The Power of Prioritizing Yourself

Have you ever felt exhausted from always putting others first, only to feel unappreciated and out of sync with yourself?

In this Thursday Thread episode, we’re pulling a key idea from Rhonda Parker-Taylor’s Tuesday conversation to talk about the importance of a “me-first” mindset. We’ll explore how prioritizing your own needs can strengthen relationships and lead to more fulfillment in your life.

You’ll hear why boundaries matter and how letting go of overworking and over-serving can help you reclaim your energy and focus on what truly matters. This isn’t about self-care as a buzzword—it’s about practical ways to honor your own happiness and align with your goals.

We’ll also challenge some of the societal messages (especially for women) that push us toward self-sacrifice and talk about how to shift away from that mindset. To wrap it up, I’ll guide you through a quick breathwork exercise to reconnect with your energy and purpose.

Chapters

• 0:05 Me First Mentality for Everyone
• 10:02 Prioritizing Yourself for Inner Peace

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hi and welcome to Untethered with Jen Liss, the podcast that's here to help you break free, be you and unleash your inner brilliance. I'm your host, jen, and in this episode we're going to talk about how a me-first mentality is better for everyone. Let's dive in. Hey there, unicorn, it's Jen. Welcome back to the podcast for this Thursday thread. It's a Thursday thread.

Speaker 1: 0:38

We are pulling a little thread out of the episode with Rhonda Parker-Taylor. Rhonda's big message that she has to share with the world is to do more for you. What about your projects? What about the things that you really care about?

Speaker 1: 0:56

So many of us put everybody else first, and this can happen whether you're a mother, whether you're a father, whether you're a father, whether you're not a parent. You're a daughter, a friend, a colleague. We can put everybody else's needs first, our clients' needs, and we start to really look to the outside in order to inform our inside, and this leads to trouble, and a lot of us have lived our entire lives this way, and I'm raising both of my hands very high to say, yes, me, me lived most of my life looking to the outside and I still catch little ways all the time, with my own coach, with my own therapist around the ways in which I am looking to the outside in order to inform how I feel inside, and the tiny voice inside of my head. When I get really quiet, get so quiet with myself. The voice, the message that I often hear, is you're okay, you're okay. You don't need anybody else to tell you that you're okay, you are okay, and so I forward this message along to you. You are okay, and so I forward this message along to you. You are okay. You don't need anybody else to confirm that for you. You are perfect and wonderful, this sparkly ball of magic inside, exactly as you are.

Speaker 1: 2:22

When we do this, when we fully understand that we're okay and we don't need anybody else to validate that for us, and we don't need to help everybody else in the world in order for them to feel okay. We don't need to fix the world. We don't have to be out there fixing everybody else's problems in order for us to feel okay inside, there's this massive shift that happens for us, and I'm not saying that this is easy. It's definitely not easy, especially if you have been raised in this way that we feel like we need to care for everybody else. But, truly, putting that me first, your desires, what brings you joy, is actually the greatest thing that can help everybody else in the world around you. Every single relationship that you have will be better off in the long term.

Speaker 1: 3:11

When you take a me first mentality and I don't mean this to be like greedy type of selfish, but really understanding that you don't need everybody else to feel okay with your decisions. Your decisions and your choices are your choices, and if you're making those choices in alignment with what's great for you, then that's better for everybody, because we're not creating this really, really tethered, funky web of like well, if that's what you want from me, then I'll do this. And then you start to feel kind of resentful about it and it just becomes this like you're all pulling on each other all the time. It's this really weird thing that most of us are living all the time, and this is what I mean when I say become untethered. When you start doing things from your heart-centered place in this place of I am okay, I don't need anybody else to tell me that I am All of those tethers that we had on ourselves in all of our relationships start to fall away, and that might be uncomfortable. It's not always comfortable for those shifts to occur.

Speaker 1: 4:19

Say, you always do the grocery shopping for your mother-in-law. It's something that you've done for a long time and maybe actually used to bring you joy, and so you would do it because you knew that it delighted her and it was something that you enjoyed doing. But now it's not fitting into your schedule so well because you took on a new hobby and all of a sudden it has become a burden and it's not something that you want to do and you find yourself not wanting to do it. What do you do in that scenario? Most people just keep doing it and eventually get resentful and it starts to impact your relationship with your mother-in-law, because the next time that she asks you to do a little something extra, you might be a little bit irritated I'm already doing all of these things for you. Or she asks you to pick up a little something extra, you're like there's this tether that is happening now between your relationship. So what do you do? Well, you could offer to put her order in for her to the grocery store and have somebody else go pick it up, have your husband or have your siblings go pick it up.

Speaker 1: 5:20

Find a new way that will free up your time and make that decision for yourself. Might that instigate something in her where she's like, well, why don't you want to get my groceries anymore? Then you can have an honest conversation and just say I have a new hobby that is really fun for me and it's taking up a little bit more of my time, so I would like to find a new solution. This seems very practical and obvious. And yet let's think about this how many things in our lives do we just continue to do for other people when it's really not bringing us joy anymore? But it might have. It might have at one time, it used to, but now it doesn't, because you have other things that are bringing you joy and other things that this might not be working anymore, but will just keep doing it. And do you know what that's doing? Here's how it is good for everybody Because your brother-in-law, say, starts helping out with it, finds out that it actually brings him joy to support his mom in that way.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Nobody had ever asked him because it was always assumed that the women in the family would do it and he'd never been asked, and actually it makes him feel so good to help. It was better for him that you said, this isn't something I want to do anymore, or I want to find a way to help somebody, have somebody else come in. A friend of mine had a very similar thing with her son recently, where her brother had never been asked to watch the kids because he was a man and he'd never been asked to watch the kids before and she said no to her other sibling, like I can't, I can't, and normally she wouldn't. She's like this was so hard for me to say no, but it gave her brother this opportunity because they turned to him. So it's like there's always these are just two very simple examples but always your no to something that is not aligned for you, that is not supporting you, that's not supporting your dreams or that might be getting in the way of you accomplishing your dreams.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Something might be getting in the way of you sitting down to write that one page a day, something that Rhonda said. She said if you write one page a day of your book, by the end of the year, after 365 days, you have a novel. One page a day, and so many of us who have a dream of writing a book do not sit down and do that one page a day, and so many of us who have a dream of writing a book do not sit down and do that one page a day. And so often it's because we're taking on things from our clients, taking on things from our jobs, taking on things from our family spending time on social media, caring what other people think about our post all of the things that are not putting your dreams first. And how many people have been helped by Rhonda writing her book. They enjoyed that thrill, they sat down and it just brought them so much joy, or they had some introspective moment for themselves that shined a light on something in their relationship with themselves. Because she sat down and she wrote the book. She prioritized the thing that she wanted to do.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Think about that your creative gifts, whatever it is that you're creating in the world, whether it be a course, maybe it is a book, maybe it's a song that you want to write, maybe it's a children's book, maybe it's a poem, maybe it is posting some funny memes on social media that could change somebody else's media, that could change somebody else's day, that could change somebody else's life. They might be inspired by your silly meme and start their own silly meme page because they're like, oh my gosh, she created that, she did that. Did you make that yourself? Heck, yeah, I did. And then they get inspired to go do that themselves. Prioritize the things that you want, and it helps other people.

Speaker 1: 9:05

So often we really struggle to do it for ourselves. That's, ultimately, what we need to do is do it for ourselves, but if you can't be to that point yet, do it for somebody else. Remember that every choice you make for yourself is better for everybody else. Resentment does not breed happiness for anybody. That is such a huge fucking tether. Slice it. We've got to start cutting those, and I know it's hard. It's so hard. I think I shared a couple episodes ago that I had a moment with a friend where I had to cut something and I had to say you know what? It's not something that I like to do. Just got to be honest with you. It's not, and that was the best thing I could have done. Was it easy for either of us? Hell, no, it was not easy for either of us, but it was the best thing that I could do for our relationship.

Speaker 1: 10:02

It's not what we've been taught. It's not especially women. It's not what we've been taught. It's not especially women. It's not what we've been taught. We've been taught that we've got to hold onto that and we've got to be martyrs. And nobody needs to be a martyr. You don't need to do that, we have plenty of saints. The Vatican is full of statues. You don't need to be one unless you truly feel like that is your calling, and I actually would. I think it's safe to say that most of those people probably actually moved more from this space of doing for themselves and serving others than they did from living a life of resentment.

Speaker 1: 10:42

It does not win you any medals. When I worked in corporate, I was working late one night and somebody stopped by my desk and said there's no reward for staying late. Nobody gets a medal for staying late, and I was kind of irritated with him that day that he said that because I had so much stuff to do and I was so behind and I couldn't get anything done that day because I worked in the spot in the office where everybody wanted to stop and talk to me and wanted to stop and say things, and my ADHD brain is like seeing everybody walk by and couldn't focus on my work, and so it was the only time I could focus on my work. So I was honestly annoyed. But a couple years later I reflected on that moment and I was like it was such wisdom he was imparting on me.

Speaker 1: 11:28

There truly is no medal for overworking yourself. There is no medal for overdoing and over-serving the needs of others and actually stealing them the effort that they need to put forth to their own dreams. Taking away the opportunities that they could learn from their own failures is not serving anybody. So start putting yourself first. Do something for yourself. I would challenge you to, next time you notice yourself starting to do something that you know you don't really want to do, challenge yourself to make the choice for yourself and say you know what I actually don't want to. You could also offer another solution If that feels really good to you. You could say but what I would do is this and offer that. Say what would be good for you. That can be a really, really powerful way to build the relationship from a much more beneficial place for both parties.

Speaker 1: 12:31

As we do in every Thursday Thread episode, I would love to close today's episode with a moment of breath. It's checking in with yourself and giving yourself a moment to be fully present in the here and the now. Nothing complicated today. Let's just breathe into our own presence, our own magic within ourselves. If you're able to close down your eyes, if you're sitting in a place where you can completely go within, invitation to do that. If you're in a place where you can soften your gaze, invitation to do that. If you're driving, you can come back to this, or you can keep your attention on the road and just listen in.

Speaker 1: 13:08

When you're ready, taking an inhale into the nose, on your exhale, closing your eyes down if you're able, or softening your gaze, there you go, taking another inhale, filling up the belly, really feeling that expansion of the belly, simultaneously bringing your awareness to the feet, feeling so supported while simultaneously expanding. Exhaling completely One more of those big inhales. In exhaling completely One more of those big inhales, in feeling both the expansion and the ground, exhaling with a sigh when you're ready, beginning to rotate your breath into the nose and out through the mouth at a pace that feels comfortable to you. There you go, continuing to breathe Nice expansive breath in Nice full belly, feeling the lungs expand and exhaling, keeping your awareness on the breath, on any sensations of the breath as it moves in and out of your body. There you go, you are safe to breathe. You are safe to connect inward to the breath.

Speaker 1: 15:27

Beautiful, when you're ready, taking one final inhale into the nose, holding that breath at the top, feeling into your energy, feeling into your energy, feeling the energy rise from the belly up through the chest, up through the throat, up through your head, when, and only when, you are ready, releasing that hold, feeling every muscle in your body relax, feeling that clean, energetic current flow through your body from head to toe. Bringing your awareness to your heart space, maybe placing a hand on your heart, focusing your awareness on your heart energy, feeling the magic of your heart, of your body, of your spirit, all connected to this space, this portal to your creativity, to your creativity, to your energy, to what keeps you alive and present right here, when you're ready, bringing your awareness back into your fingertips, maybe giving your fingertips a gentle wiggle, maybe rubbing them on the cloth beneath your fingertips. Bringing your awareness back to your feet, maybe resting on the ground on the floor, fluttering your eyes open when, and only when, you are ready, coming fully back into the present moment. Thank you so much for joining this episode and for taking a moment to connect inward, to connect to your heart, to your energy, which is your magic. It means the world to me that you would join in this breath, practice and listen to this episode. Your magic is so needed in this world and for you to move from the space of your purpose, and what lights you up is exactly what the world needs.

Speaker 1: 18:38

If you connected to something in this episode and you think a friend would connect with it too, you can share this episode with them. You can also share this episode with all of your friends by taking a screenshot of it. Put it on social media. You can put it on your stories on Instagram and tag me. I'm untetheredjen on Instagram. Links are in the show notes. I will always reshare your post if you share it and tag me. Thanks again for listening. You just keep shining your magical unicorn light out there for all to see. I'll see you next time. Bye.