Me Time ✨ When It’s Your Turn To Level Up

Happy Sunday, everybody. How are you doing today? Jean Mitchell's coming in. Excited to be here on this beautiful Sunday. Let me take off my sunglasses. I am in my car today. I quickly got to a gas station as fast as possible. But in our conversation today, our discussion is really about me time, but also, when is it your turn to level up? When is it your turn? Hello, Speak. Wonder. Happy Sunday. So great to have you here. I feel like when I'm in my car, I'm pulling a jc. Like, I feel like he is the.

A master at car conversations. Hello, Andy, if you guys can hear me. Okay, can you somebody give me a heart or type in the chat that you can hear me. Okay. I'm in my car, and I worry that flips to Bluetooth versus my headphones. So I'm trying to make sure that I just don't lose you. Good morning, Jules. I have a text I need to send to you. Just waiting for some information. So just know that's of kind coming. But. Hi, it's Sunday. We're here. It is a heat wave in Minnesota. Wherever you're located, what's it like where you are?

It's literally when I look at the thermostat in my car, 92 degrees. Oh, I love it. Yes. I am one of those crazy people that loves hot. Love it, love it, love it. So today's conversation. When is it your turn to level up? Pondering. When is it my turn to level up? Is that a kiwi? Speak, Wonder. Love that. That's a kiwi. Looks like a kiwi. I could be wrong. When is it your turn to level up? So here's the deal. We are really great at lifting up everybody around us, right? And sometimes we get so good at it that two things happen.

One, we don't let that person continue to rise on their own after we've given the initial lift. Two, we forget to lift up ourselves. So part one, we do a really great job. I'm anticipating all of us at deflecting. It's easier to invest in someone else than it is into ourselves. Why? A whole bunch of reasons. We could feel like it's not our time, it's not our turn. We could feel like the hats we wear require us to invest in everybody else instead of ourselves. It could be a deflection. I don't want to invest in me, because what if I fail?

So I'm gonna invest in everybody else. And here's what's great about it. I'm guessing we're all really good at it. We're good at lifting other people up. Why do we know this to be true? Because people keep coming back to us to ask for our help. Why would you go back to somebody? Like you wouldn't go back to a restaurant that served you bad food or had really bad service, right? So why would people come back to you if they didn't believe that you gave them great advice that you weren't great at lifting them up?

So we know this to be true because people keep coming back. They keep asking for advice or opinion or insights or help. So those are indicators that we're really good at it. But sometimes we can go too far. And not intentionally and not maliciously, not in a bad way. We go too far because we get good at it. We get used to helping other people, so we think that they need our help for each other eternity. And maybe they do, or maybe they just need a little lift and they need us to step back and walk away so they can stumble and fall and learn and grow.

And then when they need us again, they'll come back again because they could get reliant on us always lifting them up. And then we get used to it. It becomes that whole little spiral where we continue to forget about ourselves because we're helping everybody else. They need us. They need us. I hear that often. But here's what I've learned in my experiences. And I'll use my mom as an example. I would do everything for my mom. Why? Because I loved her. I still love her. But it got to a point where she kept asking over and over and over.

And I started feeling like it wasn't fun anymore. It was work. And not that everything isn't work, and not that everything is fun. I don't mean it that way, but it felt like it wasn't valued. Maybe I didn't feel like I was valued as much or my time was valued as much. And I'm not proud of this moment. So let's be really clear. I'm not proud of this moment. But there was a day where my mom and I literally got into a fight. I never fight really very often, and with my mom, hardly ever, really. And we got into a fight.

I was in. I don't even know. I was just in a mode where I was learning about myself and figuring out that when. When people ask too much and I don't have anything in my bucket to give, I push back and I get really tired and resistant. And my mom, in this particular day, was coming at me hard and in. In a way that that wasn't bad. She wasn't downgrading me or. Or attacking me. It was more of. She had so many needs and expectations of me that I felt like I couldn't breathe and I couldn't catch up.

And I. I was at a point where I just needed to take time for myself. And we got into a shouting match on the phone. She hung up on me twice, and I was p*****. And then I called her back, and I was like, don't hang up on me, Click. And I called her back again. Don't hang up on me. Click. Called her back again. Don't hang up on me. I need to say this. And she paused, and I was like, mom, I love you. I don't want to fight with you, but here's the deal. I just need you. I need our time together to feel like it's mother daughter time.

And what she was calling me was about, like, call after call after call was a list of things that she needed. She needed more protein shakes. She needed toilet paper. She needed shampoo. She just needed and needed and needed. And I was like, that's awesome, mom. I will always help you. But here's what I need from you. I need to be your daughter sometimes. I need to have you ask me questions about my life. I need our time that we spend together, not focused on everything that you need on your list and everything I forgot to get you.

I need my mom again. Boy, I wish I could say that to her now. But on that day, she heard me. She listened. And so we came up with an agreement that she would make a list of all the things that she needed. And when I would come to visit her, I would take the list with me and I would come back with the list of everything. And every time I came, she could just hand me a piece of paper. But we didn't talk anymore about the things that she needed because I just wanted to be with my mom. Those feelings still hit real.

And she heard me. And it was crazy, because at the time, she was working with a therapist, and she went to her therapist and told her about our fight. And her therapist got in her face and said, a daughter should never talk to a mother that way, especially an adopted daughter. A therapist told my mom that adopted daughter should never talk to their mom that way. And here's what's crazy. I didn't like this therapist for a long time, but it was what my mom needed, and she didn't want to hear anything different.

And that was okay. It was her lived experience, not mine. But that one phrase that this lady said to her was, an adopted daughter should never speak to you that way. And my mom lost it on this therapist, fired her, and she said, nobody talks about my daughter that way. She is my daughter. It doesn't matter whether or not she's adopted. She's my daughter. And nobody talks to me that way about my daughter. And nobody talks about my daughter. That when she fired that therapist and that day, she learned something for herself.

She learned that it was okay for us to have boundaries, her and I. She learned for the first time that she could have boundaries, too. And so in that conversation where I finally stepped into what I needed to live into my own truth, which was set a boundary, my mom learned a boundary, too. But what was great about what happened next is it also gave my mom the courage to ask for what she needed. And so we learned a whole new, different dynamic for the next rest of our lives together. And what that reminded me is sometimes I, Jean, believe in the people that I'm with so much that all I do is invest in trying to lift them up.

But what someone recently reminded me is that a bird has to crack out of the shell. They have to learn how to fly. And if I'm consistently removing barriers for them, they never learn how to remove the barriers themselves. And so even though I'm coming from the best place in my heart, I'm also hurting those people by not letting them fly on their own and then waiting for them to stumble and fall and ask for my help, because I'm making all these assumptions that they always need me. And I feel good about that.

And that's not bad to feel good about helping someone. But maybe at some point it becomes a burden like that help all the time, all of a sudden becomes a burden. You get frustrated with them because they keep asking for what they've always asked for, right? So when is it time for me to lift up from myself? And the answer for me is when I believe I'm worthy of giving to myself what I give to everybody else. So I am going through again another example that I went through with my mom years ago that redefined and shifted the rest of our relationship.

It's not to say we didn't fight again. It's not to say that when I walked in to see my mom and she would give me her list right away, that I didn't feel a little deflated sometimes. But she was living by our new set of boundaries, our new set of agreements, and I couldn't falter for that. I Could then encourage her to say, you know what? I know where the notebook is. I'll get it on my way out. So then at some point, she didn't even have to really tell me about the list. I just knew where the list was so I could take it with me.

So our time could be our time. And it empowered her to be able to always ask for what she needed. So I knew when she called it was really important. And what that taught me is now as I continue to work through relationships and I continue to over invest. You know, like when we take too much vitamin C and it really does nothing for our bodies because we just pee it out literally. It's like when we take in too much, right? Like it's helping me to realize that when I keep giving too much and something doesn't change, the change has to happen with me.

And that's when I realized that it's time for me to reinvest in me again. It's time for me to stop over investing in this person that I love or these people that I love because they need to crack through the shell. They need to stumble and fall, they need to figure out how to fly, how to stand up again. But I will always know that when they need my help, they'll ask. I always know and trust that if I'm living into my best self, my most authentic self, my most loving self, that those people around me when I pull out from helping them all the time and we reshape our boundary, that we will both win, we will both step into the strongest version of ourselves because we had to get there ourselves.

So when I find I'm relying on other people to drive my happiness or drive my ability to create space, they're trying to do too much for me. And I, I actually get a little bit pissy, frustrated with people when they try to take over and do for me. I'm like, no, I have to learn for myself. Stop doing that, please. I appreciate what you're trying to do. I have to do this myself. If I always come from a place of gratitude and say thank you, but no thank you. People that over invest in others often have the same reaction.

They're like, what am I doing wrong? Nothing. I just have to learn to stand up myself. So today is a split conversation. The recognition that we can over invest and not with bad intent. It feels good, but the question always has to be, are we serving that other person for their best self? And when we answer that question honestly, the answer might be no. And that's okay. They might not even know it. And then the second part of today's conversation is, when do I choose to invest in myself? When I'm burnt out from investing in others?

Or when I realize I'm over investing and I'm not filling my own bucket, somebody else is trying to none of this is bad. It's all amazing because that means that we have amazing relationships in our life. But there are points in time where we need to set our own boundaries and say it's time to invest. In me, I have ideas. I have dreams. I have so many ideas. I have so many dreams. I have to pick one and do that because if I don't, I get lost. If I lose myself, then what's left? That Eminem song Lose Yourself is one of my favorite songs because it reminds me that if I lose myself, I don't get to be any of my best self for anyone else.

So start here, take a look. Are you over investing? Do they need you to over invest? Or is it time for you to help them to build up their own muscle and redefine and reshape that boundary? So I love you all. Thank you for being here today with me. Enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the rain. Whatever earth is throwing at you right now, enjoy it. Appreciate it. Because it's telling you to pause. It's telling you to lift up, celebrate. It's sending you a message that it's inviting you into its own energy today and use it in a way that supports and lifts you up.

So if you're new to me, welcome. I'm so grateful to have you here. If there's something that really inspired you about today, type it in the chats, type it in the comments. Sending you all so much love today. Have the best day.