Ep 76 | Women Who Invest in Themselves are Happier

Kim Strobel 00:05 

Hello, my she finds joy podcast members, I am recording this it is the month of May I batch these episodes. So this might be one that you're not actually getting until June. And I'm sitting here in my office, I have the window open, I have my dog, Sophie rose, who's on her back, all four paws up in the air. I have George Leroy on his dog bed, and I have Luna Lucia, who is in her favorite window seat. I have been trying to decide what my next topic is that I want to share with all of you. And it's not been coming easily to me, because there have been a lot of things on my mind lately. It's been an interesting few weeks, I am someone who puts themselves out there, as you all know, in a very big way. Whether it's my social media presence, or, you know, my speaking engagements across the country, I share a lot of who I am with the world. And that can many times put me in vulnerable positions. And something happened to me a couple of weeks ago. And I've debated whether or not I'm ready to talk about it yet. But I don't think I'm ready to talk about it just yet. It might be on an upcoming episode. So what do I want to talk about? Ah, so many things. I guess one thing that's been on my mind is thinking about why it is so very difficult for women in particular, to invest in themselves in some way. And what I mean by that is the quote that always comes to me is you are not selfish for putting yourself first. And that is a hard one. Because we've been trained by Mel, well meaning women who came before us that that is exactly what you do. You are born to mother and wife, and friend and nurture and take care of everyone else. And if there's anything left over at the end of the day, you get it. And guess what, there's never anything leftover. And this is a cycle that we know we need to break. It is a cycle that probably did not serve the women who came before us. I feel like so many of them felt like they weren't allowed to put their well being at the forefront. And I think that many of them were probably depressed, exhausted and depleted. But I think that we now know better and like Maya Angelou says when you know better, you do better. And it makes me think of a young woman that I encountered a few years ago. She walked up across Main Street to me and she just needed a few moments of my time and she said her name was Madeline. And she said, Kim, I know you're a happiness coach. But I I don't know what's wrong with me and I said What do you mean and she said I have everything good in the world. I have two small children that are two and three that are healthy and vibrant and beautiful. I have a wonderful husband, we have a home I have a job. And she said I have every reason to feel good in my life. And then she started to cry. And she said I just didn't know it was going to be like this. And I said tell me more about that. And she

said I wake up every day at 5am I throw a load of laundry in or take last night's load out and folded I get the kids lunches packed I clean up around the kitchen I get the food out to prepare for the meal that night. I get the kiddos up I throw them in the car, take them to the sitter go to work. I work from eight to noon at noon I get a lunch I run to Walmart, I pay my bills, I take care of all the errands I come back and work from one to five, I go pick up the girls, from the sitter, get them home, get them settled, start making separate throw another load of laundry and my husband comes home at six we eat, we clean up, we do everything else we're supposed to do. We play with the kiddos. And then we go to bed. And she said, and I do that exact same thing, every single day. And I guess I just need to suck it up. Because this is how it's going to be for the next 18 years. And I need to stop complaining. And I said, Madeline when's the last time you took time for yourself. And she could not come up with a time when she had taken time for herself. And then she looked at me and she said, Kim, I didn't know I was allowed to. And so I explained to her that we had mothers and grandmothers who probably inadvertently bred this social script onto us. And they modeled that behavior for us. But there are many things that are different today. And what we actually know is that if you want to be a better mom, and a better partner, and a better friend, and a better daughter, and a better person, that when you put yourself first, you are better for everyone else in your life. And that's why the quote, you are not selfish for putting yourself first. Some of the time, rings true for me. I was recently reading something from Tony Robbins, he had sent me an email, and he had sent me this quiz that you could do to find out if you're like fire, earth, metal, wood, what archetype you are. And it was interesting, because as I was answering the questions, one of the questions was, you usually put yourself first before others. And I knew that many times I do that. I'm really good at that. It's taken years, but I'm really good at that. Of course, there's a lot of times as a mother, I, you know, I need to put my own son's needs ahead of mine at times or my husband's needs. But more times than not. I choose me so that I'm a better version of me. So when I went to answer that question, it said, Do you rarely put yourself first Do you sometimes always often. And I remember clicking often. And as much as I know about why we need to do this, I felt guilty. I felt guilty for admitting even on this quiz that I often put myself first because it's almost like it still feels like that's the wrong answer. Even though I know it's the right answer. And I know that this is how I become the best version of me. And I think when I think back to Madeline, I remember telling Madeline, you've got to find some time every day that is just for yourself. Maybe that means that your husband puts the kids to bed each night and you don't. Or maybe that means you take a 30 minute walk after dinner each night and your husband plays with the girls. I don't know exactly what that looks like for you. But what I do know is that you're allowed to claim some space for you every single day. And then I asked her a second question and I said, Madeline Do you want to model for your two little girls that mommy knew she was allowed to love herself while she was raising them. Because when children know that they are in their raised to know that they are allowed to love themselves, they are allowed to choose themselves. And when they've had a role model who has shown them, hey, I'm more than a mommy. I'm more than a wife. I am a human being even while I'm raising you. And so I think that this spills over into almost every area of our life. For example, many times when I'm working with clients and I ask them something like when's the last time you spent money on yourself without first wondering if that money would be spent on something or someone else if it would be better spent on them? Right? And you start to waffle around You start to second guess, like, Oh, I really shouldn't spend this money on me. Or maybe this should go into the kids college fund. Or my friend Angie one time, she told me that she literally had not bought herself a pair of tennis shoes and five years. And she had this realization that every summer she was spending $5,000 on her daughter's soccer camps. And it finally hit her that I'm allowed to buy a freakin pair of shoes, you know. And so I feel like women often feel obligated, even when it comes to spending money, you know, on themselves, because there's always a bigger priority that we can talk ourselves into. And I see women make decisions like this all the time.

And I'll just be honest with you, it drives me crazy. I have compassion for it. But I also think it's time to flip the damn script, because your happiness, your well being is worth double, triple or quadruple of any investment you can make. And here's what I believe is that that investment does not just benefit you. Because when you're constantly putting your own needs, and once on the back burner, no one benefits, you know, there's that saying you can't pour from an empty cup. What that means is if you're constantly depleting yourself to serve, or invest in others, eventually, you simply have nothing left to give. But what I know is when you take good care of yourself, when you put resources toward your well being, your happiness, your success, it does mean the people in your life get the very best of you. But more than anything, I want you to get the very best of you. So you are worth buying the new gym clothes, you are worth buying the new pair of tennis shoes, you are worth purchasing a self improvement course, because we have so much potential in us. But we don't always know how to get that potential out. And when I think about how I've invested in myself over the years, I think about all the dollars that I've put into myself. I mean, I always think like my brain is really expensive. Like I have a very expensive brain because, you know, on average, I buy 30 self help books a year. And if you say, you know, each self help book book is, you know, 20 $20 a pop, that's $600 a year, and I've been doing this for 20 years, right. So that means like, literally behind me right now is a library of books that is probably worth 12 to $15,000. And that doesn't include the value of my time that I've spent reading those books and researching and doing the work that they require. I've also invested in a lot of self help programs over the past 20 years. And I've done that for many reasons. I know the research that says that only about 1% of the population can really implement change on their own. And I know that's a terrible statistic. But it's really hard for us to make the shifts in our life. If we don't have help if we don't have a community of people who are pushing us who are making us accountable. We need systems, right? In order to kind of change our brains and create new habits. I will tell you that every single year, I now invest in some type of Self Help Program. And I've been doing it for years. I just invested in one last year, I'm getting ready to invest in another one this year. And here's what I know that all of that pays off. It, it pays off. Because these programs have helped me it has raised the ceiling, on what I know is possible for me in my life. And again, I don't it doesn't matter what you're investing in. But I do think that when you invest in yourself, it always pays in big dividends because you change the trajectory of your life. I'm thinking about a friend of mine recently who reached out and I was really telling him about counseling and how much counseling helps me and I don't have insurance. So counseling probably cost me I don't know, $1,000 a year, but oh my gosh, what that counseling does for my marriage, what that counseling does for my mothering, what that counseling does for my business is so worth it. And so I think that many times, we have to ask ourselves, what kind of change? Do we want to see in our life? Have we been successful at making those changes in our life? And if not, what is something that we can do differently? And, again, it's about learning that it's okay to invest in yourself. Invest in yourself with time, invest in yourself with money, invest in yourself with relationships, begin to know and understand that you, my friend, are worth loving. There is no one who does more for you in a day's time than you. And your life is not all about giving everything to everyone else. In fact, my wish is that we each learn to stand in the power value and worth of who we are. We are allowed to do that, my friends, and I hope this episode has helped you. And does shed a little bit of light on how you can begin to think, act and behave a little differently. If, if, if you're like, Okay, Kim, yep, I'm ready to do that. I'm just going to tell you, the happy Academy, which you probably already heard a commercial on it. But the happy Academy opens up for registration, May 16. And the registration for the early bird pricing ends on June 6, so we are launching may 16 Through June 6, that's three weeks where you can join my 10 month wellbeing program, where every single month we concentrate on a particular theme, a particular level that helps you make a shift in your life. In August, we're focusing all about happiness and well being and really reflecting and mapping out how that feels in our life and

where we want to go with that in our life. In September. It's all about practicing self care, and really getting rid of those limiting beliefs. And here's the thing, everybody thinks that self care is like, oh, take a bubble bath, go get a massage, take a walk. No, no, no, that is included in self care. But let me just tell you, self care is hard. Self Care is making the decision to exercise when you don't want to exercise, right? It's making the decision to invest in yourself when you feel like everybody else needs your investment. And so we're really going to break the barriers that get in the way so that you can create some space to claim that in your life. And so every single month has a theme like that, where we do a deep dive on helping you and coaching you to begin to get these results in your life. So if this is something that you're contemplating, I will tell you the original price of this is 1397. But if you join by June the sixth, you get it for 997. Or I think it's three payments of 347, something like that. And so you can simply go to Strobel education.com. Forward slash, I think it's the happy Academy. But if you go to struggle education.com And you don't have to be an educator to enroll in the happy Academy because the happy Academy is open to everyone. But if you happen to be a school teacher, we have a lot of school districts who purchase the happy Academy for everyone in their schools. So that's an option if you are a school teacher, but if you go to struggle education.com And then you go to forward slash VA dash happy dash Academy, it's going to pull up or you can just go to programs and click on Happy Academy. I will also drop this in the show notes. But I wanted to let you know that this program is launching and if you feel the Whisperer. If you're ready to make a move in your life if you're ready to get the results you're after. This program might be the one for you. I would love to walk through you with it. Alright everyone, thanks for being here. Thanks for listening. Please know that I want to make sure You know you are worthy and valued and you are allowed to love yourself thank you