238. How Practicing Radical Self-Care Can Create a Better World for All with Shelly Tygielski

Today, our expert guest is Shelly Tygielski, the author of Sit Down to Rise Up: How Radical Self-Care Can Change the World and Founder of the global grassroots organization, Pandemic of Love. A trauma mindfulness teacher and a Garrison Institute fellow, she’s one of the twelve most powerful women of the mindfulness movement, as named by Mindful.org, and she teaches self-care and resilience at organizations around the world.

Shelly’s journey to mindfulness has taken multiple paths. Her interest was sparked early on in life when, as a traditionally-raised Orthodox Jew, she met a Buddhist couple during an internship and realized that their morning meditations left them feeling so much more present than her own morning rituals did. 

Later in her life, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that left her completely blind. These moving experiences, plus her ingrained contemplative practice, led her to create a rigorous self-care plan that would seed an entire supportive community.

Shelly has a lot of good advice when it comes to creating a personalized self-care plan, which she thinks of as a piece of paper that outlines the actions you can take on a regular basis to make sure you’re feeling your best. When you’re not feeling great, you tend to reach for the things that make you feel better in the moment, but that in the long run, only make things worse: processed food, alcohol, and other vices. Having better options written down can go a long way towards making sure you make the right decisions as often as possible.

One of the most important things that Shelly recommends is getting into a habit of meditation. It’s been told time and time again how important meditation and mindfulness is for your mental health. Her perspective on it only emphasizes that point further. If you haven’t incorporated a mindfulness routine into your day, now is the time.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“The best version of the world starts with the best version of you. If you can extrapolate that out in a very formal and tangible way, commit yourself to putting together a self-care plan, and share it with at least one other person, that will begin the journey to the best version of yourself.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Podcasts to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more at shellytygielski.com
• pandemicoflove.com
• Follow Shelly on Instagram: @mindfulskatergirl
• Read: Sit Down to Rise Up

The Daily Helping is produced by Crate Media