Tina 00:00:00 Today we are moving into part three of the Spring Reset series and we are covering Resetting the Soul. And so what I usually start off with when I cover anything to do with the salt, because everything I do in my coaching practice, in my business is about focusing on the mind, the body, and then the soul. And so the way I define this is how do we really reconnect with our our true selves. Right? And so some of the questions you might ask are how do I practice real self-love? Am I living in alignment with my purpose? How can I connect more authentically with myself and others? Or when was the last time I let myself feel pure joy or playfulness? So these are some of the things I'm going to cover in today's podcast. So let's get into it. You're listening to the Soul Aligned Self-care podcast. I'm your host, Tina Stinson, and I had a stroke at the age of 39 from stress and burnout that shook my world. Now I'm laying it all out.
Tina 00:01:13 The deep level self-care practices and mindset shifts that I needed that kept me healthy, balanced, and thriving. Join me in this intimate space as we explore healing, resilience, and the soul's journey to alignment. This is where real conversations about deep level self-care happen. Let's get into it. Hello guys! Welcome back to the Soul Aligned Self-care podcast, and welcome to anybody who's here for the first time. I truly love hanging out with you and appreciate you hanging out with me. This week we are covering the Spring Reset Part three. Now, if you haven't listened to the other two parts, that's fine. You could listen to either one of them in any order, so just go back and listen to them. I'll put the links to both of those in the show notes. And. But before we get started, I just wanted to talk about one thing before we get into today's topic, which is resetting the soul. And I'll explain exactly what I mean by that in a second. But I want to invite you to join me over on my Patreon.
Tina 00:02:21 You could follow me for free, or you could join the VIP tier. In the VIP tier, I release new meditations weekly. We do biweekly moon journaling, which is so much fun where I provide you with a worksheet every two weeks with journal prompts to use for the moon, the full moon, or the new Moon. And also, I give a self-care practice every week we do card polls. There's so many fun things we do over there, and there's a new series I'm starting called From Seed to Table, which is about how to grow your own food. So we cover everything that involves self-care. So I would love to have you over there. We're doing a free trial right now. I think it's seven days free, so you can go in and you could nose around and check out everything and see if if it's something that you would like. And as I said, you could also follow me for free over there. So I would love to have you let me know if you join me over there.
Tina 00:03:17 If you heard me on the podcast and you join me over there, definitely leave me a comment on one of the posts. I would love to hear from you. Okay, so let's get into today's episode where we're talking about resetting the soul. So what do I mean by resetting the soul? Because it sounds kind of weird, right? And a lot of people are like, they ask me that question. Exactly that. And I think that that could mean something different for everybody. So I'm just going to explain to you what I mean by that and how I use this in everything I do, my coaching practice, everything I do on the podcast, the blog. Everything is about resetting your mindset, your body and your soul. It's about full circle, deep level self-care. I'm covering everything. Like I said just a few seconds ago. We even cover Growing Your Own Food. And I love that new, that new series I'm doing over on my Patreon. I might be sharing it on my, YouTube.
Tina 00:04:17 Also, I haven't really decided yet, but I love it because it really emphasizes everything I do in my life. And gardening and food is such a huge part of my life, and it's such a huge part of our self-care. As some of you know, I'm a culinary nutrition educator. I really do focus a lot on plant based nutrition. but I share many, many, many things that will help you. Your body benefit will help you reset your body. So, but today I'm not talking about that. I talked about resetting the body last week, so definitely go listen to that one. Today we're talking about resetting the soul. And one of the things, the best way I could define this for myself is it's about reconnecting with your truest self. And the reason this is so important to me is because when I was, you know, before I had my stroke, those of, you know, I had a stroke at 39, just caused by extreme stress for many years. And when I was recovering from that part of that recovery was recovering from trauma and also being in a very abusive, verbally abusive, narcissistic relationship for a long period of time where I really lost my sense of self.
Tina 00:05:30 And those of you who have been in that situation probably know what that feels like. And maybe you've reconnected, right? Maybe you haven't. Maybe you're like, oh yeah, that's what I'm feeling, right? So I hope that I'll reach some people out there who maybe are looking for a way to reconnect with themselves. You lose that sense of self. You lose Because you're you're in survival mode and you're also in people pleasing mode. And so you forget what makes you happy. You forget what brings you joy. You forget how to comfort and love yourself. And so you have to kind of like take steps, very intentional steps to get back there. And so maintaining that connection is so important to me. I would say that that relationship that you have with yourself is one of the most important connections that you'll ever have in your life. And if you're not doing that intentionally, then I would encourage you to try to start doing that. It's any any deep level self-care that you do like. This will definitely put you in the position to share a higher version of yourself with other people also.
Tina 00:06:35 So improving that relationship with yourself in turn, will improve relationships with everybody in your entire life. And so there's no there's no downside to this. So some of the questions you might ask yourself that, you know, I kind of look to, when I'm thinking about resetting the soul is how do I practice real self-love? How am I living in alignment with my purpose? And how can I connect more authentically with myself and others? And lastly, but not really last on the list, when was the last time I let myself feel pure joy or playfulness? And one of the things that one of the easiest ways to reconnect with self is that last one reconnecting with your joy, your playfulness, your silliness. Because once you start doing that, it's kind of infectious and you honor it more often. So I think that the easiest way to start that connection with yourself is to figure out what brings you joy. Because when you follow your joy, you're automatically going to become aligned with your purpose, right? So when you follow your joy, you're automatically going to be practicing self-love.
Tina 00:07:42 And when you follow your joy, you're going to be able to connect more authentically with yourself and others. And so finding your joy, I would say, is the first step that you should take when you're trying to reconnect to your soul, resetting your soul. So here's the thing, though. To do any of this work, we have to slow down. And this goes for part one and two. Also, I talk about this all the time. We have to slow down like actually slow down. And this is coming from someone who didn't know how to slow down years and years and years ago when I was in that state of fight or flight, I didn't know what that meant. I didn't think I was allowed to slow down. I thought if I slowed down, I was letting people down. I was being lazy. I had all these these societal implants of separatism and and just, you know, pulling my bootstraps up and getting the work done and doing everything myself and not asking for help and a whole bunch of bullshit that's fed to us.
Tina 00:08:40 Right? But slowing down and being intentional about the way you live your life really helps you align with the way you're supposed to truly live your life, not the way others expect you to. Okay, so if we're always in that like doo doo doo, gotta get done mode, we lose ourselves completely. We have the blinders on. It's like I always call it being on the hamster wheel. We got the blinders on. We're just running, running, running, running. If you've ever seen a hamster on a hamster wheel, that's what like 90% of us are doing in our lives on a daily basis. We stop knowing what we want. We stop knowing what lights us up inside, and we stop knowing what really makes us happy. And I feel like this is becoming more apparent to us since like 2020, when we experienced the pandemic. And from that point forward, what we're experiencing today, like a lot of us, keep asking ourselves the question, what is the point of all of this? And it's almost like the curtain is being pulled back and we're realizing that the way we're living our lives is just a bunch of bullshit, and we need to be more intentional and start focusing on our happiness first.
Tina 00:09:52 Because why would we want to work for, you know, 75% of our life for another person that doesn't even respect or honor us and put every ounce of happiness and joy to the side and not raise our kids and not spend time with our family, it seems ridiculous when you really you say it out loud. It seems ridiculous that, and this is like a whole nother topic. But like that, women give birth in this country and in a couple of weeks are expected to go back to work when we're supposed to be with that child was supposed to be raising that child was supposed to be able it was supposed to be honoring women that create life and bring life into this world. And if we don't take care of those women and we don't take care of those children, and we don't let those women raise those children, we're going to have very fragmented pieces of society, which was what we're dealing with right now. So as I said, a whole nother podcast to get into that. it angers me when I see women like crying because they have to go back and work and leave their baby.
Tina 00:10:55 And I was lucky enough to be able to stay home with all my children. Very, very, very lucky. And I feel like that is just something that should be done like that. I just, I just don't get why that's not happening anyway, moving forward with resetting the soul. as I said, we if we're not connected, if we're not intentionally slowing down, we stop knowing what we want. We stop knowing what makes us happy. And before we know it, we're letting society or everyone except us, obviously decide how we should feel. Everybody else is making those decisions for us. So today, let us focus on joy, not just the occasional oh, that was fun kind of joy, but daily, non-negotiable joy every single day. Because joy is not a luxury. It's it's. It's your soul. It's your soul's fuel. It's what we're supposed to do in this world. So I want you to block out all society's expectations. I want you to block out everyone telling you what you should do.
Tina 00:12:02 So let go of all the shoulds and start to focus on yourself. If just for this moment, that you're listening to this podcast, and if I can inspire one person to do this practice that I'm going to share with you today, then my work is done here. As long as I could inspire someone you know, every day, every week, every month, every year, and bring someone closer to living in their true purpose, then I feel like like I've succeeded. Okay, so today we're going to talk about how to reconnect with your joy. So step one get curious. Start paying attention. So what do we have to do to pay attention? We have to slow down, right? And so if you need to be intentional about slowing down, I would encourage you to just do a very quick meditation. I do have a meditation called take Five that is over on my Patreon. I release a new meditation every week over on my Patreon that you could listen to. also over on, my YouTube, I do the same thing.
Tina 00:13:05 I will put links to everything in the show notes, but take five is just a way of like taking a few deep breaths, closing your mind off, and you're closing your eyes and reconnecting with yourself and asking you yourself what you need in that moment. Right. So start paying attention. What makes you laugh so hard that your stomach hurts? Pay attention if you have to write it down and take notes. Do it. Like sometimes when things don't come naturally to you, you have to almost like retrain yourself, which is what I had to do for myself. And so that's why I am such a lister. Like, everything I do needs a list. Everything I do. So like I have lists everywhere. I have notebooks everywhere in my house. I have a notebook for everything. I probably have like ten notebooks going right now for different topics, different things. And when I think of something, I run over to my notebooks and I write it down in the appropriate notebook. Right. So as I said, I'm a list tour and also on my notes app on my phone.
Tina 00:14:05 Okay. And I'm going to talk about that more in a second. So if you notice something that makes you laugh so hard that your stomach hurts, okay. For example, I love the funny side of TikTok. There's the people. I will argue this to my death, that there's people on TikTok that are way funnier than some of the top comedians that you see. The celebrities, people on TikTok are so funny. If you get on the right side of TikTok and you just have to tweak your algorithm by liking and paying attention to the right things, right? Every once in a while, I get on the wrong side of TikTok, and all I have to do is only pay attention and like funny people and funny animals. And then immediately, within like ten minutes, I'm on the right side. Okay, that makes me laugh so hard sometimes that tears are streaming down my face. I can't see anything bad about that. just pay attention to who makes you laugh so hard that your stomach hurts.
Tina 00:15:00 Who do you hang out with that makes you laugh like that? Is it your kids or is it your partner? Who is it? Somebody at work. Spend more time with them, okay? Also pay attention. When do you feel that little wakefulness, that aliveness, what lights you up? Pay attention. So like for me, and when I'm in the garden, man, I'm in my zone. When I have my hands in the dirt, I'm watching something grow. I plant a seed and a couple of days later it starts popping up to me. I'm just completely fascinated by that. It never gets freaking old. Never. I do it every year and it never gets old. Growing different plants, seeing how they grow, seeing how quickly they come up, see how long sometimes they take to come up. I'm amazed by that. So what makes you feel that way? Is it when you're cooking? Is it when you're spending time with your kids? Is it when you're at work? Is it when you're reading books? Is it when you're doing some kind of creation art? I noticed in the past year when I started really, really intensifying, adding this joy into my life every single day that I love to be in creation mode.
Tina 00:16:13 And then after I create it, I don't really want to run it anymore. It's so funny. Like, I love creating. So I made the commitment to myself to continuously do things that let me create all the time, like creating meditations. That's why I love doing that, right? Some people ask me, is it hard to like, create a new meditation every week. No, it really isn't. The topics that you could talk about are endless. All you have to do is think about the topics that you want to experience in your life. And sometimes I, you know, I see what my clients need and I create a meditation for that. Like, that's that's all I do. Right. So what makes you feel that way? What brings those that oh, that like, you know, that feeling you get when you're excited about something coming into fruition, right? Also, have you ever felt like a tiny pang of, like, jealousy seeing someone else's life? That is a clue.
Tina 00:17:13 Okay, I think it was Amanda Francis that, like, turned me on to that. It was the best way. Like, I hate being jealous. I hate it when jealousy pops up because I'm like, oh, come on, Tina, stop it. Right. But now I look at it differently. Since Amanda Francis said that, I can't remember where I heard her say that I've definitely taken some of her courses and listened to her. I love listening to her the way she talks. She just cracks me up and I find her also very inspiring. So that's a clue when when you're jealous of something, that's a clue that you want that. So like embrace that. It's a tool. So when I get jealous, I'm like, why am I jealous? Like, what is it that I want? And how do I get that? So if you envy your friend's pottery class and you're like, so jealous that they're doing that, then your soul wants to play with clay, right? You want that? Whether you're admit it or not, you want that.
Tina 00:18:06 I don't know why you wouldn't admit that pottery is so much fun. Okay, now step two. This is a big one because I see everyone from every walk of life, every everyone. They make excuses. So step two is no more excuses rule. So I used to be the queen of I'm too busy for joy right when I was in that mode before I had my stroke, I was a single mother. I had three kids. I was working a high, high stress, like sales job. Right? That was I was living off a 100% commission. So if I didn't sell something, I didn't make money. I sold real estate. And so it was stressful. And it always felt like if I wasn't trying to work or trying to get a sale, I was failing. It always felt that way. And I feel like there's a lot of real estate agents out there that know what I'm talking about, or any type of sales job where you're really depending on that commission for most of your, your pay.
Tina 00:19:06 It's it's intense. It's hard to turn down anything because you feel like if I turn this down, when's the next thing going to come? Okay. There's always that feeling. And it's a hard that is a hard mentality to manage. Okay. But I did master it after a couple of years. But I was always too busy to for for happiness. I was taking care of my kids. You can imagine a single mom with three kids. Okay, with pretty much no help from my partner except for monetary help. and he wasn't a partner. I could say former partner. So, you can imagine how busy I was. I was endless, I started my week off, double booked almost every day. And having to, like, manipulate my schedule and figure out how to, double book myself. Because, you know, kids play sports, they get involved in things, and or you have to donate your time at school, whatever it is, like all those things that you have to do, you know, and then working and then trying to like, do the chores and take care of the house and landscaping and all that stuff, like, like I did.
Tina 00:20:10 I did all of it. I had no time for any fun, right? No time. And I learned, just like how I learned to master my schedule as a realtor. If you don't schedule joy, it won't schedule itself. And so I started doing that, you know, everything was an appointment. Everything. I was getting my hair done. It's an appointment. It's not. I'm getting my hair done. When a client asks me if I have free time, it's like, oh, sorry, I'm busy. I have an appointment, another appointment that at that time. So it's like you have to schedule in your joy. I demand joy every single day of my life. No skipping, no skipping. And that's it's really easy for me now because I know what brings me joy. So one of the happiest moments of my day right now, because it's spring and it's a time where I plant all my seedlings. So the happiest moment is in the morning after I do all my things my meditation, my yoga, my breakfast, I go down to my greenhouse area and I look at my plants and I see what new plant has emerged from the soil and how big some of my other plants got.
Tina 00:21:23 And that makes me so happy. Like so. It's almost like, check, I'm happy every day. So you have to start really making a point. And then at some point after you do this, you have scheduling and the joy you're doing it. It's just it's just going to come natural. Like I don't think in the morning. Well, I have to get my joy done like I don't I don't do it that way. I'm really just doing things that make me happy. My yoga, reading my book every morning, checking on my plants multiple times a day, going for walks with my dog, cuddling with my dog, spending time with friends like I'm doing these things every day and it's not planned anymore. It's just coming natural. So moving on to step three create your life experience list. This is such a fun activity. So I those of you, some of you know that I put all my meditations on aura, I create meditations for aura. I'm a coach on aura. I love working with aura and I also do lives every week on aura.
Tina 00:22:30 Every Monday I go live and share a self-care practice for the week. And this week I shared this practice. And can I just tell you that it was so much fun hanging out with everybody that came to the live, and everybody sharing all of their passions and the things that bring them joy? It was like I could feel the energy in the room, the so-called room, the zoom room, whatever you want to call it. It was so infectious. And even though everybody else's passions aren't my own, some of them offered things up that I was like, oh my God, that's a great idea. I want to do that too. Like so it was just so infectious. So a life experience list would be, and this is your mission for today. If you choose to accept it, start a running list of things that light you up big or tiny, one time or lifelong, just add it. So some examples could be, you want to learn to make sourdough bread. Okay. You want to dance to your favorite song every single morning.
Tina 00:23:32 Do you have a playlist? Do you have a happy playlist? I do, I have I also have a vibe playlist that's just like very like chill vibe. Maybe you want to visit a lavender farm in Provence, right? Maybe you want to grow a lemon tree indoors. That's one of mine, just in case you were wondering. so keeping this list. So I want you to, like, focus on getting, like, 25 to 50 things on your list, or even more if you want. It's not easy to get that many things. These are things that are going to bring you happiness, joy, that are going to give you that feeling of creation that I talked about. Right. And so it doesn't have to necessarily be something easy and effort. It could be something that's hard, but you know, it's going to make you happy. Right. And I want you to keep this list on you at all times. So either you're the type of person that has a little notebook in your purse.
Tina 00:24:23 I have that, or you're the type of person that keeps everything on their notes app on their phone. I also do that like my notes app is like one of the busiest places ever. There's so many lists on there, and so keeping my life experience list on my notes app makes it available to me at all times. And why this is important is whenever you get like that urge, like if you're sitting waiting for an appointment or you're picking somebody up and you're waiting, or you have those few moments and you get that urge to like, scroll on your phone, you know what I'm talking about. You go over to TikTok or you go over to your email. You're checking, checking your text messages, just scrolling because you don't want to just be sitting there. Right. So there's two choices. I would encourage you to either just sit there and see what that feels like, because let me tell you, we need to just sit there sometimes. Or if you want to do something, go over to your list, add something to your list, look at the things on your list and start investigating.
Tina 00:25:19 Now I'm going to share with you my Lemon Tree story that I shared like a million times in the past two days, because the Lemon Tree has been on my list for a couple of years, and I haven't really done much about it. I'm just going to be honest. It's been sitting there. It's kind of something I want to do, but it's not like at the top of the list. But I know it's going to make me so freaking happy and I kind of haven't really looked into it. So, you know, I like gardening, I like growing things. I love trying to grow weird things. You know, like this year I'm going to grow quinoa, right? How cool is that? Right? Artichokes. That's a weird thing for me. I'm going to grow artichokes. I've growing, luffa squash. You know how you make those loofah sponges? I'm growing that. How cool is that? Right? So I always wanted to grow a lemon tree. But I live in New York.
Tina 00:26:06 I live in the mountains. It's cold, so I can't grow a lemon tree outside. And I want a Meyer lemon tree. Right. Meyer lemons are known for their sweetness. So I want a Meyer lemon tree. so one of the things I learned, I started looking into this. I learned that I can grow it in a pot and a lemon tree. Could stay in a pot and be very happy and productive. And the best part that I learned is, the fact that it will still create lemons, it'll produce lemons living in my house. Like, I could put it outside in the summer. So it gets that nice taste of sunshine and warmth outside in the wind and all that stuff. And then in the winter, I take it in and just make sure I put it in a pretty sunny window, you know, and it's going to give me lemons. It's going to give me enough lemons that I'll probably have too many lemons because it's just me, right? so now I looked into all those things.
Tina 00:27:04 I did the research. I found a place that sells the lemon trees. I found, videos on YouTube on how to take care of it so I could put all those little notes on the notes app on my phone underneath the lemon tree on my list. That's why it's cool having it on your notes app, because you could just add all these little things. And then when I, when I finally buy the lemon tree, I can go back to my notes app and rewatch the videos and learn again how to take care of it. Like I don't have to look it up or find it. Right. And so if you have a few moments and you get that urge to scroll, go to your list, pick one thing and start to research it. You want to, start doing sourdough? Find some videos on how to do that. Okay. You want to visit lavender farms in Provence, find the lavender farms. Maybe there's ones that actually have tours. Maybe you could stay on the lavender farm in an Airbnb.
Tina 00:27:58 Look into it, start doing the research. So the magic of this list is it's not just like a wish list or a happiness list. It's it's a this is what I'm doing, right? It's very intentional. And instead of just staying on the hamster wheel like I talked about earlier, doing, doing, doing, doing every once in a while in between your doings, you're going to slow down, jump off the hamster wheel and figure out how to bring some of this delicious goodness, joy and happiness and playfulness into your life. Okay. And so I want you to aim, like I said, 25 to 50 things, but there's no rush, okay? This is a lifelong project. I mean, I've been keeping a list, an ongoing list for years, and sometimes I walk away from it for a while. You know, life gets busy. And then when I go back to it, it's so fun to just be like, oh, I did that, I did that. And then sometimes I look at things and I'm like, I don't really care about that anymore.
Tina 00:29:01 Like, that doesn't excite me anymore. Just cross it off. But today start with like 1 to 5 things, right? And then just keep adding and then just keep Researching and learning more about it. Sometimes when you research it and you learn more about it, you like almost decide not to do it. Not because of fear, but because you're like, oh, I didn't know that entailed that. You know, like maybe I looked into the lemon tree and I could grow a lemon tree, but it wasn't going to produce lemons. That just sucks the life right out of me. But since I learned I'm going to get lemons, I'm so excited about that. And I'm doing it like this summer, I'm getting a lemon tree. Okay? So it's like, do the work, the fun work. Now, one of the things I want to emphasize is, what's so cool about this ongoing list is it's not always about getting to that end point. It's not always about getting the, you know, having the lemon and juicing the lemon into my water in the morning and being like, oh, I succeeded.
Tina 00:30:02 Now it's about learning about it. It's about finding a like a company that sells these lemon trees. That does it in an ethical way, and knowing that this lemon tree is going to be taken care of, and then I'm going to get a good lemon tree. It's about learning how to take care of it. It's about getting the tree and watching it grow, and then watching it bloom, and then watching the lemons grow and being excited about it. It's going to be a couple of years, probably before I actually have lemons. Right? So it's just like this ongoing experience. So it's not about the end point always. It's about the experience. It's about to not sound too cheesy. It's about the journey. Right. And so it's about adding these things into your life every day. And then once you have this ongoing list, you're just automatically as soon as you focusing on this list, you're automatically bringing experiences of joy, inspiration and all those things I talked about at the beginning of the podcast into your life.
Tina 00:31:02 It's a starting to lie. Light you up. Right? And so that's what's so cool about it, is that you don't have to. To experience the joy. You don't have to get all the things. You don't have to reach the end points. You're just going to experience joy in the process of this list. And so I can't think of any way better to reconnect with yourself and start to get you. Like if you're unstuck, you know, if you're if you're feeling stuck and this podcast has inspired you, then that's perfect. Because one of the only reasons we really get stuck is because we're not aligned with what we're doing in our lives. It's really, really that simple. But it's not easy to bounce out of that. This is a very easy way to bounce out, though, because it's fun, and being and experiencing fun things is just infectious. You want to keep doing it because it feels good. So it's the best kind of work that I could think of. So aim for the 25 to 50 things, but as you'll figure out, as you do this work, you're going to figure out that it doesn't really matter how many things are on the list, just as long as you have a list and it's ongoing and you keep playing with it.
Tina 00:32:11 So I would love to hear from you. Like, what's the first thing on your list? Share it with me. Go over to Instagram at Tina Stinson. Coach, follow me over there. That's where I'm going to be posting everything. You could also come over to my Patreon. You could follow me over there for free, or take advantage of that seven day free trial for the VIP section and join me there. But either way, message me and tell me the first thing on your list because, I love hearing from everybody. It's so inspiring. Just like I said, the live that I did over on aura was just amazing because, like, the energy just built, I could feel the energy building and it was so inspiring to me and to the other people that were there. So let's do this together. So if you want to explore this deeper or you want to begin to learn how to reset on a regular basis, just join my free monthly Reset Meditation breathwork session. I'll put the link in the show notes where you could sign up.
Tina 00:33:14 Once you sign up, you're in. You'll be notified each month when I go live. It's just a, probably like an hour, you know, and it's, breathwork meditation. And then we do some journal prompts and it's just a little mini reset for the month. Like, you know what? You need to let go of what you want to bring into your the next month of your life. So it's a it's really fun. It's free, as I said, and you just have to sign up once. So remember, fun isn't optional. It's essential in your life. If you're not having any fun right now, then this this podcast is for you. Share this podcast with someone that needs to have more fun. And so don't you dare skip it. And remember, growing up is a trap. Okay guys, until next week. Love you. Bye.
