The Sustainability of Me

In my last essay, I mentioned that I work for a sustainable investing firm. As part of that role, I am constantly thinking about sustainability as it relates to the sustainability of our economy and what companies are doing to support that, and how investors can integrate those initiatives into their investment thesis. 

But recently I started thinking about what am I doing for my own sustainability?  How am I investing in my own physical and emotional sustainability?
Once again referring to my prior essay, I’ve mentioned that I believe that self-care is at the core of balancing a busy lifestyle. And that it does take real effort to allow yourself to indulge in self-care. In a sense, it’s another thing, you have to do and balance amongst all of the other things you have to handle.  But I do believe that having that core layer fulfilled by putting efforts into self-care is imperative for giving me the strength I need to handle all of the other things that come my way.

So what does self-care mean to me?  And how does this self-care relate to the sustainability of my well being?  
I realize that self-care to me encompasses both physical and emotional efforts that help sustain and strengthen my body and mind.
And while the list of efforts can be quite long,
It primary consists of 3 major themes,
1.  Physical self-care
2. Emotional self-care
3. Being flexible about the perception of my reality

I’ve listed out some specific efforts under each theme.  

1.  Physical self-care
I’ve grown to really enjoy paying attention to my body and my skin from an inside out perspective.  It makes me feel confident, responsible, and put together. 

Exercise: I try to do some type of cardio exercise once or twice a week and as well as some type of strength training twice a week. Most importantly as I grow older, every morning and most evenings I put time into stretching.

Nutrition: I put quite a bit of time thinking about my (and my family's) nutritional intake. Over the last eight months, I’ve actively minimized my animal product intake and have primarily turned to a plant-based diet (75%).  The general rule I practice is to enjoy anything I want while eating out, but being strict about a healthy diet while eating at home.  Also, for the last year and a half, I’ve embraced intermittent fasting.  While I certainly have my “cheat” days, I try to implement 14-16hrs of fasting at least 5 out of 7 days of the week.  And finally, I am trying to be more diligent and intentional about my vitamin and water intake. These things alone have given me a real boost in energy and feeling of well-being.
Skincare: My skincare routine is also very important to me. I make it a point to have a routine that includes the right lotions and potions for my face and I try to do some type of skin therapy/massage to the rest of my body at least once a week. I also indulge in facial masking about two times a week.  While this has been great for my skin, it’s also extremely emotionally relaxing.

Emotional Self-care:
My emotional self care has been such a beautiful journey for me.
Meditating:  For me meditating started off with my coworker Anya briefly mentioning to me how much she enjoyed meditating and that even for 10 minutes a day worked wonders. That was about two years ago, and I did indeed start to meditate about once or twice a week based on her recommendation. However, I was under the assumption that one had to meditate in a particular way, and since it always felt a bit off to me doing it that way (e.g. breathing a certain way, turning “off” my mind, etc...), it deterred me from doing too much more.  Finally when I started letting go of those notions and just gave myself that time to relax my mind, meditation took on a whole new world for me. It really did just do that; it relaxed my mind.  Over time I started enjoying it more and more and I now find myself meditating approximately 20 minutes a day. I do enjoy guided meditations but now I also find myself enjoying peaceful music and meditating to that. At this point not only is my mind relaxing, but I find that meditation does provide me with all the merits as advertised. It allows me to let go of things, appreciate things, and live in the present. I know those are big concepts, but most simply, it just calms my mind and allows it to slow down enough to recognize what is in front of me.

Broadening my insights: Along with meditation, I truly enjoy listening to inspirational and insightful podcasts, Ted Talks and YouTube videos.  Some of them are about self-care, balance, and emotional strength. But many times just about various topics that I’m interested in. For example the other day I listened to a podcast about the Airbnb enterprise and what it’s going through during these times of Covid and I was just amazed and inspired by the resilient attitude of the founders. Not only did it broaden my insights, but it also served to be inspirational.  I've welcomed and embraced the fact that I can still benefit from learning and growing my breadth of information and am also open to rewiring many of my thoughts in order to continue growing emotionally. 

“Me time”: All of the literature on this topic of self-care will always emphasize alone or “me-time”.  I’ll simply further emphasize how important I find this to be.  Having even a calm 30min to myself can truly have an effect on the pace of my day and how my mind can handle that.  I typically stay awake later than the rest of my family to find that time, but what I find even more effective is when I wake up 30-45min before my kids and take that time to focus on whatever I want at a nice relaxed pace.  This is often when I do my best exercise, meditation, or writing.  

Creativity: Another thing that has greatly contributed to my emotional self-care is indulging in some type of creative activity. I find that writing has become a strong outlet for me; whether it be writing these types of small essays, creating a recipe book, or writing a memoir of my travels for my kids, it’s extremely helpful to me as it helps me organize the thoughts in my mind. One of my best friends Radhika Lakhani, who is truly a guru and master in the space of self-care and conscious living, recently said to me that she finds that an important part of self-care also involves telling people and passing on your messages. By writing about my experiences I find that the creative juices provide me with energy, while the idea of preserving and passing along my experiences brings my mind a rare calmness.

I also find that cooking is extremely helpful to me as it really does bring out my creativity. I grew up learning a classical form of Indian dance and I would often do my best when I mentally visualized various movements and how they would look together before actually executing them (actually dancing). I find that cooking provides that same opportunity. My best cooking happens when I can picture the tastes of different ingredients in my mind and imagine how they can be put together. Executing a recipe based on that visual in my head makes it feel like an artistic creative project; similar to how dance often felt for me. I realize it may feel like a far-fetched comparison, but when you enjoy thinking about how to creatively put things together for a beautiful output, I hope you can appreciate it a bit more.  

Perception of reality:

This is an exercise I find myself needing to actively practice.  I'm learning that one’s reality is a part of their perception; that one can change their perception and thus change their reality.

In other words, I realize that many situations just cannot change and will remain just as they are regardless of how hard you try to change them or how hard you work at them.  And in those cases, it’s not the situation that necessarily has to change for things to feel better, but rather the perception of how you look at that situation.

I’ll provide a personal example.  Prior to covid, I was accustomed to traveling the world every few weeks between work and pleasure.  And when I wasn’t traveling, I was making the most of my own "backyard", New York City, where I was taking in and enjoying the spirit and energy of working near Wall St.  I was still often out indulging in all of what New York City has to offer; the restaurants, bars, theaters, unique experiences, etc..  In other words, I was truly enjoying what life offered me.  When Covid hit, my life (like many people’s) abruptly changed overnight.  I went from what I just described as being my normal, to a very new situation.  I was now home with my kids, mostly alone as my husband still had to go into the hospital to work, trying to balance my intense work schedule with the kids new remote learning situation, cooking and cleaning twice the amount since we were all home, not being able to really leave the house and constantly worrying about my husband’s exposure to covid. My life turned upside down and didn’t seem so fabulous anymore.  And after the first few weeks of feeling the rush of this new reality; having lots of zoom calls with friends and enjoying working in PJs, very quickly I started to feel very down and almost bitter.  The perception of my reality was that this was all just unfair.  My husband was still able to get a dose of normalcy by going to work and I was stuck at home handling everything else (even though he helped me an amazing amount when he could!).  Of course I logically understood why this had to be the way it was, but emotionally it was tough!  So for months I tried so hard to change that normal and make it better.  I tried coming up with new schedules for work and for the kids, I asked my husband to take more time off of work, I tried to find any glimmer of hope and rationale that covid would end soon, etc... But all to my disappointment, nothing changed or really improved the new normal or the reality as I perceived it.  The reality was that the situation wasn’t going to change and after reading some inspiring stories, I realized that the only thing to make this situation better was not to focus on changing my reality, but rather to change my perception of this reality.  And I actively had to do that.  I started seeing this time home as a time to indulge more in self-care, getting to know my kids in a way I wouldn’t otherwise get a chance to, get to try new recipes, get more sleep, etc.. I started looking at this new normal as an opportunity.  And in treating it this way, the new normal started giving me much more happiness in return to enforcing this; my kids are happier and closer to me than ever before, I'm writing more, my mind is calmer and I’m able to recognize more small beautiful things I would have otherwise missed. Ive been able to find the energy I’ve been looking for since covid hit.  Don’t get me wrong, there are many times I do still feel down about the whole situation; I certainly still miss my pre-covid life; but I also know that when I intentionally shift my perception of this new reality, I can also be very happy.  

In general, I've realized that while I'm often thinking about all things Sustainability, it's important for me to walk my talk and think about my own sustainability as well.  Indulging in my own ways of self-care has truly made me stronger.  However, I do truly believe that it doesn't just all easily happen or fall into place. It does indeed take effort and conscious intentionality to focus on self-care.  Efforts that I think are well worth it.