Transcripts
1. Introduction: Our relationship with ourselves is the most important relationship we will ever have. We don't have the validation and acceptance of ourselves nothing really like to measure up. Welcome. Class is now in session. Hi, I'm Jonathan Van Ness. I'm a TV and podcast host, an author, a comedian, and today a Skillshare teacher. Today's class is all about self-care. For me, self-care is really my entry point into my relationship with myself. Throughout my life when my relationship with myself has been stronger and more connected, I see a calmer, clearer, more compassionate and courageous Jonathan. I'm very excited to show you some of the techniques that I like to use to really help me get into that relationship if I may be struggling and not really know how. Today we're going to get into making a self-care planner. This is a tool that I've used for years to help organize my thoughts, organize my ideas, and help me accomplish all the goals that I want to set for myself. We're going to go through some exercises together, you can make one that works for you. We all show up in the world in different ways and I think slowing down and giving yourself time to investigate who that beautiful you is, is just an amazing gift. From this class, I hope you take resources and tools for you to strengthen your relationship with yourself. Free to learn to try new things, or maybe you're coming back to something that you use to do, but you don't do it anymore. But most of all, I hope that you take the idea that taking time for yourself is not selfish. It's actually the most important investment you can give yourself in moving forward with authenticity, integrity, and joy in your life.
2. Why Self-Care?: Welcome to my class. I'm so glad that you're here. Self-care has a lot of different definitions. I think that for me, self-care used to be something that was a means of tuning out, of numbing out, of just turning the world off and just like maybe you're just on the couch watching a long tele show or something. Then at one point, I realized that actually, self-care is a much bigger relationship that I have with myself and showing up for myself in self-care, I can actually be more useful to people around me and to myself, and just be of more service to people and really, actually myself too. The idea of self-care though, can be really overwhelming and really daunting, especially if we haven't really done that or engaged in this idea of self-care. It's like where do I start? I think it's so important that self-care can show up in a million different ways. It can be through maybe a planner, it can be through maybe you trying a new class, it can be through maybe you're really trying to cook something you've been wanting to cook. It can be very narrow or very broad. But for me, I like to organize and put all of my ideas in a place so that I can really create change by listing what I want the change to be in the first place. This is really about creating a habit of listing down on paper and spending some time with yourself so that we can learn what it is that we really need, so we can tune into ourselves and tune into what is the conditions that we need to create for us to realize the things that we want to do. Originally my idea for a self-care planner came from my appointment book. I've been doing hair for 16 years. When I started, it was before iPhones. I actually really needed to have a planner to put down my appointments because I was the queen of forgetting that I had appointments, so I really needed to write it down. When I realized, wait, I'm doing a planner for my clients, why don't I have a planner for myself and to make time for the things that I want to do. Creating a self-care planner is something that I have consistently come back to, to help me get in one place, in one time what I really want to do, what do I want to achieve? I can put my hopes, my dreams, my goals and really it shows me through action that I'm worth my own time and attention. I think that's a really beautiful thing for us to be able to show up for ourselves and say in a world that is so digital and so fast-paced and so about what can we do for other people to really slow down and tune into what do we need to do for ourselves. That's why I love a self-care planner. Now, I don't want you to be overwhelmed because mine's really gorgeous and we're going to start with making a really gorgeous one for you because it really is like a dream board, a mood board, a vision board. Mine really is just so especially gorgeous that I'm really excited to introduce you to mine. This is mine. Obviously we have Michelle Kwan. We have a gorgeous rainbow moment. Miss. Taylor, we have Miss Brittany. We have some brushes, my dog and some of my cats and I got really into gardening this year. Really this is just a place where I put like all my gorgeous little inspirational moments. This self-care planner is a tool that has worked for me over the years that I have done more and less of its ebb and flow. It's been a consistent in my 20s and 30s that has just been so important to me. I hope you can take aspects of this and make it work for you. It's really just a jumping off point and please share what you do in the project gallery. I'm going to go in there and take a look. Our next step is we're going to get into some decoupage, so you can make a your very own and gorgeous planner. Step-by-step guide, honey, so let's go, let's get our crafting on. Let's go.
3. Preparing Your Planner: It's time to decoupage our self-care planners. Now, you don't have to decorate your planner, but I think it's very fun and it just creates the craving for me to want to come back to my planner every day and say, good morning, what's happening? Because I just want to say good morning to this a lot more than what I want to say good morning to this. Brighter, more fun, more intriguing. I love to have a few different organizational areas of my planner. I love a to-do list. I'm a huge fan of a weekly plan, so I can have an overview. Gratitude lists are something that I use so much when I'm feeling anxious, stressed. That also is going to come in handy later and I'm going to put it off to the side because I don't want to get glue all over as I start to craft. This is the thing about decoupage. Once it's glued down, it's glued down. I like to really not commit with gluing at the beginning. I like to work with a dry surface to start. Part of what I like to do on my planner is I'm really creating a mood board of reasons why I work so hard or things that I'm really inspired by. It's just a little reminders of why I love to do what I do. There's a lot of pictures of cats because I love my cats. There's also a lot of pictures of figure skating because that's something that makes me feel really inspired and makes me feel like I'm working towards something. It also just makes me feel a lot of joy because I love figure skating, and so it just fills me up with joy. But for you, that might be color or pictures of art that you like, or a sport that you like, or just a hobby or something that you want to try more of. It could even just be a word that inspires you. You totally do not have to decoupage. You really, honestly, can decorate it however you want or not decorated it, but you could do some art on it, you could draw it, you could do a little mosaic situation, but it really is relaxing. You just instantly feel a little bit relaxed. I've got some images that I think are really cute. Obviously, you could always do more. Now, one thing that we want to do once we have our pictures, is put those to the side and then I want to get this organized. I'm just going to make a little line where I'm going to cut it. I'm going to cut this little edge off. I don't get scared judging the process because no matter how much I pre-measure it, it's never exactly perfect. We like to put the glue down and then we put the paper on the glue as opposed to putting the glue on the paper; otherwise, it gets a little weird. I'm just going to put a little bit of glue down, and then I'm going to take this, a gorgeous brush, and I'm going to spread it around, 'till all my edges to come up. I'm just going to place my little paper down. We are working. This is really slaying. Don't freak out about this, even though it does made me want to freak out. I'm going to put a little bit more glue down. But we are going to end up putting this glitter decoupage over the top. It's going to be okay. We're thriving. Now, Michelle has to be in the middle. I'm going to just place that there and I'm going to put a little bit of glue down, and then I'm going to just take a smaller brush for this size. She is giving it to the judges. At first, I did not decorate my client planners. It was really something that I needed to do because I was a nightmare about booking four people at nine o'clock and then three people at 10:30. I would just forget who I would say yes to, and then I would have three clients walk in at the same time. Then I finally had to start doing planners. But I didn't really like having a planner, but I liked it much better if it was cute and personalized. That is how I realized that I needed to get into decorating my planner to make me actually want to use it. Now, this is the best part. The moment everyone's been waiting for. You do a whole layer of glue over the top of this and you have to use a lot. It's okay. You just got to get messy with it. It does dry clear, everyone. Don't worry, you just have to work it over. Then what you can also do when you inevitably use too much glue, like I always do, you use this little handy dandy roller thing. You're going to have many self-care planners throughout your life. If this is really just your first, it's a great jumping off point. If you're anything like me, you might just have to do it a few times before it turns out cute. That was so much fun. Now we're going to let that dry, and whilst that's drying, we're going to do a breathing exercise to keep continuing our self-care journey.
4. Listening to Yourself: Welcome back. To start off, we're going to listen to ourselves, but it's like, how do we listen to ourselves? What's most effective for me is meditation. Meditation is such a useful and important tool in my daily life. We are all writing, as my therapist says, like at the top of our nervous system, so much going on, so much to do so little time. That gets to be a lot for us and so if you think of like your nervous system or your window of tolerance being between my arms. Often we're really just writing right up here at the top. How can we lower it down and start to get into our bodies, get out of our heads and that's really how we can listen to what we need. If we can't listen to what's coming up for us, we really won't know what to do. The way that meditation was explained to me, that is really useful for the way that I like to imagine it is. It's almost like you're in a movie theater and you're by yourself, and your thoughts are just coming along the movie screen. The thoughts might be, what am I having for dinner tonight or what so-and-so said hurt my feelings or I might feel bad about this one thing or I really want to do this other thing and whatever the thoughts are, we're just not attaching anything to them. We're not judging ourselves for having the thoughts, we're just observing it and letting it go. Really that is so helpful. Because it helps us to realize that we are not our thoughts, we're actually this more still like observer of our thoughts. One way that I really like to get into meditation is by doing a little body scan, doing a little breathing exercise. We're going to set our timer for two minutes. What I like to do, so I like to sit down on a chair and sit up nice and tall, but you want to let your back rest up against the back of the chair, let your feet be planted on the ground, you can let your palms rest face up on your knees or you can let your palms rest face down on your knees. If you're feeling overwhelmed and all over the place, having palms down is really nice. If you're feeling like you wish you had a little bit more energy or a little bit more gusto, you can let your palms rest face up. I'm just going to let my eyelids closed, take a deep breath in my nose and open up my mouth and let it go. Deep breath in the nose, and gently open your mouth landed out. Taking a deep breath in the nose, pausing at the top, open your mouth let it go. Then I want to start down at our feet, just feeling our feet supported by the earth beneath us while you're still breathing in your nose and out your mouth. Bringing your intention up into your calves, into your knees. Then just feeling your body sitting in the seat, feeling yourself supported and relaxed as you breathe in your nose then opening your mouth letting it go. Feeling with each inhale, bringing in fresh breath, then every exhale just sinking a little bit deeper into the chair beneath you. Deep breath in, big breath out. Then you can just notice if there's any tension that comes up in the body, and you're directing your breath there. I feel it a little bit in my shoulders, in my neck. Big breath in, open your mouth let it out. Then at the end of your two minutes, you can start to slowly blink your eyes open, staying connected to that sense of breath. Now what we're going to do with that exercise is we're going to work on something that I like to call above the line and below the line thoughts. I'm going to open my little planner to just a little line sheet of paper. When we think about writing down, what comes up for you after your meditation, I like to think about it as there's a line. Things that are above the line are love based things that come up for you in your meditation, and things that are below the line are things that are fear-based feelings that we have that come up during the meditation. If you can just gently observe what some of those thoughts that came up on your little meditation movie screen were, and then come back to your planner and write them down. It's going to help to get us out of our mind and onto paper what's going on for us. Then when we know what's really going on, we can decide what we really need. I really like that because it helps to slow us down and it helps us to materialize and get out of our head and onto a piece of paper by using our body to help to express and process what's going on for us. This is a really useful tool to connect into the gorgeous vault that is you. Let's do it. I noticed that there is a fear of judgment that was coming up for me from you, the viewer, you gorgeous student, you for watching. I noticed that there was this moment of like, my eyes are closed and I'm on camera and is someone going to think I look silly. There was a moment of fear, but then I realized as I kept coming back to my breath, that there is a little bit of tension as a result of that fear. I said to myself, I'm going to breathe into that tension which I had shared and I said I feel a little bit of tension in my neck and so I breathed into that. Then I realized that I am worthy of your time and I'm worthy of sharing what I've come to learn with you. Then this deeper part of me came up and said, "Wait girl, you're fun." This is really important that we share this method of calming and grounding and working with ourselves. Then I'm going to write, I'm fun. Really I felt a sense of confidence come up. It's not about this idea of toxic positivity or like, I'm only going to do these things that are above the line. It's really about acknowledging that we all have parts of us that get insecure or like below a line of confidence. Really what our jobs as adults are is to be that parent and be that caretaker for ourselves. We can't really look for that nurturing and that calm and that ease and validation from external sources, not from other folks, not from things. I mean, we can temporarily, but it's exactly that temporary. Really how we can learn to deal with those insecurities and deal with those fears is by really learning to assuage them, which is like another gorgeous word for like calm them ourselves. Our next lesson is going to be about learning to release limiting beliefs. We're going to learn to figure out what are some of these below the line thoughts, where are they coming from and how can we move past them. I'll see you then. [MUSIC]
5. Releasing Limiting Beliefs: I hope you're feeling grounded and connected after that breathing exercise. I'm feeling expansive, I'm feeling calm, and I'm feeling ready to delve into the idea of releasing limiting beliefs. As we wrote down our above the line and below the line thoughts, I think that's an interesting way to think about what is coming up for us that we want to let go of, what lives below the line. For me, one thing that has always come up is this idea of I'm not enough. I'm not good enough for that thing or I'm not a good enough partner, spouse, parent, child, worker, whatever. Whatever it is, we always feel like we could be doing more, or I think there's other things like when I was in 9th grade and I couldn't learn how to tumble backwards. I had this actual mental block of being terrified that I was never going to really learn how to do gymnastics. What you're thinking, like that was a hard right turn. Why are we talking about gymnastics? It was really just something I was passionate about that I always wanted to do and never thought that I would be able to physically do it. Eventually, through a lot of doubt and through a lot of hard work, I did eventually learn how to do it. I wish that I could have gone back in time and worked with my nervous system to make that a more joyful experience as opposed to like a nail-biting, "Oh my gosh, I'm not good enough. I'm never going to get this" experience. But now, we're going to work with some of our limiting beliefs. I'm going to take my little piece of paper and I'm going to rip it off because it's not going to live in my planner forever because there's some limiting beliefs in here which I'm going to release. A way that we can start to release limiting beliefs or negative beliefs is positive affirmations. There's this amazing water study that I read about by this Japanese scientist named Masaru Emoto, this scientist took all these different samples of water and they spoke to the water while it was under a microscope, and they said positive things to the water and they said negative things to the water, like I love you and I hate you. Underneath the microscope, the water when spoken to lovingly and kindly would make symmetric crystalline structures that were really gorgeous, and beautiful, and balanced. When they spoke negatively to these water samples, they would become asymmetric, and like not balanced, and gnarly looking. It just goes to this idea of how we talk to ourselves charges every cell in our body. We're made of water. Really, how we talk to ourselves, make such an impact in how we show up in the world, how we work with other people, how we interact with our loved ones with people we don't know. It makes such a big difference. By starting with positive self-talk. It really helps to prepare us to show up It's our best selves in the world. That really isn't about showing up better for other people. It's really about showing up so that we can help ourselves through such a stressful, high anxiety world. If we don't have a really grounded relationship with our self, it's so easy to just be distracted, and hurt, and just caught up in all these cycles that we're all in the middle in. Really being able to ground down and talk to yourself in a loving, mindful way is one of the best ways that we can deepen our relationship with ourselves. One thing that I have learned in my life is that there's a lot of different aspects to my personality or to myself. One thing that I've learned through lots of different types of therapy but one that really sticks with me as this one called Internal Family Systems or IFS for short. Really, what that talks about is that our personalities are comprised of all of these different aspects of ourselves. I have a little bit of an irritated part sometimes, but then sometimes I have a people pleaser. But then I also have another little part that's like I call them my little busy bee, the part that just likes to work and likes to keep going and going and going. Once I have a day off, it's like, "Oh my gosh, what does it mean? What do I do?" But then there's also, this is one of my favorite parts. I call him the narrator. He's the one who doesn't really know when to stop talking and just chats and chats and chats and chats. Now, look, you might be scared right now. Really, like is this multiple personality disorder? No, queen. It's not. We all have parts. We all have different aspects of our personality. That's really just a compilation of all the different versions of us that we'd been in our lives. I think that's gorgeous and it's a really fun and useful way to think about how our personalities are. One thing that you can do to really get curious and get more in relationship with yourself is, I just noticed like I had had my feet cross, so I'm going to like uncross my feet, just take a deep breath. I can close my eyes and I can think about that thought that I had, which was "I'm not enough." You can almost visualize what part of that, what part of you said that thought. When I think about it, it's actually that same part of thought that I was never going to learn how to do gymnastics, that I wasn't going to be able to get this skill and teach it to others. Really, when I had that insecure feeling, that really was like a teenage part in me that used to get bullied and used to get made fun of. That part really used to care what negative judgments other people would make about me. Now, from this adult-centered self place, I can say to that part, "Hun, I understand why you would be feeling this insecurity, but you're not in your junior high school." You're not in high school. People may be saying whatever they're going to say, watching this or not watching this. But that doesn't change the fact that you're actually totally capable to share these techniques, and meditation, and mindfulness with others because this is really helpful to not only me, but to everyone watching this. What that was is a real life version of me, my adult self, being able to comfort a part of me that has a limiting belief that isn't actually true for "I'm not enough." What I think would be a great opposite to that is, "I am enough." That is such a powerful mantra to help us get out of our fear, and get out of our head, and get into our body. Really, all we need for a mantra is you find a mirror and you literally say to yourself, "I'm enough." For our planner, I think working on some of these positive affirmations and having them written down is a great thing to do. Now, if you look up online, you can look at positive affirmations, and actually look at a whole list of them to help you get your mind started and help you think about what you want to deal. But positive affirmations don't have like "not" or "no" or like negative words in them. It's all about positive affirmations. It's about me. I am worthy of love, I am worthy of acceptance. We want to write those down so you can really come back to them. Some of the ones that had been so helpful for me are, I accept myself completely. I accept myself completely. I'm going to do it twice because it's so good. Myself completely. You can write it. You can verbally say it. You can actually close your eyes and say it in your head without moving your mouth. So powerful, it really starts to positively rewire our brains as we do this work. I accept myself completely. I'm worthy of love. I am worthy of love. You can also do, "I love myself," I love that one. You really can start small, doing this work for a couple minutes a day is more than enough. Sundays, I do it longer than other days. I mean, at the beginning, I did feel really a lot of resistance to wanting to do this. It was like it felt like, just really drag on me there, like I really didn't want to. I felt frustrated about needing to do this because I was like, I just want to be one of those people that doesn't need to do all this stuff, like who actually has to do this? But then I realized that I am one of those people that needs to do this stuff and I love that. It's like they say in Buddhism, comparison is the thief of all joy. Whether or not someone else needs to do this stuff or would be benefited by doing these things, it's none of my business. What is my business is, how can I be happier and how can I have more joy? This helps me have more joy. This helps me feel more calm. What used to make me feel silly or like weird about doing that, I don't have that at all anymore. I really jump in because I know that it's going to make me feel better and it's really something that I enjoyed doing. This act of self-care and working on myself in this way actually feels good at this point. Just press pause for a second and let's get into some of this work. Let's think of three mantras that you can write down now and you can work on through the week. Another way we can get this work into our bodies is through a little yoga moment, which is one of my very favorite things to do. Let's get our bodies moving and do some yoga.
6. A Yoga Moment: Yoga literally means union or to yoke or to bring together. What is yoga bringing together? It's bringing together your breath and your movement. There's something out syncing your movement to your breath that is really deeply grounding, healing, restoring, and it also really forces your brain to come into the present moment. It's almost like a moving meditation, which is really gorgeous. I want us to practice together for a moment on linking our breath and our movement together and what we're going to do is a cat-cow pose, which feels amazing. But we're going to do before that is we're going to move into our cat-cow pose from child's pose. Child's pose is such a good asana for calming the nervous system, helping to relieve anxiety, and helping really just to calm our head. Let's go into a child's pose, shall we? What we're going to do is come onto our mat. Now, one thing about yoga is that we do want to take our shoes and socks off, and the reason for that is you want to be able to really feel the energy from the ground, pulling the energy up through your mat, so it's important. Bring your big toes together, let your knees come wide apart, and if this is too much, you can put a pillow underneath your knees for a little bit of extra support, and then you're going to walk your hands out in front of you and just let your forehead come to the ground. Now if you don't have a yoga mat, or you're somewhere where you don't want your head touching the ground, sometimes I like to take my hand and rest my forehead on my hand. But this Yoga mat is nice and clean, so I'm just going to go like this. From here you're just going to start to breathe in your nose and out your nose. With every inhale, try to breathe into your back, and with every exhale, try to just gently push your hands into the mat, so you can let your hips come towards your heels. You'll see even when we're holding a pose still, it's still is dynamic and has movement. As I inhale into my lower back and into the sides of my ribs, you'll see my back expand and as I exhale, you'll see my shoulders come away from my ears and my hips press down into my heels. Let's stay here for three more breaths. Then on our next inhale, we're going to start to shift forward, bringing your hands right below your shoulders. We can take that little pillow off to the side and what we want to do is spread those fingers out nice and wide. Sometimes when we start to do this, fingers are too close and that can hurt the wrists. We're going to keep the fingers really nice and wide. We're going to press the tops of the feet into the mat, and we want to find a neutral spine, not tilting this way, not tilting this way, just a nice neutral spine. Then we flip our hair and look to the side, just kidding. From here, we're going to inhale and melt the front of your heart down towards the mat, then you lift the crown of your head and your tailbone high to the sky. The heart melts down to the mat. Your gaze and your tache goes towards the ceiling as you inhale the whole time. Then as you exhale, you're going to do the opposite of that. Letting your head drop, letting your tailbone drop in the back of your heart presses high to the sky. We're going to move through that for a few more breaths, inhaling through your neutral spine, right into your cow pose, exhaling all the way through your cat pose, trying to link your breath exactly to your movement. Inhaling, and at the top of your inhale, try to be at the very apex of your breath. Exhale. I like to press into the tops of my feet and my hands the whole time. Any part of your body that's touching the floor, you can press the floor away. Once you've gone through five rounds of that, you'll bring your big toes together, sink back into child's pose for a breath. Inhale, come back up. Then on that same inhale you're going to tilt into your cow pose and exhale into your cat. Inhale mount, exhale round, inhale mount, exhale round. Two more rounds, inhaling, exhaling, inhale, big exhale and also close your eyes for this movement. Inhale to center. Big toes, touch, walk your hips back, and forward child's pose. Gorgeous, so you can repeat that motion as many times as you need until your sense of anxiety is released. I feel already a sense of more groundedness and less intrusive thoughts, which is gorgeous, less racing thoughts really. You can do three rounds of that, you can do five rounds of that, and is just such a nice exercise, it helps to open up our heart, and when we open our heart, it helps us to get into our courage and helps us really give us a little bit of confidence. I hope that that helps you and I really hope that you'll try your hand at yoga, whether you've done it before, maybe you've been off of the mat for a long time, maybe you're brand new to yoga, but we like to say in yoga that you learn to live your practice off your mat. You'll notice if you want to get out of a pose or if you find yourself getting irritated about something on the mat, does that happen in your life off the mat? It's just an interesting practice where you start to get to know yourself much better through your practice of yoga. It changed my life honestly so much. I wouldn't be where I am today without my relationship to yoga, and I hope that you can get curious about what your relationship is to yoga.
7. Developing Your Routine: I hope you're feeling you're gorgeous post yoga endorphin glow. I know I am. This lesson is all about making our self-care practice sustainable. For me in the past, some of the things that got away from me is that I would learn something new, whether it was like going to yoga or whether it was doing a little craft thing, through the years has been a lot of those little craft things. But if I didn't put it down on paper, it would soon leave my actual daily life. I think actually putting our new thoughts and our new areas that we want to set boundaries for our self-care around is really powerful because it really helps us to set our intention. What I have here is our stunning weekly plan, which is great. Now, I keep my work schedule in my phone. What I use this for is specifically for where I block out for my personal time. If you are someone who is maybe a hairdresser or if you have like a nine to five job, you don't have to put what you're doing for your work in this. This is our self-care planner. This is really where I'm putting my more joy-filled, my more passion filled moments, all the stuff that I'm doing outside of work that's really specifically for me. I think it's actually really important for us to do that because our careers, our jobs has so much to do with other people's well-being and what other people's needs are and I don't like those two to intermix. I really like to keep those separate so that this is really about what I need for my self-care. Such a gorgeous idea to take down what we want our week to look like and set some boundaries around what we're not willing to give away. What's the time we're not willing to give up for anything? For me this week, actually it's literally true, this very morning, literally I woke up at five in the morning so I could do 30 minutes of my own physical activity. What I'm working towards is doing that twice a week because through this time, I've not been going to gyms, I haven't been doing group classes and so I've really have gotten away from a daily workout routine that I use to really just have so naturally. It was the first thing I did. This week, what I did is, I have two mornings where I absolutely have to move my body when I first wake up out of bed. It's going to be fun and I'm going to listen to Ariana Grande and I'm going to do a really powerful flow. That's what I did this morning. I knew I had 30 minutes and my mornings I don't have that much time this week, so I'm setting myself up for two 30-minute sessions, which I saved for Tuesday and Friday. What I'm going to put in here is Tuesday 30 minute flow. Then Friday I'm going to put 30 minute flow. Those are two of my physical activities that I'm going to commit to this week. I know I can accomplish these two things, I've already looked at my work calendar, so I know I have time Tuesday and Friday morning. Now, that's not the only time I want to spend on myself care relationship. I have some creative writing I know I'm going to want to do, I have some other little mantra works I know I'm going to want to do. My goal for that is I'm going to spend five minutes every morning on a little bit of breath work, a little bit of mindfulness work, meditation and creative writing. You can take more if you want but for me this week, I'm going to start with five minutes of morning on self-care planner work. Five-minute self care planner date. Oh, actually, Saturday I'm not doing that because this is also really important. Saturday and Sundays, honey, I'm having fun. I'm not getting out of bed and doing anything that just feels like a regimented schedule. I've realized that if I get too scheduly and if every single day has a setup schedule, actually, I caught my inner rebel and that inner rebel comes out and is like, I'm going to take this geode and I'm going to throw it. I'm not really going to throw it because I hear these cameras are expensive, but that's the thing. If you get too much rigidity in the schedule, it's just not fun. I need to have some free-flowing in this. Actually Saturday I'm going put so much fun and then again on Sunday. This is looking really good to me, but I feel like I just need more like hardcore, unbridled joy activities that are like my most fun things that are just the opposite of I have to go do that and one is going to be a needle pointing session. I'm putting it on Friday because I don't know what happened to me. Maybe this is going to be the part where you get to the video where you're like, I don't want what they have. But like a raging Friday night for me it's like needle pointing at home with my cats. It feels so good sitting down to needle point for an extended period of time. My body is literally moving and adulation, if adulation means something good. I am pretty sure it does. Needle point date, it's happening on Friday night. I'm going to put it towards the end because I like it to be in the order in the day. The other thing to really remember about this, this is a goal. Sometimes what can happen with our self-care is that in and of itself can become a bit rigid and a bit too much of something that we rely on. Let me explain. Basically when I first started to discover my yoga practice, I got so much relief and so much joy from my feeling of going to yoga class, that all of a sudden, my yoga class became this thing that if I missed it or if I didn't get to go to class for a day, my day was ruined. I realized that actually the rigidity that I had around having a daily yoga practice was actually preventing me from taking some of the lessons off my mat, like moderation and balance and actually listening to what my physical body needed, which was sometimes to rest, novel idea. Wherever you are, it's important to slow down enough to listen to what you need, listening to the intuition of what you need. Your self-care planner date could be Mondays and that's it. It could be Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It could be Tuesday, Thursday. Heck, it could be seven mornings a week. It just depends on what you and your nervous system really need. Once we know what it is that we need for our self-care, you're going to have to set some boundaries in order for you to get that. It's like for my Friday night of needle pointing, if I have someone that says like, there's this Zoom quiz we really want you to do it or a really fun work opportunity comes up. As much as I would like to maybe do that work opportunity, I know that for my nervous system I need to rest, restore, relax. I have my little Friday night needle pointing going on there. There's a way that we can really set boundaries and in doing so, you can lead with relief in setting your boundary. Thank you so much. I would love to. Then you turn around into but I need to XYZ and we can really lovingly set our boundaries so that we can make the time. We can proactively make the space, make the safety around the time that we need to do our self care work, which honey, it really is just like such a priority and there really isn't selfishness in you getting what you need now. If you start to realize that you're saying no to literally every single thing that every single person ever asks you to do, you can then maybe have that conversation with yourself about rigidity and flexibility and maybe, is our self-care running our lives? There's always a balance to be had in all of these conversations which is great because really this whole gorgeous life experiment that we're on, this is just like research and feedback that we're getting from ourselves to ourselves so that we can be happier and healthier people. What we're going to do is go to your weekly planner and I want us to make your sustainable self-care plan for the week. I want you to think about what is a daily amount of time that you can give yourself that feels like, yes, that's something I'm excited to commit to in the morning. But if you're thinking five mornings a week are you serious? Maybe for you it's two. It could actually be that we do this self-care planner date once a week. This is really just a suggestion. It feels good. I'll tell you what and once you've decorated you know it looks good. What do you think, Michelle Kwan? She thinks it's a great idea. There's actually another gorgeous activity that I want to talk to you about that I'm going to put on my gorgeous planner, which is a self care spa moment. I really like to do this on a weekend when I have time to not be interrupted. No matter where we are, we can turn like some little aspect of our apartment or house into a place where we can rest and restore and recharge, whether that's taking a bath, lighting some candles, maybe it's a steamy shower. A self-care spa moment, it's really just creating an intentional relaxing, calming space at our homes so that our nervous systems can go from up here more to down here. Come with me for our at-home self-care spa moment. [MUSIC]
8. A Home Spa Moment: One of my favorite things is a home spa moment. For me, that starts with a gorgeous bath. I love a bubble bath just as much as the next person, smells nice, we love the feeling of it. However, those bubbles can be a little bit drying to the skin as can super hot water, but I love super hot water. So I love to use a bath soak. Lots of different companies make bath soaks. This is a herbivore coconut milk bath soak that is so gorgeous on the skin. You don't have to do moisturizer after the bath if you don't want to, but just to make it even a little bit more special gorgeous hydrating, I do this 100 percent Squalane oil by Biossance. This gives me the moisture, this oil locks it in. I do a scoop of this, two pumps of that and it's amazing. The other thing I love to do while I'm in the bath is to layer face masks. I'll wash my face before I get in the bath tub and then I'll go ahead and do a dual face mask. Here's what you want to remember about these masks. We want to do either detox or exfoliating masks first, and then we can do a moisture mask after that if you're going to do two. In this case I would do the Squalane + Glycolic renewal mask because there's a little texture in there, it's a little bit exfoliating and then I'd finished with the valine ultra hydrating mask, which is so gorgeous. Then since we're also here I might as well, because I just totally missed out, this is a little gorgeous body polish and I love doing body polish on my heels and on my elbows at the end of my bath while the water is draining. Once my skin's been all warm, and nice, and soaking, it's a great time to exfoliate at the end of that. Once we finish up with our bath, it's the perfect time for skin-care. Our pores are open, they're ready to receive. First thing that we want to do, if you are a toning mist person, if you're a toner person, if you're a misting person, I like to do mists very first thing out of the shower. You can use them to refresh makeup later on if you want to, but I feel like you get the most bang for your buck when your skin's nice and opened up from the warmth of the shower or the bath. Then we do a gorgeous eye cream. I'm a huge fan of using spatulas for my skin care. It keeps the product clean, you don't have to use as much, also you don't have your fingers absorbing the product. I place the product on the back of my hand and then I'll use my finger to apply and rub into my skin. I just use my finger the whole time to just pat it into my skin. You can go above your brow and below your brow, but you do want to look on your eye cream to see if it's an above the brow and below the brow cream. Some you aren't meant to put on top and some you can. This one you can do both and I love this one. Then after we do our gorgeous eye cream, then we're going to apply serum. Sometimes you can use serum before eye cream, but I like to do my eye cream first because it protects your most sensitive skin before you put your serum on. Serums, you do want to apply before a moisturizer or before an oil. The reason for that is because they go the deepest. I'm not going to rub this serum all over my face because I have on makeup, obviously. So eye cream, then serum, then we would do our moisturizer, which I love this moisturizer, I really I'm just a Biossance girl, I can't help it. Again, spatula, keep it clean. You really can get away with that much for your whole neck and face. But here's another gorgeous tip. Instead of taking your skin-care and rubbing it in your fingers first, because we're not trying to moisturize our fingertips we want to moisturize our face, once you have it like this, you can tap. You're really just applying the skincare in the areas of your face and then rubbing it altogether. Then at the end you're going to put on oil. The reason we want to put on oil at the end is because it seals in all the moisture and helps to create a barrier so that you're keeping all those gorgeous ingredients delivering right to your skin. If you're like, "Oh my God, my skin's already really oily, I don't want to use a lot," you actually need oil to make your skin stop over producing oil. If you're newer to oil, you don't have to use this whole vial, just do two drops. That really can be enough for your whole face and neck, especially if you've already applied all your moisturizer. That's really enough. Again, you can go boop, press it into the face. Another thing to remember is that actually, this is major, your face skin starts at your nipples up. You could really apply your face care routine to all of your skin from your nipples up. We really want to approach our neck, our upper chests with the same love and affection that we'd approach our face with. Then we mustn't ever forget our gorgeous magical sunscreen. After all that, we're going to apply our sunscreen. You want to use about a tablespoon on your whole face and neck, don't forget your ears. This is the mineral-based sunscreen, which I love. There are chemical-based ones and there are mineral-based ones. Mineral sunscreens are a little bit chalkier, typically. This one's not very chalky, but it is chalkier than what a chemical sunscreen would be. But I like this because it creates more of a physical barrier and it doesn't go on chalky at all if you prep your skin in the first place with the skin-care beforehand, it absorbs really easily. But just note to self, if you're a mineral sunscreen person, don't just put it on your dry, no skin-care skin or it will not look cute. But then we don't want to forget our lip. I love doing a nice heavy lip moisturizer. I'm going to apply a little bit of this lip balm. I would say, for someone newer to skin-care and is not ready to really approach layering full-on, I would say you need a great moisturizer and sunscreen. If you're ready to graduate a little bit, then I would say eye cream, moisturizer, sunscreen. If you're ready to graduate from that, I would say moisturizer, sunscreen, eye cream, serum. Yes, it's really not that many things. I'm feeling gorgeous, I'm feeling hydrated, I'm feeling thriving, and I'm also feeling like I'm ready to learn so I'll see you back in class.
9. The Joy of Discovery: My skin is feeling hydrated, that's spar session was gorgeous. Now we're going to dive back in to deepening our understanding of ourselves. When I talk about the idea of bringing more joy into our life, I get a lot of like, where do I start? I don't know what makes me feel joyful, I've just been doing whatever I've been doing for so long, I just don't know. What I want to do to get into the idea of fostering joy, facilitating joy inside ourselves is really going back to what was the last time you remember feeling an unbridled joy, unbridled curiosity about something? When was that and when did you last experience it? The way that I like to think about that is by writing that down. Every day in your journey of your self-care planner, you can write down through some creative writing, a time when you felt really joyful or really curious about something that was new. You can write about memories, you can write about the actual thing that you were doing, places, feelings that you had while you were there. We're going to set our timer for five minutes, and we're going to write about a time that made us feel joyful or passionate. I just got a new one in my head that I'm going to write about. Set your timers and let's write for five minutes. That flew by, can I just even say how quickly that flew by? What I wrote about is how much I miss playing the violin. I played the violin in grade school and junior high and high school, and then ultimately what happened is, I graduated high school and I was going to college and I was like cheerleading, and I was studying school and I didn't really see where violin fit itself into furthering my life financially or with stability. Was playing the violin going to be how I made money and made a living? I realized that that was really one of the first things that I loved doing and loved learning about that I let go of because as a kid, I didn't see how it would translate into my life as an adult. That is something that makes me so sad. What I was writing about is that really it wasn't my love or my passion for violin that kept me or that allowed me to go away from it, it was actually the expectations of the world and my family and friends that I didn't see that violin was really a feasible thing for me to do until my adulthood. That actually caused me to lose a certain amount of joy because I loved learning about the violin. I loved learning how to make my eyes move with my fingers on the pace of this gorgeous music, it was so much fun. Really, I think what I would like to do with some of this information is like I want to find a violin teacher and maybe pick up the violin again. It might be like a once a month thing, maybe it'll be an every other week thing, maybe I will not do it at all. But writing about my thought of missing the violin, there's still a lot of memories and a lot of feelings that I don't think I have fully processed because, I was a young kid, I had a lot of other things going on when I quit doing this. I think it's just a really nurturing therapeutic exercise to get these ideas out of our head and onto paper, and it helps us tune into what we need. Trying new things is also really important. Like for instance, I always hated tomatoes and then this one day I woke up, and I liked tomatoes. You never know what exactly is going to happen. Another thing, gardening. If you would told me five years ago, that I was going to be obsessed with gardening, and that I would have a garden. I would have literally broken out the smelling salt because I would have thought that there was something tied too tight and you are going to pass out, and I didn't want to pass out. But yeah, I mean growing up gardening, I just remember my mom making me weed stuff, and she was like you're going to have to weed stuff and I was like, no. But then as an adult, I love weeding my vegetable beds, because now that I grow vegetables which are gorgeous, and who knew that a lot of vegetables and fruits first turn into a flower, and then the flower turns into food. I was so shocked you really don't want to know, and if you don't have a garden, you can literally get this thing called a vegepod. It comes from Australia I'm pretty sure. I'm obsessed with a vegepod, this is not a vegepod commercial, but if you remember this and if it makes it a vegepod. V-E-G-E pod, vegepod. Amazing, we're obsessed. Then my husband was, "Oh, we should try gardening" and I was like," I don't like that, I hate the feeling of wet mud under my fingernails." But then instead of me just dismissing the idea of gardening, I was like no, okay fine, I'm going to try it. I literally became obsessed with gardening because I didn't know that there was flowers involved in fruits and vegetables. I guess I'm just saying trying something new is so important to just joy and accessing joy. We don't necessarily know what we're still going to love, or not love based of our past experiences because, we change and we grow and we have new ideas and we have new perspectives. You don't want to limit yourself by not taking the chance of trying something new. The older we get, we try less things because we get nervous and we get scared. But I have found trying new things is actually really fun, and really rewarding, and also build your confidence because you're like, I can try new things. Even just going to find a new yoga studio, going to find a new store to try, going to find any new activity that in itself builds confidence, and then we can feel like we can rely on ourselves more, which is just a priceless feeling. Next, I'm going to share one of my favorite passions with you, needle pointing.
10. A Crafting Moment: Needlepointing is this gorgeous art form that has been passed down from my grandmother to my mom and then to me. It's always something that I thought was interesting, but something that moms do, and I didn't really think it was that cool. Something happens when you get older where it doesn't always happen, but at least for me, it happened where my mom, I didn't think was that cool. Then all of a sudden, super cool. She made this needle-quaint pillow that is so interesting and has all these different textures on these flowers, and then she gave it to my friend, Patty. That is also when I realized that I needed to learn the needlepoint myself so that I could feel connected to the generational artistry above me, but also make myself really interesting pillows because these pillows are so cool. But also there's nervous system benefits to the needlepointing too, which is that I have racing thoughts or anxiety, and then when I start needlepointing, it goes away. Focusing on making something with my hands and coordinating my brain, my hands, my eyes, it just feels really good, and this is such a fun creative outlet. Let me just show you. There's hundreds of stitches that you can learn to do, and they're all so different and so fun. They all create such different effects. You can be perfectionist if you want to or you can just get her done, which that's more how I am. I just bear all right through a mistake. But there is something, whether it's crocheting or knitting or literally painting really any art, it is so much fun to do, and it's such a fun way to connect with yourself. I hope this turns out pretty. We're literally going to find out together. Smoosh the string down to get it through the eye of the needle. I did on my first try. This isn't movie magic. I literally just did this officially on my first try, and I don't know if you're supposed to. I feel this probably needs to be the same length. Crafting corner get out of here. I'm going to do basket weave, which is, I think, its most basic, and it's definitely first stitch I learned. I'm going to start on the corner over here. Oh my God, this is so exciting. Actually, I was trying to be this strong person with eyes that don't need a magnifying glass, but it's not my truth. I am officially my grandmother's grandchild. What happens with these stitches? Everything goes diagonal. It goes into the hole that's up into the right. Everything's a diagonal stitch on basket weave, and it's definitely the easiest. But I do have this fierce double stitch going, where I have two threads in my needle because this lady is in a pool. I think that white part's supposed to be this guy. I wanted her to be a sparkle, a glimmer in the sky, and none of the white thread had a sparkle in it so I needed to add a sparkle thread with it. My Christmas stocking is needlepointed by my mom, and my grandma needlepointed all of our stockings. Now, my mom's working on a stocking for my hus. This is going to be a coaster, and it's going to be gorgeous. Yes. I'm so pleased with how this cute extra string is looking. Can I just say I literally forgot complete time and space of where I was? All my problems just melted away into her gorgeous little cup of whatever she's drinking. I hope that you get into your version of needlepoint. Maybe it's crochet, maybe it's painting. Maybe it's some clay sculpture. There are so many different things to try. The [inaudible] are the same. Calming, happy, connected, joyful effect. So I challenge you to get your hands dirty, and try something new, and get your arts and crafts on. Next, we're going to talk a little bit about failure and forgiveness, which is something I run into a lot on needlepointing. But not just needlepointing, also in my daily life. Failure and forgiveness are two gorgeous Fs that I can't wait to talk about. I'll see you in just a bit.
11. Failing and Forgiving: This is a gorgeous playbook or self-care planner for how we're going to deepen our relationship with ourselves. But inevitably, life is going to happen, we're going to experience setbacks, and things might happen where you may not achieve the goals that you set for yourself, and that is completely okay. If your goal is that you do three mornings a week or two mornings a week, five, whatever, and you fall short of that, what's so important is that you come back, that you make the conscious decision to dust off your self-care planner and try again. We may fall short, we may not do everything that we want to do every single time, but you are still worth investing your time. You're still worth coming back to your hopes, and your dreams, and your vision, and actually investing in creating that. Just because one week doesn't turn out exactly how we think it's going to, doesn't mean that we just give up. However, because we know that things are going to get dicey sometimes, I think what would be great is if we do a little proactive guide for what we're going to do, a little guidebook for what we're going to do when we get overwhelmed and we lose our journey into our self-care planner. Let's go to a gorgeous blank piece of paper, and I'm going to start off by just writing down a few things that I'm afraid are going to happen that could knock me off my self-care journey. One of those things that immediately comes up is if something comes up in an interaction with someone that causes me to do something that makes me resentful. I'm feeling a little bit irritated, I'm feeling a little bit angry at them. I'm going to put resentment with a person as one thing that might knock me off of my path. Another thing that could happen is, is I miss my plan for the day. I miss my self-care planner time, or I miss my joy appointment, whatever it is, I miss something in my weekly plan. Another thing that could maybe happen is maybe we're dealing with some anxiety. Here's one, maybe we're really catastrophizing about a certain situation that we maybe don't want to end up doing. I'm going to pick catastrophizing, which is where everything is a catastrophe. This on this side is the what-if. Then on this side, I'm going to do this. What if there is a resentment with a person? One thing that is so helpful for me when it comes to resentment with the person is love and light meditations. What's a love and light meditation? We think about the person who we're resentful of. Now this is hard. This is actually harder than going to yoga or doing your self-care planner because it's like, "Oh my god, I got to think about a person I'm literally resentful of." Yes, queen, we do. We're going to think of the person we're resentful of and in our meditation, we're going to send them love and light, and in that sending of love and light, we hope that this person gets all of their health and happiness that this person wants. Sometimes I'll inhale on the love and I'll exhale on the light. I'm thinking of the person. I can so clearly see them in my mind. I mean, literally, one round of it, I'm already less resentful. If your resentment level is at a 12, it'll turn it down to a power level 2. Even a zero, if you do it for a few days in a row. That's a major good tool. Now, if we miss a weekly goal, what I do is I autopsy the situation. That is something that my therapist and I talk a lot about, and that's just going back into the week and thinking about, well, what happened that caused that goal not to take place? Did I maybe have a people-pleasing part that came out? Did I say yes too much? Did I maybe not get enough sleep? What is it that happened? When I do that, I really try to do that without a judgmental tone with myself. It's really like a loving introspection investigation into what happened in the missing of that goal. For that, I'm going to put down a loving investigation, is what I'm going to do if I miss a weekly goal and try again. Sometimes, when that happens, what I really need to do is I have to actually write out what happened for me to remember. Because with so many interactions and so many different folks that we're working with, it can be easy for it to just drift away. It might be that if you did miss a weekly goal, you really will have to go back, look at your schedules, see what happened, and then write about what happened, and that will give you some really fruitful information about how you can better ask for what you need upfront a little bit earlier in the interactions so that you can really make your goals happen. That's another thing. Anxiety, old friend, here is something that I really love to work through anxiety with. It's just an old-fashioned child's pose. The reason why we love to get into child's pose is it puts pressure on this third part of our forehead, which helps to just instantly calm and relax us. Then what you can do is you can go from a child's pose right up into a little cat-cow motion, which we also went through in our little yoga moment. What that does is it helps to open our heart and it helps to just get us into our courage. The child's pose, it helps the anxiety calm down, and then the cat-cow, it just helps to get our heart nice and open and courageous. Child's pose is a gorgeous prescription to anxiety. Then finally, catastrophizing. To me, catastrophizing is bigger than anxiety. Catastrophizing is like, I'm having unreasonable fears, maybe it's going to happen, but it's probably most likely not going to happen, and I am worried about it. When we notice that we're really catastrophizing, we're really elevated. Maybe our shoulders are hunched forward, maybe we're being really, really irritable, really negative, whatever's happening, that's when it's a good information that we need to stop and do something a little bit more proactive than maybe even a child's pose. It could be a bath. It could be removing yourself from that situation, taking a walk. It could be a lot of different things. But the most important thing is that we're going to actually move our body out of the situation. We're going to be moving our body. Other thing that could happen and I definitely struggled with this, I'm sure you're going to be shocked, sometimes I might feel like I'm being like especially self-absorbed or really just a little bit selfish. That is really something that I don't want to have that happen when it comes to my self-care because I really do love showing up for people around me, I love showing up for causes that I'm passionate about, and I really can't do that as much if I'm feeling way too just in myself. When we're feeling selfish, a great thing that we can do to combat that and to get out of our own way is to volunteer. Volunteering can look so many different ways for so many different people. It could be that you volunteer your time at a shelter. It could be that you volunteer at a food bank. It could be that you bring some of your extra food to a food bank. It could be that you write letters. It could be that you would get involved in mutual aid that really speaks to you. I think actually when it comes to this, money is great, money is fabulous, so you could also make a donation. But what's even more incredible than just throwing money at a donation is really donating your time. Time equals love, according to Dr. Edith Eger. Giving your time to causes that are important to you and to people that are important to you, it just helps you to gain confidence in yourself and it helps you to gain that feeling of integrity and enjoy. Because when we bring joy to other people, it emboldens us to trust ourselves and to feel confident in our self. That is such a beautiful feeling. Helping others really does help us, which then it makes me think chicken or the egg, I may only helping people because I want to help myself. Who cares? Because you're helping people. That's really what self-care is. It's us connecting with ourselves and deeply connecting with ourselves so that we can be better community members for ourselves, for our friends, for our families, for people who may not look like us, for people who may not act like us. Really, self-care is about being an ally. When we don't have energy, when we don't have our own love and our own acceptance, it's really hard for us to show up in a full authentic way in our relationships with those around us. Self-care can feel really overwhelming, but I don't want you to brush that overwhelm feeling away. I want you to look at it and say, "I'm not overwhelmed. I can do this," and you can. One of the reasons where this idea really first came to me, is this idea that we do wedding planners and we preach wedding planners for young women, you've heard about it from the time we were a little. But do we ever really think about doing a planner for ourselves? How do we do a planner to fall in love with ourselves and fall in love for caring for ourselves? That's really what this is. This is just a way for you to get excited about your life, get excited about you, and get excited about what your dreams, and your hopes, and what your offerings are. It's a beautiful way to connect into your truest self. When I say your truest self, I mean your truest self. It's so much fun. There is no one else in the world like you. No one else is going to make a book the same way that you're going to make your self-care book. Get into it, have some fun, and discover yourself. It's never too late.
12. Final Thoughts: Congratulations. You made it to the end of our gorgeous class. While I'm literally going to miss you and I hope that you enjoyed this so much, I'm really excited for what your self-care planner and your self-care journey is going to look like. I want you to remember, it's okay if your goal shift, it's okay if your commitments shift, but what's not okay is for you to just not anytime on caring for yourself at all. I want to challenge you to picking out however many mornings a week that works for you. Maybe it's one morning a week, maybe it's three, maybe it's two, maybe it's five, there is seven days in the week. Pick however many of the number that works for you. But I would like to challenge you to pick the amount of mornings it works for you and commit to doing 5-10 minutes of morning self-care journaling work for 5-10 minutes every morning. You can go more, but you can't go less. At least 5-10. You can work on really whatever you want to work on. If you want to work on your creative writing aspects, if you want to work on your weekly planning, if you want to work on you're above the line and below the line thoughts, your mantra work, whatever you want to really focus on, focus on that. Whatever your goals and your dreams are, focus on those. Then at the end of the year, you can go back and you can see how much you've accomplished. Please share in the project gallery what of these lessons worked for you, what was the most challenging, because really we're all in this together. We can comment, we can share, we can see what other people are doing on their gorgeous self-care journals, which can also help you get some ideas for your self-care journal. I also can't wait to keep discovering my self-care journey. I can't wait to get back out on the ice, maybe start doing some gymnastics again. I definitely want to continue my advocacy in terms of increasing the HIV social safety net. I want to keep thinking out how can I empower political leaders that I think are amazing, how can I help to foster that, and cats. It's cats, HIV social safety net, violin, gymnastics, figure skating, and hair. A lot of gorgeous hair styling, a lot of gorgeous hair things are going to be happening for my self-care, because that also brings me so much joy. I've got a lot to do, I've got a lot to organize. I got Michelle find to help me do it, makes such a big difference. I wouldn't be where I am without it. I hope you had a good day. I hope you had a gorgeous lesson and thanks for coming to my Skillshare.
13. Bonus: 5-Minute Timed Writing: Set your times and let's write for five minutes.