Tending Your Life Christy Tending

Being convenient is a priority for many people, and it is ingrained in our culture and our society. It impacts the way we show up in our work and with our families. I recently held a workshop titled "How to be Inconvenient" and several people shared that they gasped at the topic. How did being inconvenient get to be so controversial?
Being "convenient" means our self-care is happening at another person's convenience. This means we're not doing anything in a way that doesn't upset anyone else, doesn't upset the balance of power or the equilibrium of a given situation and we avoid doing things that have an impact anyone else. What happens is that self care becomes something we do in secret. We know it happens, but we make the effort to do it in a way that doesn't requires anyone to rearrange their schedules or be upset, or be "inconvenienced."
Convenience, and especially being seen as convenient to other people, is often an unseen hurdle to self care. And, discovering that many people feel so strongly motivated (often at a subconscious level) to maintaining convenience that it becomes a hurdle to self care was a big learning moment for me. Why? Because I personally do not feel strongly about being convenient to other people. And in fact, my being inconvenient, I see as a way of teaching the people around me that I do not exist simply to serve them.
And, so in this episode, I'm talking about this, and how to be inconvenient and why it matters for your self care and personal boundaries.
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I've been following Marlee Grace's Work for quite awhile, and when I was thinking about pioneers—people who are doing this a step away from, or even against, the mainstream, I thought about Marlee. I knew I wanted to bring her on the show to talk about creativity, stepping away from the socials, creating community, her books (Getting to Center and How to Not Always Be Working, especially).
I loved this conversation so much, and it was an honor to have Marlee Grace on the show.
Marlee Grace is a dancer and writer whose work focuses on the self, devotion, ritual, creativity, and art making. Her practice is rooted in improvisation as a compositional form that takes shape in movement videos, books, quilting, online courses, and hosting artists. Grace’s Instagram dance project Personal Practice has been featured in the New York Times, Dance Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, and more.
Marlee’s most recent book is Getting to Center: Pathways to Finding Yourself Within the Great Unknown. She also recently self-published a book of advice based on her radio show, Friendship Village.
Connect with Marlee Grace Marlee Grace's Website
Links and resources for this episode Marlee's books on Bookshop.org Christy's favorite resources Free Workbook: You're Allowed to Want Things Subscribe & Rate the Show iTunes
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One of the best ways to support the show is to leave a rating and review. It's the best way to spread the word and help more people find the podcast. Leave your review on iTunes, send me an email (to christy@christytending.com) letting me know you did it, and I'll send you a free gift worth $20!

Welcome to Season 5 of Tending Your Life.
This season, I'm pleased to partner with Hyde Organic Yoga Apparel to uplift this slow, sustainable brand and bring you a discount on what I think are the most fabulous yoga clothes on the planet to get in on this awesomeness, click the link and enter Christy10 at checkout.
And if you're brand new here, this is a podcast that lives at the intersection of our political and spiritual lives and aims to help listeners redefine self-care and make a deeper impact in their unique way, wherever in the world, they find themselves. We talk about leadership.
Self-care creativity, sustainability. Sobriety mental health, social justice, mindfulness parenting, and so much more. Plus you'll enjoy interviews with luminaries and friends who are revolutionizing the way we think about joy, grief, love, dreams, boundaries, adventure, and life.
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One of the best things about doing this work for as long as I have is the ability to see patterns over a long period of time. What are people struggling with? What are those tendencies that pop up again and again? And how can I fashion solutions that address those issues that don't seem to disappear?
In this week's episode, I'm talking about sustainable self-care.
One of the things I've noticed over the last few years is that people tend to take the same approach that got them into burnout, overwhelm, etc.—and apply it to their approach to self-care.
For example, if you overwork in your professional life, you're likely to try to overwork or do too much in your self-care. If you're a people-pleaser, you approach self-care so that it never inconveniences anyone and makes sure that you only do self-care that works for others.
While this might feel okay for a while, ultimately, it doesn't address the real issues of why you need self-care in the first place and how to create it in a sustainable way that actually resources you..
Links and resources for this episode Free Video Workshop: How to Be Inconvenient Free Workbook: You're Allowed to Want Things My Bookshop.org shelves for more books and resources Homework: creating sustainable self-care Ask yourself: what is the root of your need for self-care? What is the root cause, and how can you envision a root solution based on your unique needs, wants, desires, and way that you show up in the world?
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In today's episode, I'm here to give a little State of Things update and to talk about my biggest a-ha moment so far in this unexpected and highly usual moment in which we find ourselves. In the midst of this shelter-in-place/COVID-19 pandemic moment, what do we do about self-care, let alone all of those difficult emotions and feelings that come along with this moment of deep uncertainty?
In this episode, I'm proposing something that is both compassionate, yet counter-intuitive. This is about sitting with our discomfort instead of trying to self-care it away. 
Read all of the episode notes on Christy's blog.
Links and resources for this episode The Art of Self-Advocacy Subscribe & Rate the Show On iTunes
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We all know that perfectionism is the enemy of liberation.
Which means that imperfection is our ally in liberation. Which is awesome!
In this episode, I'm talking about embracing imperfection and the awesome impact that imperfection might have on our lives. Once we set down perfectionism, what could we choose instead? What are the things that we're able to access in the context of imperfection that perfectionism could never give us?
What I want you to take away from this is, is really that we do not live in a binary of perfection and imperfection. (We're never going to reach that perfection! It's not an option!) If we're never ever going to get to perfection, then we become free of its hold on us.
It means that we all exist somewhere on this spectrum of imperfection. Finding our place on that spectrum is pretty amazing.
Links and resources for this episode Episode: Perfectionism is the Enemy of Liberation. Episode: Sitting with Discomfort. The When I Grow Up Coach: Michelle Ward. Free Self-Care Course. My Favorite Self-Care Resources. My teachers on sobriety Rolf Gates Holly Whitaker Elena Brower Laura McKowen Subscribe & Rate the Show Apple Podcasts
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