Ash McDonald (00:01):

Hello, sweet friends. And welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited to be in the sacred space with you. Again, today is gratitude, stillness, slowness, feminine energy, and knowing how to connect to it. That is my gratitude today. I would love for you to take a moment and think about what you’re grateful for. Where’s the joy that you can find in this day, no matter what is happening in the world, what are you grateful for today? I’m coming to you in my menstrual phase. So it’s really funny. I am actually doing a little batch recording and I recorded the first episode just a few moments ago. And then I took a little bathroom break in between and found myself in menstrual phase. And I thought, gosh, I bet there is a reason for this so that I can speak to two different phases in one day.

Ash McDonald (00:54):

Not knowing that I was embarking on it. I knew I was going to come today or tomorrow, but here I am in menstrual phase. One of the things that I do to honor and celebrate, because you may experience this, but I very much took on these belief systems growing up, that being on your period was this gross. Private. Nobody wants to know, don’t talk about it sort of thing. Now I call BS on that all day, every day. Because honestly it makes us sort of detach from this beautiful, super power that we carry. And so now one of the things that I do is every single time I get my period, this is kind of a funny little behind the scenes thing. Every single time I get my period, I go and grab a piece of dark chocolate. And I literally take a moment slowly devouring, this delicious chocolaty, goodness.

Ash McDonald (01:45):

Now chocolate might not be your thing, but it is totally my thing. So I always have it somewhere so I can grab it. And it’s just like one little square. It’s not like a giant candy bar. It’s like one little square of chocolate. And I just kind of sit in the moment and I really reflect on what I hope this next menstrual phase will bring me. And the reason why I do this is because something really cool happens in our brain when we move into our menstrual phase. And that is that our left and right brain hemispheres become 25% more connected. I E there’s more connection happening in your body because you are menstruating. It also means that we have a greater capacity for reflection and intuitiveness. It’s not necessarily the time we want to bring ideas to fruition or cultivate our creativity if you will, but it’s a really beautiful time to have a deeper insight for everything around you.

Ash McDonald (02:37):

So I thought that was a great a great thing to move into, even though I’m batching, these episodes was great. I get to actually share about two different phases and I love that. So in our last episode, we talked about CEO energetics. So I believe that it makes perfect sense to follow that conversation up, talking about CEO, self self-care. We discussed this idea that stress, it hits our body and cortisol is just dumped through our veins. And when that happens, we tend to move instantly into a masculine state of mind, right? So we’re just, we’re reactive. We’re trying to solve things, fix things. Do do do. Okay. Part of that also includes oftentimes ignoring what we need. Something that I see a lot with fellow entrepreneurs, fellow women, is this sort of throw all the most important things when it comes to our self-care on the back burner when life gets crazy, right?

Ash McDonald (03:42):

And the truth is being a mom of three and, you know, owning my own business for a decade now and being married and having friends and being a daughter and all the things that I am. I mean, what is life not crazy if we’re being really honest, what is it not crazy? Right. And so what happens is we tend to, we tend to just throw all that away, right? Ignore what we need, ignore what’s necessary and just get things done. You know, what’s true. Is that an over-reliance on masculine energy is actually the first thing that, that causes a hormone imbalance inside of our body. And when we’re having a hormone imbalance, not only does that just throw us way off kilter, but it makes us crave poor food. And it makes us do things like, you know, sacrifice, sleep, or not get enough sleep.

Ash McDonald (04:37):

So on the one end, we’re having a hard time sleeping because our hormones are all crazy on the other end. We’re, we’re harnessing that masculine energy. And so we’re thinking, oh yeah, I’m totally going to stay up till 11 and get this work done. Or I’m going to get up early and get this work done. And we’re not recognizing that, oh my gosh, being that I’m in stress and that cortisol is just rip-roaring through my body. The first thing I need to do is up the ante on my self-care, which is actually what’s true. Right? So we’re ignoring slowness, we’re sacrificing sleep or craving, and totally taking in that craving of poor food. Because remember when stress hits, this is what happens in our body. Okay. So don’t forget this. So as we talked about, on the last episode, we to let our feminine energy be the door with which we walk through first, this is not ever to say that masculine energy is not good because oh, sister, it is so good, so good.

Ash McDonald (05:35):

But we need to let the feminine energy be that door, that first store that we walked through. So we can be more reflective and calm and choose the right things. I E putting self-care first, when stress hits. Okay. So in order to dive into this conversation, the first question I thought of was how do we make self-care non-negotiable and our busy lives, because I get you, I get it. Sometimes it feels like I can not fit that in. It just simply does not make sense. There’s so many other things I’m meant to and have to be doing, right. That’s not, not true. But the first thing that needs to happen here is that we need to look at your beliefs. You need to look at your beliefs. What did you learn about self care as a child? And can we change that? Can we change that truth?

Ash McDonald (06:25):

I know growing up, I learned very early on that the actual act of motherhood of being a good mom and a good wife was to sacrifice. I cannot tell you how many times my mom would say things like, look at, you know, all the nice clothes that you have on your backs. And I’m walking around a holes in my clothes. And I, I realized as I became a mother that I had adopted those beliefs. In fact, when I first became a mom, I thought I was failing in every way, because the house didn’t seem as clean as my mom’s house used to be. Or like, I would want to buy new clothes or do something for myself. And it was like, what is the matter with me? My mom never, you know, she was always all about us and why would I want, I felt like there was something wrong with me, which is an essence where shame is born, right?

Ash McDonald (07:14):

Is that belief like I’m alone in this feeling and there’s something wrong with me now, this isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with my mom by any means, but we have to recognize the experiences that we have. They create these adoption of beliefs that become our truth until we’re willing and ready to see them to recognize them and to shatter them right. And to, to grip onto what in fact is true. Right. So number one is what stories do you believe? What have you been taught about self care? Were you taught that it’s selfish to care for yourself, right? Where you taught that it makes more sense to do things for others or that accomplishment and achievement should come before that. I mean, what were you truly taught and of that, what is actually true for you? What do you truly believe? And can we rewrite that narrative?

Ash McDonald (08:06):

So when I recognize this in myself and realize like, okay, as a mom, I don’t actually value having a really perfectly clean home as a what’s the word I’m looking for as a spectrum of whether or not I’m a good mom or not like, I, I refused, I reject that belief, right? So in order to reject it, I actually rewrote it. But for me being a good mom is about how present I am with my kids and how much time I spend with him. Right. Actually, I’m going to take that back. Not how much time, the quality of time. I’m always going to be a proponent of quality over quantity. Okay. That’s the same thing I had to do with self care. When it came to this belief that I adopt adopted of just like good moms and good wives and good women take care of everybody else.

Ash McDonald (08:52):

Like good people take care of everybody else first. And when I rewrote that it was, gosh, no, I cannot pour from an empty cup. I know it’s so cliche, but the truth is what do I have to give? If I’ve got nothing myself, right. When I reflected back, I remember my mom always being stressed, always being overwhelmed, always running around frantically, trying to get everything done perfectly and always telling us that the reason why she was absent or, you know, angry or frustrated was because she gave everything to us over herself. I mean, she would literally articulate it to me. And to us, I am this way. I’m this frustrated, I’m this angry. I’m all these things because I choose you. And what’s interesting is not only did I adopt that as like, okay, so I have to do that too, as a mom, but as a kid, I always felt like, so it’s, it’s my fault.

Ash McDonald (09:45):

Like, I’m doing something wrong. She’s treating me like this because I am wrong. And shouldn’t treat me these horrible ways. But if she was frustrated or impatient, that was how I took it. And so when I rewrote that story for me as a grown woman, as a mom, myself, it was, I can give so much more to my children, to my business, to my husband, to my friends, to my family when I give to me first, and now I live a completely different life. Then what I saw growing up, yes, my self-care does take precedence when I plug it in. And what it looks like absolutely is number one on my agenda and in my priorities. But it starts with belief. Number two, is there a recognition that there will be days in your life where self-care comes easy and you have ample time to show up for it.

Ash McDonald (10:37):

And there will be times when you need it to look a little different. I personally believe we have to be prepared for this. And sometimes I’m an Enneagram three and I totally set myself up for quote unquote failer failure in those moments when I would have this like perfectly curated self care routine, anybody ever hear that, you know, that’s that perfect self-care routine that we’re meant to follow. That’s going to give us the best of the best of the best, right? Like this is what you need to do to be successful. Oh, that just grinds my gears. Does that grind your gears? Oh my goodness. It drives me insane. No, no, absolutely effing. No, no. Right. Because what happened was I would develop this beautiful self care routine. And then, you know, my kids would get up early or, you know, my sequence, my email sequence went the wrong way.

Ash McDonald (11:27):

I went to the wrong feeling. Something would happen. And I was like, well, I don’t know what I can do right now. Like I have to just completely ignore it because there’s no way I could do that. You know, one hour long morning routine. So one of the things I started to do a couple of years ago was developed what I call a thrive and a strive standards list. So essentially it is a list of things that are ideal versus extras. So thriving is like, for me, that’s optimal living. There is, this is the stuff that it absolutely needs to happen, but it can be tiny. It can be these short, little easy things that we do. And I’m going to get into the four major components to self care as a CEO. So just hold your horses, it’s coming, it’s coming. But the point is I would have this list to pull from, for thrive standards.

Ash McDonald (12:15):

And I would have this list to pull from, for my strive standards. And striving was just those days where I happened to actually have a full hour. And how can I really take this to the next level? Okay. This allowed me to be more flexible. It allowed me to recognize my rigidity and find my flow, right? Like rigidity is not, again, that’s more masculine. That is not where we’re going to find the flow. So many CEO’s desire. I know you desire that. That’s why you’re listening to this. Okay. So we don’t want our self care to become a, another to-do list. So we have to make it flexible by identifying concepts, but not locking them in stone. And I’m going to give you some ideas in a moment. And finally, we have to block time off, whether it is 30 minutes at 2:00 PM or one hour at 7:00 AM or whatever the case may be.

Ash McDonald (13:10):

I know we have carried these beliefs. We have, we have heard the, you know, old how you start your day is how the rest of your day goes. Now I do believe that having good positive mornings is awesome, but also I am a mother and that doesn’t always work. And so what I do is just schedule my self-care block every day. And ideally, it’s going to fall in that perfect morning routine window, but sometimes it’s after my kids get off to school, sometimes it’s during nap time. Sometimes it’s in the middle of the day when I’m going to go take a break because a nanny or babysitter shows up there is no right or wrong way to plug in self-care you just must plug it in. Okay. So let’s dig in. I know you’re like, but tell me what exactly am I supposed to do for self-care?

Ash McDonald (14:00):

Well, again, I don’t believe there’s this one size fits all in anything. I don’t believe there’s one size fits all in self care and motherhood and marital relations in your business. None of it. But I do believe that we can have these components that will help us to truly activate a self care that is in other words, energy management, right? And so the four components are to inhale, to exhale, to go inward and to go outward. Okay. I repeat inhale, exhale inward outward. Now I’m going to break it down for you to inhale. So I literally think of this as energy in this can be anything. So think of that list. I was just talking about from breath work to stillness, to grounding activities. And there’s so many different grounding things you can do to different meditations, short too long one. So that would be the difference between your thrive and strive, right?

Ash McDonald (14:54):

Here’s my ideal long meditation. And here’s my ideal. Super-Duper short meditation. Here’s the wrath work that I love when I’m able to strive. And here’s the 10 breaths in an hour activity that truly resets my nervous system, but takes five minutes during my thrive, right? Stillness can be as simple as going outside and staying still for three minutes. Really the truth is meditation is to not allow your brain to go crazy. And to just sit quietly, there is so much gloriousness to this grounding could be combined with stillness, where you go outside without socks on without shoes on. And you dig your little toes, these into the grass or the dirt, or even on concrete. Right? Really doesn’t matter. The point is that you, you come up with these ideas of where are you getting your energy in? Okay. Now the truth is all of these are actually going to provide energy in, but you get the idea.

Ash McDonald (15:53):

Inhaling is the first component of my self care routines. I’m always going to start there. This allows me to get inside my body so that the rest of the things that I do are truly like connected to me. Okay. So number two is to exhale. And I think of this as energy out. And really for me, this is movement and movement can be anything, right? You’re physically shifting the energy within you. I E getting out the bad stuff, allowing there to only be the good stuff flowing through. Now, I’m really excited because the very next episode, episode number three of shameless, ambitious is going to be about cyclical self-care routines. Yes. You heard me, right? I’m going to break down how we can differentiate these based on the phase that we’re in. Because I fundamentally believe that us women, we’re not meant to be the same person every single day.

Ash McDonald (16:43):

That is the biggest lie we have ever been told. And because of that lie, this is why we carry so much. Shame is because of, we are constantly thinking what is wrong with me? Last week, I went for an hour long run and it filled my cup to the brim. And this week I can’t even get myself to move. I must be broken. Sister, friend, you are not broken. You are not broken. You’re cyclical. And that’s amazing. So I digress. We will talk about that on the next episode. So exhaling energy out, shifting that physical energy within you through movement, it can be a walk. It can be a run. It can be a workout. It can be five minutes. It can be one hour. It can be a hike. It can be yoga. It can be polo. It can be anything. I definitely make this part.

Ash McDonald (17:29):

Cyclical always is very cyclical for me, but to move is to exhale. Okay. Number three, inward for me, this is connectivity. It is mindset work. It is prayer. It is journaling. It is a card pooling. It is anything that allows you to really connect within yourself. So we did the energy in which is to ground and to really center ourselves. We did the energy out, which is to physically move out any bad energy through the act of movement. And now we’re, we’re going inward and really connecting with ourselves intuitively. Okay. So you might have a long list of things that really work here. I teach my clients a concept called the affirmation confirmation loop, which I’m sure I’ll do an episode on one day. We could do journaling. You can do any sort of mindset work, whether it is literally just figuring out how to rewrite that story about self care and taking the time to do that.

Ash McDonald (18:25):

Like I said, carpooling prayer is so many things can fall into this category and last but not least outward. And so in the outward space, this is to be creative, right? You’re going inward and now you’re going outward creativity for you could be dancing. It could be singing. It could be writing. It could be reading. It could be painting. It could be cooking. Sometimes creativity for me is literally making myself the most delicious and eccentric, like oat milk latte ever, where I just really take my time with it. And I’m adding different ingredients and I’m frothing and I’m heating and I’m, I’m, I’m just creating it’s creation at its finest. And I a hundred percent definitely make this cyclical as well. I mean, hello. At this point you were like, you make everything everything’s cyclical Ash. Yes. Yes I do. Yes I do. So again, the four major components to CEO, self-care I E your energy management is to inhale, to exhale, to go inward and to go outward.

Ash McDonald (19:28):

Doesn’t that sound so amazing. So amazing. You were so deserving of this. The final thing I want to leave you with is really to ask yourself, what’s the cost of ignoring your self-care Wolf. When I really think about this, it’s deep. The cost for me is presence being truly present with the people that matter. Most it is purpose being able to, to, to be, and to show up for the, the purpose that was put in my life. Right? If I ignore self care, I cannot do that service. Being able to serve the ones. I love both my clients and my VIP, my families, my, my, my children, my husband, my mom, my dad, my brothers, this really matters. It really matters. So we’re going to continue this conversation. We’re going to continue this conversation next week, when we talk about cyclical self-care routines. But in the meantime, I want you to really start thinking about this, the inhale, the exhale, the inward, the outward, what are these different components look like for you, which of those components is thriving and which is striving, and how can you differentiate those in order to create more flexibility, to become the inflow CEO that you deserve to be?

Ash McDonald (21:05):

Yeah. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being you so brilliant. So amazing. So needed. So loved, so worthy.