Kat Kiseli

After you go through the process of fully getting real with yourself, accepting yourself, and working with who you are, you get to the phase of taking care of yourself. You now have reached a stage where you are aligning better with your truth, and you probably are wondering what is next. Well, let me tell you what is next and stop building suspense! Self-Care is next!

I often hear people in a battle against themselves. It is like they can WILL THEMSELVES to change by barraging themselves with negativity. Funny enough, in all my single-person case studies, the only universal truth that I came across was that I always follow what makes sense to Kat in the end. No matter what it is, there are universal Kat-isms that span the spectrum and my end game always looks about the same. Therefore, I learned the truth behind growth: beating yourself up just gets you further away from the goal; self-acceptance and working within your zone of genius are the only ways to truly grow and reach your full potential. That is why self-acceptance is Step 2 in Being Self Savvy: It involves forming a much healthier relationship with yourself in the form of self-acceptance. This blog will show you some ways to begin that process so that it feels organic and not forced.

What does Being Self Savvy mean and where does it come from? For this blog, I want to bring you all on the journey of being self-savvy and ultimately living a self savvy life. To me, being self savvy is a three step process; so, I will be writing a series of three blogs. To kick it off with this blog, I will be covering Step 1 of Being Self Savvy: How to begin getting real with yourself through self-assessment and reflection.

The problem with finding the perfect routine is that most people make their entire days about others and not themselves. Then, when confronted with this reality, most people will not get real with themselves, but instead say - BUT I HAVE NO TIME. Through this blog - you will learn a methodology you can take to reorder how you see your day, which will help your I HAVE NO TIME dilemma. Finding your perfect routine will be a lot easier once you apply some of these time management techniques.

I have always been the “strong and lifter” type, not the type to do a daily yoga or daily stretching routine. I also used to feel incredibly self conscious in any type of stretching exercise class. I used to chalk this up to genetics, but I also secretly wanted to understand more about flexibility stretches and their pros and cons. Then, once I hurt my lower back and knee, I questioned if lacking flexibility was a predisposition or changeable. The injuries were the impetus to change for me - I hope no injuries spark your desire to be patient with yourself. I really think you should give daily yoga or a daily stretching routine a try out of pure learning rather than injury repair.

We all know that stepping on the scale to weigh yourself can be either very exciting or very, very, very, very anxiety-inducing. For me, I fall in the latter camp of feeling crushed by numbers on scales; however, I have discovered ways to battle this process. In the end, weighing yourself is a very personal choice. (1) you do not need to do it to have the body you want and are happy with; (2) you can choose to weigh yourself every day and also be happy. Both have pros, and both have cons. Make a list of pros and cons for you, make a choice on throwing out the scale completely or limiting yourself to certain days, and then stick to that plan of when to weigh yourself without regret. 

Everyone experiences discomfort with the unknown to some extent; however, others (such as myself) spend every moment of every day worrying about what WILL happen IF. I will walk you through the AHA moment I had over the past year in distinguishing between perfectionism and low self-esteem as it relates to fear of failure. Knowing what really makes my failure spidey senses tingle helped me focus my energies in the right way to combat the never-ending fear of failure. Maybe I will stop letting it hold me back.