the work that you’re doing today.
Sophia: Yeah, so basically long story short, when I got pregnant, I had a really intense prenatal anxiety and then we ended up in the NICU with our newborn and that was really hard. And then about eight months postpartum, I had postpartum… I started to get postpartum anxiety really terribly. And so, during that time I was searching for answers to enhance my own wellness and enhance my own self care.
I birthed through a birthing center and in the birthing center model there is a community that’s available to you. We had prenatal yoga classes and all that sort of thing and there was a lot of postpartum support even when I was in the NICU. And I kept wondering like how do we bring that to other women who may be suffering like I am, or just to people in general who are just stressed out by being new parents.
And so that led me to Doctor Katherine Melot who’s a pediatric chiropractor who had the same ideas that I did in terms of bringing online education to people or rather education about self care and wellness to people online. And doing that by having a hub for that type of education and not just focusing on birth prep or pregnancy stuff, but the whole thing, which is a, yeah, a more comprehensive view of pregnancy, preconception birth and postpartum and understanding that postpartum is anytime after you have a child, not just the first six weeks.
Ayelet: Yes. And we have another episode on that with wonderful Dr. Kat Kaeni, who’s a maternal health and postpartum perinatal expert. So yay. So this really is, again, we’re looking at things holistically. I think oftentimes we do feel like, oh, you’re pregnant and then you have a baby.
And those are two separate things. But of course they’re all pieces of the same pot and we feel very different after we’ve had a child. We’re different people. We have a big, big shift in our own personal identity.
So I would love for you to speak a little bit, first of all, just to define for us in your mind that term “self care.” Because I think, you know, over the last few years it’s become a big buzzword in the whole wellness space. But really what does self care entail and what does it mean to you?
Sophia: So, self care is anything that you do for yourself that promotes physical, emotional, mental, financial, and professional wellbeing. So this is the part where I take a more comprehensive view. It’s not about just, like, getting a massage. I mean, obviously, and I think that if you’re part of the wellness community, like your understanding that self care is a little bit more comprehensive than that, but it’s something that like, it’s a daily practice. It’s not a luxury.
It’s not, you know, a vacation in the summer. It’s not like alone time once every couple of months. It’s not that, it’s creating a habit of wellness and that looks differently to different people. It depends on what brings you fulfillment, spiritual, like fills your own personal cup. And so I often use the analogy, you know, when you’re sitting on a plane and they’re telling you like to prepare for the oxygen masks and all that sort of thing.
They always say like put your own oxygen mask on first before helping other people. The same thing goes to like filling your own cup first, because then you’ll have something to give to others. And I think oftentimes we get very depleted, especially when you’re taking care of other people.
And, and I understand that like in having a child, like things change and sometimes you do go, your own personal self gets put to the back a little bit because that baby is a priority, but it’s remembering like, oh, you’re still there and you still need to fill that cup in order to be able to give to not only your child, but to your relationship, to your career and to your friendships.
And so I think, yeah, I just think it’s a little bit more comprehensive and I think that there are things that we can do to ensure that we’re practicing self care every day. And that has to do with understanding our own personal values and emotions and all that sort of thing.
Ayelet: Yeah. So all right. How the heck you do that? Yeah, how can we create sustainable self care habits? And is that the same thing as finding balance?
Sophia: So I think the term balance is very misleading. I think it often makes us think of like a pie chart or you know, or the scales where it’s like where you have to equally give to all parts of your life and that’s somehow balance. But rather I like to reframe it and think about personal sustainability, because what is sustainable for you is different than what’s sustainable for my life, one. And two, we have to take into consideration the season of life that we’re in.
This is something that the leadership coach Michael Hyatt talks about when you’re thinking of making any kind of goal, or different kind of change in your life is, you know, right now, if, if you’re a parent, that’s the season of life that you’re in and that, prioritizing different things in your life is going to look differently than when it did in your 20s or what it’s going to look like in your sixties. And so you really have to be cognizant and take that into consideration.
The other thing is, if you’re looking at sustainability and you’re thinking like, okay, well how do I prioritize wellness and self care? You have to take a look at your values. What is most – and values are what’s really important to you in your life, your convictions, that sort of thing. Again, they differ for different people. My values, my top three values right now are stability, security, creativity, and giving.
And then when you have, you identify your values in order to create less psychological stress for yourself, you act according to your values. Because when you don’t act according to your values, that causes cognitive dissonance, which is psychological stress, right?
So when you’re acting according to your values, then things start to kind of feel more in line. And what I believe is that we as a society don’t value self care. So it’s going to be, so it’s going to take a little extra work to say like, oh, personal wellness is actually a really important thing in my life.
And it’s a value. And once you identify that, then you can start taking action toward it. So for me, I’m an introvert mostly, and I’m also highly sensitive and I know that my self care or wellness involves having a long time. When I exercise for example, yeah I do like go to a gym, but I like to stretch in the morning by myself.
You know, some people may be differently. Maybe you like to go out and jog with a group of people. You really have to be self aware to understand like what’s your personality, like what are your tendencies towards, and then you know, and what fills your own personal cup. And one thing I want to point out is like when you’re taking action towards your values (and we all know this) emotions, certain emotions come up, right? There are always emotions in life.
And I think we, we easily label them into positive and negative emotion, but I just consider them all human emotion and you know, we’ll talk about the challenging emotions in terms of, you know, feeling like you’re resentful, right? Like, I think that’s a thing that comes up for a lot of women is, or parents, stay at home parents, etc., who feel like, oh, I’m doing all of the, you know, management of the household and this other person isn’t stepping up.
Or, you know, why am I always stuck with the dishes? Or, you know, and one partner may be, may feel like, why am I always stuck with planning all of the social events or whatever. You know, those kinds of emotions that come up. One thing that I think we have to keep in mind, not just as parents but as human beings, is to learn how to lean into the emotion and really sit with it and validate it and say, hey, emotion, like I see you and I hear you just like you would with a good friend.
Like if a good friend came over to you and they were stressed out and… You wouldn’t just be like, no, you know, I just, I can’t, I don’t want to hear you right now. It’s funny, actually had a friend do that to me yesterday…
Ayelet: “I can’t deal with your emotions right now!”
Sophia: It was a really tough conversation and she was not in a psychological space to listen to my difficult emotions and I understand and I respect that. And that was hard and I cried afterwards and I think that we could have been…
Ayelet: And actually, she was practicing self care!
Sophia: Yeah! She was practicing self-care, and I, I was, I think responding with self care in terms of like, oh, I understand this really difficult emotion and I’m going to sit here with it instead of trying to push it away, which I think that we, we’ve learned how to do.
Whether it’s like, you know, as simple as like, you know what, I’m not going to think about that. I’m just going to scroll through Facebook mindlessly or you know what, I’m just going to have another glass of wine, you know, whatever it is that, you know, for me a long time ago it used to be like adrenaline kind of sports, you know, I’m not going to think about that. I’m going to go ride my motorcycle, you know, that kind of thing.
Ayelet: We numb, instead of dealing with the issues at hand. Which, I mean we do, I think as you mentioned, we do very well in our society. We tackle the symptoms and not the underlying issues.
Sophia: And this comes really from the work of Dr. Susan David who wrote a book called Emotional Agility, she has a TED talk also that you can look up that summarizes the concept of her book, but she talks about not just trying to be positive all the time, which I think our society is very attached to right now of like, no, you have to be, you have to be happy. That’s the whole point. You have to be thinking positively about things.
And the reality is, like the reality of life is more complex than that. We have the range of human emotions and when you acknowledge all of them, not just the positive ones, then you yourself feel more psychologically validated. Even if somebody, especially, I think also, when you have a partner you’re discussing difficult emotions with.
So I think in this process of, of self care and creating self care rituals and habits that you’re remembering to be compassionate with yourself and to listen to yourself kindly and to validate and say like, you know, that your whole human experience is a valid experience.
Ayelet: Yes, absolutely. I think so often we see on social media for instance, and every kind of media we see these, especially when it comes to motherhood or parenthood in general, it’s like either this like “I’m so happy and my baby’s so beautiful and I’m so glowy” or this like super snarky, “Yeah. You know, F this” and nothing in between, right when we have to, when we can have these conversations about everything in between… That’s where I think for me, the kind of self care that I like to engage in, that’s where it happens for me and that’s where I can feel sustained. And, um, what’s the word? Fulfilled.
Sophia: Yeah. I think it’s also just that idea of being heard and seen for who you are.
Ayelet: And for your own experience.
Sophia: Yeah, absolutely, like your experience is valid. And, and I think as you mentioned with media, particularly with social media, because we can curate our lives really well on social media and, you know, portray whatever we want to, I think it’s a very difficult to be the person to say, “Hey, well actually this is the reality.”
And I think it’s funny because I had this conversation with the friend yesterday about how, you know, I was talking about how much of a difficult time I’ve been having because I feel like I need more community in my life. And I was essentially complaining about the places in my life that don’t have community or support, you know. And at one point she kind of stopped me and said, well, wait a second.
Like, you need to be grateful. You need to like, let’s just, let’s do a gratitude exercise right now. Tell me one thing you’re grateful for. And I was like, no, no, no, no. You don’t understand. This has nothing to do with that, with not being grateful. I am absolutely grateful. I love, you know, my family, my daughter, etc., etc. However, or rather not even however, AND I am also feeling these very strong emotions. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
And I’ve had people tell me, you know, to my face like, oh, your anxiety, your, you know, thoughts about these things, that’s a weakness in you. And I don’t see it that way. I see it as like, this is part of my whole human experience. We’ve been taught to see it as a weakness in ourselves.
If you read any of Brene Brown’s work on vulnerability and shame, like, you know about this, is that we, anytime anybody talks about anything negative that they’re experiencing, people want to really pull back from that and be like, like, it’s almost like contagious or something, you know, and say like, oh no, no, no, no.
I, you know, and really it’s like it because it makes us uncomfortable. It’s a difficult discussion and conversation to have and to sit with somebody else’s very strong emotions, even – even strong positive emotions sometimes for people, is difficult. And so…
Ayelet: I was going to say, we have this tendency to, to want to solve a problem for somebody else. And if we can give it a label, then we feel as the recipient of that information, like we’ve done our job somehow. But I think what you’re saying is so true that sometimes just labeling the emotion, labeling, putting it out there, how you’re feeling, and this is different from just venting, right?
It’s sharing information that that can be very, very useful, and when we find community around a feeling, then together we can share experiences instead of that advice, right? We can share ideas and ways that things that have worked for one person or another and try those out.
Sophia: Yeah. I think you’re right in terms of like this idea of like wanting to be seen and heard. I think in addition to that, and my mistake in my conversation yesterday with my friend and I let her know this afterward, is that I didn’t ask her permission to listen to my story.
And I think we often forget that, especially with close friends and family. We just assume like, oh, you’re ready all the time to hear whatever I have to say. And I, I’m mindful particularly as a life coach because I listen to people’s experiences a lot, to remember to ask for permission.
Ayelet: So what does that look like?
Sophia: Ok, so yesterday in that example, I could have just easily said, hey, are you in a psychological place or an emotional place or just a place right now to listen to a difficult story I have to share with you?
And she could have said, you know what? No, I’m really stressed out. I actually just listened to this other difficult story, you know, but maybe we can talk tomorrow and I would have to sit with the like, okay, well this person is not willing to hear me out right now, but you know what? I have a network and a community, and I can reach out to another person I know who is willing to listen at this moment.
And she has the right to say that! She is not… I think often we get very confused that like people are obligated to us in somehow. You know, that our partners are obligated to listen to us all the time, that our friends are obligated to understand and listen and all that sort of thing. And I think we forget to just ask.
Ayelet: That’s really, that’s such an interesting point. Yeah, I love that you said that.
Sophia: I think that it just makes us more mindful sharers, and again, I think there’s also experiences where you can’t ask permission. I was thinking about this recently because somebody asked my advice about it and you know, I think there are experiences, I know I’ve experienced in my own personal life, tragedies where nobody asked me permission to share that tragedy with me because I witnessed it with my own eyes or I was, you know, close to the people it happened to or something. And I think those, those are very difficult moments, but what really helps in those moments is being able to reach out to people who can listen.
Ayelet:
That’s great. Okay. So Sophia, let’s just take a break to hear a word from our sponsors and then we will hear just a few tips and resources from you about easing into that transition of new parenthood as well as some of your favorite resources for families interested in learning about this topic, ok?
Ayelet: Okay, Sophia, we would love to hear your top tips for practicing self care in all areas of life if that’s ok.
Sophia: Yeah, absolutely. I think when you’re trying to institute something new, you have to assess where you’re at, because if you don’t know where you’re at, you can’t know where you’re going. And so I would just, there’s an exercise you can do, it’s called the Wheel of Life. It’s basically a circle that you draw and on the outer rims of the circle you, you write all of the aspects of your life. So the large areas, right? Career, family, partnership, friendships, spirituality, etc.
And then you write a point in the center and that’s zero, that would indicate zero, and the points on the outer rim of the circle would indicate 10. And so to each of those areas of your life, you rate how fulfilled you feel in that area, how satisfied so to speak. And that gives you a really good idea – and then you connect the dots – and it gives you a really good idea of like, oh, you know, my spirituality is at a 10 and I feel very happy and fulfilled with that part of my life but my career is at a 1.
And so I think that gives you kind of a nice big overview to say, oh, you know what, I really want to work on this part of my life and really focus on the self care aspect of that. Again, I think you have to make self care a value, and wellness a value and then once you start if, for example, if let’s say your own personal wellness is that a one and you want to, like your health, and you want to increase that, then you would start taking action toward you know, enhancing your health.
Whether that’s like signing up for a gym membership or so on and so forth. In terms of, I think self care is like nuanced in each of those. And so if it’s, let’s say like professional fulfillment, like I believe like I need professional fulfillment in my life in order to feel happy and fulfilled and so what do I need to do for myself in order to enhance that professional fulfillment may involve, you know, reading one leadership book a week and that’s my self care time. That’s my self, you know, care professional time.
For you, it may be something having to do like you personally like with your community or maybe you do yoga in the morning. One thing that’s really easy to do in the morning or in the evening at the end of the beginning of the day are gratitude exercises. People talk about this all the time because it’s shown to increase like your levels of happiness and stuff and thinking of three things that you’re grateful for.
The other thing is like alone time, winding down time. I love that. I have a mom friend who she takes five minutes every morning with her cup of coffee. That’s her, that’s her little space for her… For other people, it may be a swim, a jog, you know, but it is not, you know, like scrolling mindlessly through Facebook alone, you know what I mean?
Ayelet: And it’s also not like going to get a massage, right?
Sophia: Yeah, I think that’s part of it!
Ayelet: This is, we’re talking about taking some time to be with yourself and be present with yourself or, or not, really. I mean I think what’s the difference really, in your eyes between the mindless scrolling and the mindfulness exercise?
Sophia: Yeah, I think that they both have their place. I think that sometimes you get so overwhelmed with everything in your life and all of your responsibilities. Like mindlessly scrolling through Facebook feels like a break and I think, I think it has its place, but I think what I’m talking about it’s like just like meditation has its place and all that sort of thing. I think just being aware of that and not seeing that like you’re using it as a numbing, like I don’t want to feel my emotions.
I don’t, I don’t even want to like, you know, this whole idea of like being with myself is so much that I just can’t do it. And you know that’s some people’s realities at some point and if that’s your reality, then you baby step. If you want to go to that place of being more with yourself.
Ayelet: This wheel of life chart, which we will link to in the show notes as well and I’ll place here in the Community LAB. I love that it has all these different areas because again, like you said, if you’re at, if you’re rating yourself like a one in everything, including family, intimate relationship, friends, finances, all those things you mentioned, then yeah, it’s going to take baby steps in all those areas!
Sophia: Yes and again, it may not all get like to a 10 all at once and that’s your perfect life. Like we all know, you know, life is crazy and it has ups and downs. It’s unpredictable, but I think that the point is like argue 100% you know, putting 100% effort, not even effort, like presence in whatever you’re doing right now.
You know, if I’m with my child right now, I am fully with my child. If I’m focusing on my work right now, I’m fully with my work and I think that presence of mind really helps quell any, you know, anxiety and stress and it – and it takes practice and it really quells that, that feeling of overwhelm because your mind isn’t always like I’m with my child but I’m also with my finances and all the bills and the things I have to do today.
There’s a practice one of my mom friends does that I absolutely love and that is when she drives on her way home from work to daycare to pick her children up from school, she has a marker, a physical, literal marker on the way that is a sign for her to say, ok.
This is the point where you stop thinking about work and you start thinking about your children. And then from here on, you know from the stop sign here on out to the school is, I’m focusing on the children. I’m, you know, we’re going to have a talk about their day, etc. I’m fully present with them. Before that, I can, I can think about work and all the meetings and I can think about, you know, the projects that I’m working on. And I love that. Like I, I practice that every day and it’s a struggle. I mean, it’s not perfect!
Ayelet: But that’s, I love that. I love that that’s like a, a solid, literally a physical marker that you’re like, here we go.
Sophia: Because I think that it’s so easy, particularly in this day and age. Especially if you’re somebody who has work online all the time, you know, where it’s just too easy to be like, well, I’m waiting in the parking lot for them, so I’m just going to check that email, that work email or I’m just going to give so and so call… And then you’re just, you’re not, you’re not present. You’re not in like this space with us right now. And, and literally with some of my coaching clients, I will, like, we’ll do these exercises where it’s like mindfulness exercises, right? Where, are you present? Like, Hey, come back with us. Actively listen to what we’re talking about.
Ayelet: Yeah. So all for all of you listening to this podcast, half listening and half dealing with your children, this is for you!
Sophia: I know, and it’s funny because, like you know, I almost feel like this is like an inherent part of like our modern parenthood, right, is like you’re juggling the zillion things and you may not have family nearby to help you, and you’re also like trying to maintain relationships both in person and online and, and I think that’s where we just have to like really step back and like simplify a little bit.
Ayelet: Yeah, totally. I love that this is the direction that we’re going in this conversation as far as the self care piece. Like that, it’s all, it’s about the simplicity and the sustainability. And I think you were saying that one of your values, did you say it was simplicity?
Sophia: Oh right, no, it was stability, no worries. That’s my husband’s value though. He’s all about simplicity.
Ayelet: Like what a great exercise, simple exercise that you can do to enhance that intimate relationship part of the wheel, right? Identify your values with someone with whom you are in your intimate relationship, whether that’s your partner or a colleague, or whatever it is.
Sophia: It’s funny, because it actually is a more challenging exercise than you’d think because I think it’s really, it’s like if I asked you like, what’s really important to you in your life, what would you say? For example?
Ayelet: I would, I would say respect. I would say simplicity is definitely one.
Sophia: Okay. And so this is great because you have the words for that. A lot of people don’t have the words for that, and instead have the action. So I’ll often ask people like, what is really important to you right now? And they’re like, well, you know, I wish I could travel the world.
That travel’s really important to me. And it’s like, well that’s the action. Let’s, let’s distill that down to the value. And that value may be adventure or openness or curiosity or exploration. And then so, you know, and exploration, yeah, travel is part of that.
But maybe it’s also like making new friends and you know, trying out new types of food. Like there’s just so much more to that. And a really great exercise. If you’re not, if you’re not sure what the values are, but you have more actions in mind is to write down a little story about you giving a speech at your 90th birthday party to your friends and family members about everything that you did in your life.
And so the story obviously may not be like maybe it’s a paragraph or maybe it’s six pages. I tried it once and I kept writing and I, for me, there’s just a lot of things that I want to do in my life. And then you start to circle the things that are actions and say like “90 year old Sophia, you know, wanted to write a book.” And so what is that? That’s like the creativity part of me. And once you circle those actions and you can just distill them down to your values and that’s a helpful way to get a little perspective on what’s truly important to you.
Ayelet: That’s nice. And for anyone who’s here and listening or anyone who’s listening in the future, we’d love to hear what are your three values? Let’s see. Let’s hear those. So you can share them right here in the chat, if you are interested in sharing or you can share them by responding in the comments, or emailing me at ayelet@strengthinwords.com
Sophia: Even if you have your action. Then we can also help you say like, oh, this is, this may be a value in this.
Ayelet: Any more specific tips that you have for us or should we move on to some resources you’d like to share?
Sophia: I think one having to do with finances, I think this is a very difficult conversation that people try to avoid is to make a really like really understand where you are at with your finances because it’s the, the resources that allow you or give you the space, time, and energy even to be able to do the things that you want to do in your life, including self care.
So for example, for you, you know, if you know you need to be in a gym in order to enhance your own physical wellness, that means you need a gym membership. And if you need a gym membership and you don’t have one, that means you need to know what your budget is like for a gym membership and I, this is coming from a person who used to be extremely financially irresponsible and got $30,000 into debt and I paid it off all last year and it is very, I think easy particularly now, right?
To be able to say, you know what, I don’t really know where my finances are. I’m just going to spend this and then kind of deal with it later. I think that happens a lot. And then I know also in relationship it’s hard to have financial discussions with your partner. So making like an assessment and looking at the numbers, like the hard numbers of what you are, where you are at right now, and then making a conscious effort to move the needle toward that wellness goal. If it’s a gym membership, if it’s a regular massage, you know thing.
If it’s a buying this really cool gratitude journal, I don’t, you know, whatever it is or taking a trip because I think then oftentimes we get limited by our resources and that causes and, you know, I mean it causes a lot of stress to be limited in that way and feeling like you’re not able to take care of yourself because you don’t have the financial resources to do it.
Ayelet: Yeah. One thing that I hear all the time from parents is is the limited resource of time, which of course I also deal with that, and you do too, I’m sure… And that’s a hard one because then it’s all about really fitting in the little pieces. That’s why I love the example that you gave and actually, we had a recent podcast with Shannon Shearn of Savage Wellness about self care and family wellness and one thing that she does also is sit with her cup of coffee and her children’s play and she gets five minutes and then she’s fine. She’s like, okay for the day, but I love the little, a few guided meditations are always wonderful and just that like literally the physical marker of, okay, when do we switch…
Sophia: Another really useful tool especially if anybody on here is in like into productivity kind of tools that I personally use and it was actually invented by a mom to help her child tell time is called the Time Timer, it tells time in color essentially. And I love it because that’s the way that I think about time, and I use it with my daughter to say like, okay, you know you have five minutes here. When the red goes away, she’s two, when the red goes away, that’s when we stop this task and we move on to our next task because then they’re, you know, it creates like, okay, now we’re wrapping up.
There’s an end to things. But it also allows, gives me that space and time to be like, okay, she can be focused on this for five minutes and I can focus on this other thing. And I think going back to like, yeah, time is extremely limited. I think it does go back also to financial resources because what would create more time in your life?
Maybe having an extra date night, maybe having a babysitter come in, maybe having more daycare hours or getting into a different kind of school or after school program or you know, all of those kinds of things. And again, that goes back to like this financial assessment. Like where can we fit that in in a way that’s not stressful.
Ayelet: Yeah. And it doesn’t have to look a specific way, there’s a lot of flexibility around all of those. Nice. Alright, we want to hear a few of your favorite resources.
Sophia: Right, so, the book that I mentioned earlier, Emotional Agility by Dr. Susan David. And she has a TED talk that she did last year. She’s a psychologist out of Harvard and she created a coaching institute also affiliated with Harvard. And her book is about being, I mean the title, emotionally agile and like leaning into all human emotion. Understanding that emotions are signposts, but they’re not like the end all be all. So not to get like fully lost in them, but to understand that they’re just messages from your body saying like, okay, and then acting according to your values.
Then there’s Hello My Tribe, which is something that was founded by a friend of mine here in Austin and she, she’s created like a wellness community here in Austin and I know she wants to expand but she has an online presence that’s really nice and it just talks all about like wellness and motherhood and she’s actually, she’s trying to get to speak at South by Southwest in 2019 if anybody’s familiar with that here in Austin.
And then we have BirthBabyBody, has a community of moms group on Facebook and we focus on self care and wellness and something that’s unique about our community is we bring in experts every week to talk about enhancing wellness in all aspects of pregnancy, birth, motherhood, from mental to physical health. So we have like pelvic floor specialists to like, you know, relationship, people who deal with like marital stuff and all sorts of things. And you can ask questions.
Ayelet: Very cool. Well, thank you so much, Sophia, and also thank you to all of our participants of the Learn With Less™ Curriculum who are here listening live. We’re going to continue the discussion and open up for a Q&A session for you guys in just a minute, but for all of you listening from home or on the go, thank you so much for joining us and we will see you next time.
