Friends. I’m so glad you’re here with me. If I haven’t met you in person, I really hope you’ll come over to Instagram and say hi to me. I’m at amy. smoothzonescoaching and I really love chatting with you there. Um, it’s such a great opportunity to just reach out and talk and I love it so much. So come on over.

I would really love if you’d leave a review too. I love reading the reviews. I appreciate them so, so much. If you’re loving this podcast, please leave a review. It only takes a few seconds and it’s really. Really easy.

And I wanted to let you know that with the holidays right upon us A lot of times we think this is not the time to start coaching or to, uh, add anything else to your busy schedule and your plate and all that you’ve got going on. Or you might be feeling really worn down. You might be feeling really sad and it’s just like, I don’t want to reach out for help.

I just don’t have the energy. I have a couple of spots open for new clients and a couple of different options for people. Who needs support during the holidays? I think that getting some help and support is the best thing you can do for yourself because this makes everything on your plate so much easier.

I’m going to help you make decisions like strong, confident decisions about where you want to put your time, where you want to put your energy and teach you how to say no completely without the guilt. And then I’m going to teach you how to say yes wholeheartedly. We want to be like, heck yes, I am all in to whatever I decide to do.

I’m going to help you with your feelings. I’m going to help you with your grief. I’m going to help you with whatever you really want this holiday season. This is the best time. It’s the best gift you can give yourself. Don’t wait. Come and grab these spots. You can go to smoothstonescoaching. com forward slash get support and find out all the details there.

And I don’t want cost to be a factor. If you, I’ve got the prices listed there. If it seems out of your budget, I still want you to come talk to me. We’re gonna figure something out. I just want to help everyone that I can and I understand that there are budget constraints and we can totally work with that like Not a problem at all.

Okay. I had to switch gears. I had another podcast plan and I was working on it and working on it and then all of a sudden I started not feeling really well and I’m guessing that a lot of you are going through this right now. We’re in the middle of just cold and flu and like Some sort of, you know, Corona is going around again.

And I also was coaching some people. I’ve actually seen people, um, really struggling with not feeling well and not being able to do all the things that they want to do, not being able to show up as a parent, not being able to show up at work, not being able to show up for themselves the way they want to, because they’re not feeling well.

And so I wanted to do a little episode as I sit here, I have to keep pausing it to cough and I’m feeling a bit like if I just sit with my body, I’ve got these waves of fever going through, um, but I really, really wanted to talk to you this week and so I’m doing it and it’s all good. I’m going to make this short and sweet, but I think you’re going to love it because it’s going to be packed with so many tips and there’s not any of you listening that haven’t been sick before.

I don’t think, and if you have, I want you to email me your secrets, but yeah, let’s talk about what do we do when we’re sick? Now this could be, like I said, you caught a little bug or you’re pregnant after loss or you’ve got other health issues going on. You might have chronic illness. You might. Okay.

Really have, um, stuff you’ve been trying to figure out for a long time, whatever you define as sick. This is what we’re talking about today. And I. Just want you to start with the basics and sometimes people hate this part. Uh, I have teenagers right now that are working through some stuff and every time the doctor’s like, Get enough sleep, drink lots of water, do some exercise, get outside in the sun, you know, take your vitamins and eat good food.

And they’re like, uh, and sometimes we’re like these teenagers to like, why do we have to do that? Um, or we might have a lot of excuses like, I want to do that. I want to eat better. I want to move more. I want to get out. And it’s just really, really hard. It’s okay if it’s really, really hard, but the basis, like we can’t be self coaching or trying to, when we’re feeling just horrible.

So instead of like trying to think your way out of this. situation, I want you to start with the basic foundation of health, which is really try to drink a little bit more good stuff. Try to eat a few more healthier options. Um, let yourself rest. This is the biggest thing that I find with my clients and people I talk to is we’re just so bad at resting.

We’re so bad at it. And even when we’re sick, right? Like, in my case, I have a lot of living kids at home. I don’t get to rest when I’m sick for the most part. I really have to almost fight for it to just be like, Mom is sick. Like, I feel terrible, right? And there’s that part where we’re like, Oh, we shouldn’t complain and we shouldn’t really, you know, we should just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and keep on keeping on.

Um, but yeah, it can be difficult to rest and to take that space for ourselves. Uh, and. Especially if you have living kids or you have a job or you have, you know, people around you who do not appreciate rest, this can be really challenging. So I’m going to challenge you. Get some rest. Rest is productive.

Rest is what you need. As Daniel Tiger says, when you’re sick, rest is best. Um, if you haven’t had the pleasure of Daniel Tiger. You gotta check it out if you feel up to it, if you’re okay in your grief. Because it is like a preschool show and there is a baby tiger, but, um. Yeah, you need to rest. That is an order from me.

So get your rest, take care of your physical health as much as you can. And then when you’re not feeling your best, we need to adapt. Adapting is so important. This is one of the biggest blocks and the biggest struggles I see too, is you’re not feeling well, but in your mind you’re like, but I should be able to do everything that I normally do.

I should be able to show up the way I always do. I can’t let people down. I can’t let balls drop. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. I have to. I have to. I have to. Have you ever found yourself doing this? If you’re guilty, that’s okay. We all do it because again, we’ve been taught that we don’t stop. We just got to go, go, go.

And we don’t have a society that’s set up like there’s no. Magical, like, nanny that comes when mom is sick. A lot of places have terrible sick leave. And even if they have good sick leave, it’s like, if you leave, you know you’re gonna come back to just a pile of work. And so, it’s really not very restful, or your phone’s going off the whole time.

But we gotta adapt. Um, we really need to stop trying to be who we are when we’re at 100%, and be where we are. So check in with yourself. Are you 50 percent of capacity? Are you 30? Are you zero? Where are you? And then you need to adapt. You need to really change what you’re doing. It’s so funny. I feel like this in some ways is so basic and in other ways is so foreign.

We just are not good at this. So I want you to get good at this and the best part is the more each one of us learns to take care of ourselves when we’re sick, the more permission we give the people around us. So it is like a total win win. Um, I currently work with another coach too on top of my business and she’s amazing.

She’s like, if you guys are sick, let’s rest. Chill, please don’t work and I love it. And what would the world be like if all bosses were that way? So how can you adapt when you’re sick? Sometimes that means we feed everybody cereal or we Order in or whatever it is, but you got to adapt. Okay, my next tip which It’s really basic and also really, really hard.

I get it. Get help. Please get help. Ask your partner, ask your family, your friends, your neighbors, whoever you need. Or like I said, hire somebody if you can, if you’re able to do that to help you, right? There’s nothing worse than like laying there being sick, thinking about this huge to do list in your head.

It’s okay to get help and part of adapting is really letting go of some of those things because they really don’t matter. We don’t want to sweat the small stuff when we’re sick. And I was talking to someone and they were saying, well, I, I’m super introverted and I really struggle and I just don’t know.

I can’t ask people or I don’t have family nearby or whatever. We have this whole list of excuses and they’re legitimate. I’m not going to downplay like sometimes it can be hard to find help. But I promise you if you need it, if you want it, if you look for it, you will find it. I believe the world is full of amazing, incredible people who want to help me.

I think they want to help you. Don’t be afraid to ask. All right. Then when you are feeling ill, feeling poorly, feeling sick, I want you to own your choices. A lot of times what we do is, like I said, we’re laying in bed. Thinking about what we should be doing. We choose to stay home from work and we feel terrible about it.

Um, we let the kids play too many video games while we’re sick and we feel guilty about it. Listen, you are not at capacity. You are unwell. Your body is fighting germs or infections or injury or whatever it is. You need to focus on that. That is survival. Like we have to take care of ourselves first. We cannot Be who we are when we’re not sick.

And so as you make choices

We feel like we were forced into them or we didn’t have a choice, but you always have a choice. You always have choices. So if you choose to feed the kids cereal for dinner, own it. Don’t add another layer of guilt on top. Don’t add a layer of just being awful to yourself and criticizing yourself or thinking about what’s everyone else going to think.

Just own the choice. If you choose to stay home from work, stay home from work, and just do it. Be present. Stop thinking you should be there, or you shouldn’t have taken it off, or you should have figured out a way to like, take a whole bunch of medicine so you could have powered through. Just stop. Like, really.

Please own your decisions. And remember not making a decision is a decision and we want to own that too. We want to just say, yeah, I laid in bed all day. I didn’t do anything. That’s a great decision. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re sick. Why do we think it should be anything other than that?

It’s like literally all you have to do is. Keep on breathing and let your body heal itself. Or if you need extra attention, go get that extra attention. But if you’re just like me, you’ve just got this kind of annoying, uh, germ thing going on, you know what? That’s all you need to do. Anything above and beyond that, if you want to do it, great.

And the other side is sometimes we do all these things and then we’re like, Oh, I should have rested. I should have stayed home. I, I went to work and I shouldn’t have. You should have. Own that choice. Don’t second guess yourself. It’s just a real waste of energy and you’re already really tired and you don’t feel well.

So why would you put that on yourself? Whatever you choose to do, Do it. Like right now, I am not feeling well. My voice is awesome. I wanted to do this podcast because I love doing this podcast and I had a little quiet moment and I’m going to do it. I am going to own that. I’m not going to tell myself I shouldn’t have done it even if my throat is worse afterwards or whatever it is.

Own your choice. And the last one is don’t judge yourself. This mixes in with all the other tips. But we have this real. Inner critic thing and this huge set of beliefs around what we should do when we’re sick. And many, many of us were raised that we really ought to just pretend we’re not sick. We ought to just keep doing what we’re doing.

And,

and I want you to ask yourself, who does that even serve? Right, the only person it serves, the only thing it serves is if you believe in this kind of big corporate machine of like the industrial era where it’s like we want workers that are like robots. Right? That’s the only person it serves is like the people that think that Monday through Friday 9 to 5 whatever whatever or around the clock like that We should all be able to show up the same the same the same the same, but we are not robots We are humans humans get sick humans have hormonal cycles humans have feelings and emotions and grief and things that knock them down and

So like who cares? Really, we have this one life and judging the crap out of ourselves because we’re not cleaning enough or folding enough laundry or, you know, doing whatever at our job. Like why do we do that to ourselves? Why do we judge ourselves? Like I said, it’s kind of ingrained in us, especially in just Western cultures.

We just do not have the space to rest and heal when we’re sick. Our structure is not set up that way. So you have to just know that and recognize that. And so all your thoughts and beliefs about productivity, all your thoughts and beliefs about what strength is. A lot of people think strength It’s powering through.

There’s all these stories like, Oh, well, you know, I had this huge, whatever thing happened to me and I just went to work anyways. It’s like this badge of honor to push ourselves when we don’t feel well. What if the opposite is true? What if it really takes courage to rest? What if it really takes courage to take care of ourselves and to slow down

What if we could just be sick and we didn’t spend all our time trying to stop being sick by just doing everything we can to get rid of it. I believe that our bodies, they love us. They are absolutely doing the best they can. They, they know what to do and each one of us has our own health issues. And so I want you to really, again, take this with a grain of salt for your own situation.

I know that each one of us has different challenges. Some are harder than others, but I think that these tips to take care of your basic physical health, rest, food, water, movement, adapting when we’re feeling really bad, getting help. Owning our choices and not judging ourselves will really, really help us.

And I am telling you, when you listen to this, you’re like, yeah, that seems really basic, Amy. Come on. It’s so hard. Like I, I see it all the time. I’ve coached a lot of people on it. It is really hard for us, but we got to just practice. We have to practice this practice. Being good at being sick, we’re not very good at being sick.

Just like we’re not very good at feeling uncomfortable emotions. Sometimes we might think other people are going to judge us for what we do when we’re sick. That’s a big one. Who cares? So what? So what if they judge us? The thing we’re most afraid of is how we’re going to feel. We already feel terrible.

Don’t add that extra layer of judgment. Don’t add that extra layer of guilt or regret. Be where you are. Be in the present and right now or whenever you are in the future, not feeling well, take care of yourself. You’re amazing. I love you. I’ll see you next time.