Self-care doesn't just involve sitting around doing nothing. Listening to one's own thoughts, absorbing, and analyzing all that occurred during the day are all parts of spending time with yourself. 

In a day with 24 hours, we spend about 15 of them awake after deducting the hours we sleep. How much of it are we spending with ourselves? And what value do we place on ourselves?

In this week's episode, YouAligned Founder and Content Director Ashton August delves us into mindfulness; taking charge of your mental health and well-being. 

YouAligned  is a resource to promote wellness of the mind, body, and spirit. Their mission is to provide insightful, motivating, and unique content on a wide range of topics such as wellness, spirituality, yoga philosophy, and more.

Listen to this podcast and develop a more positive mindset so you can truly thrive.
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Listen to the podcast here:

Mindfulness: How to Connect with Yourself and to Others with Ashton August
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about connection because it’s ironic that, in the modern world, we have the most devices, the most means in which to connect, yet we’ve created a system where it is harder to connect with people, connect with others as well as connect with ourselves than it seems like it’s ever been before. My guest today, Ashton August, her business, YouAligned, helps you connect with yourself so you can better connect with others and it incorporates so many aspects of what we all need to do in this particular period of time to have a better image of ourselves and a better connection with who we are and become better aligned with what we want our lives to be.

 
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Ashton, welcome to the program. 

 

Hello, thank you so much for having me, Stephen. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation today. 

 

I always love connecting people with this health and wellness sector because it is such an important focus right now, especially because I believe we are in a mental health crisis society wide right now and that we need any of these tools that we can get in order to just become better connected and better accepting of ourselves. 

 

Well said and I am in full agreement with you. As a mental wellness advocate, I cannot emphasize enough how important our self-care as a means for supporting our mental health is and, you said it, unfortunately, it’s so true that, I agree, we are in a state of mental health crisis.

 

So, currently, right now, and we’re recording at the end of 2022, beginning of Sagittarius season, which we’ll probably get into later, me being a Sagittarius myself, but currently at the end of 2022, what is the main thing keeping people from being mentally well, being aligned with themselves?

 

I think that we are still rubbing up against the problem that we’ve had as a society for quite some time, which is this glorification of the hustle mentality. So even though we’re getting more and more aware of this being the state that we’re in and this perhaps being not optimal for our health, we are not really seeing a collective change yet. So I love that the awareness is there, like people like us are having these conversations and are dedicated to making this change, but I would say that at the end of 2022, society as a whole is still really stuck in “Go, go, go, do, do, do, get as much done,” and you and I both know that when we’re in the state of mind, I’m sure all of you tuning in know, when we are frenzied like that, it’s very, very hard to take a step back, take a deep breath, get present, and find that space for ourselves. 

 

For sure, and one of the challenges that I’ve personally encountered is this feeling of guilt, this feeling of I should be doing something. What do you think is the antidote to that? Because there’s going to be a day when you’re just off, that’s part of the cycle of life,