IMPACT THEORY

UNIVERSITY

THE ULTIMATE
GUIDE TO
SELF-CARE
 IMPACT THEORY
UNIVERSITY

THE ULTIMATE
GUIDE TO
SELF-CARE
 01

WHY SELF-CARE MATTERS

Success is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. As
seen by the heartbreaking number of suicides throughout history, it
doesn't matter how much money, power, or fame you have. The
reality is, the longer you feel shitty about yourself, the more you
believe that will never change. This loss of hope is a dangerous place
to put yourself in.

This is why Self-Care is so important. Taking control of your

neurochemistry is the only way to become a person you see as
worthy. You must get your brain and body to a level that works in
your favor and that you're proud of.

Admittedly, this is difficult because suffering under our current

circumstances leads us to believe we will never get there. We start to
think being overweight, or an addict, or being lost in life is just who
we are, and nothing can improve. Self-Care efforts will help you
break free from this victim position and put meaning back into
your life.

* This worksheet is designed to briefly outline key points from the

videos and help build on what was taught. This is not a detailed
summary of every point. For deeper explanations on each point,
re-watch the videos and take notes! If you have any further
questions, be sure to ask in the Facebook group community!
 02

Before we dive into how to do this, let's look at our beliefs behind
Self-Care:

We Believe:
Failure to take care of yourself can lead to hazardous consequences,
including:
· Depression
· Anxiety
· Aimlessness
· Sub-optimal performance
· Boredom
· Biological-decay (diseases of overconsumption, obesity,
diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, etc.)
· Diseases of neglect (muscle & bone atrophy, cell senescence,
etc.)

Where people go wrong:

THEIR WHY ISN'T CLEAR

People understand what they need to do to improve, but don't know
WHY they need to do it. Why does it matter on a practical level? For
these efforts to not just be a fad diet, you have to understand the
stakes and what's driving you to make these changes.

THEY PUT OTHERS FIRST

Before you start any Self-Care efforts, give yourself permission to
put yourself first. It doesn't matter if you're a spouse, a parent, or the
head of a hundred staff company. You can't help people if you're
struggling and suffering yourself. The best way to help people in your
life is to lead by example. Your positive changes and the energy
spewing from them will become contagious.
 03

THEY VALUE SECONDARY THINGS

Putting value into money, prestige, or identity, instead of the efforts
that will get you those things, is a common mistake. Above
everything else, you have to care about acquiring the skills that
empower you to feel good about yourself.

THEY DON'T DO HARD THINGS

Doing hard things needs to become a central part of your life.
Regularly challenging yourself expands your limits and builds
resiliency.

A common roadblock on the path to change is the idea that you just
won't be able to implement any real changes. You understand its
importance, you've seen it done, but you just don't think you have
what it takes to merge it with your current self.

To that we say: we believe in you. And not for any generic reason.

We simply believe in an average human's ability to adapt and

improve. It is true our minds may or may not be hardwired for certain
things we see in others. But one skill all of us possess is the ability to
CHANGE. We can process information, evaluate, and make the
necessary changes to evolve. Humans have been doing it since the
beginning of time. By just being a human, you already meet the
minimum requirements. Remember this as you start your journey.
 04

Q&A TAKEAWAYS
· Getting terrifyingly specific clarity of your goals will help counter
aimlessness and boredom. If you don't know what you should be
doing for the next 7 minutes to reach your goal, it isn't clear
enough. This amount of detail is what will keep you rooted in the
process and won't allow the opportunity to become aimless or
bored. You'll be too busy in the momentum of minute by minute
progress.

If this process causes you more stress than joy, your value system
may need more fine-tuning. Really try to understand why gaining
these skills matters to you. How will they contribute to the human
you want to become?

· Understand you are not a blank slate. There are some biological
things out of your control working against you. The beauty is,
once you know these things, you aren't in the dark anymore. You
gain the information needed to start navigating through and
around them as needed.
 05

MATTER OVER MIND

A core component of Self-Care is rooting everything back to biology.
We are biological systems and must understand this to protect
ourselves at a cellular level. Proof of this is shown in processes like:

DEATH
When your cells can no longer generate ATP (the energy) needed to
keep going. This happens to everyone over time.

DEMENTIA
The unfortunate process of losing your original person and identity.

BRAIN DAMAGE
Can alter the functions of your daily life, including personality,
decision-making, and emotional responses.

CANCER
When dysfunctional cells destroy your whole system.

After recognizing how complex our bodies really are, we can start
placing more value on protecting them. Do everything in your power
to improve your biological system. Otherwise, you make yourself
more vulnerable.
 06

MIND AND BODY

If you want to optimize your mind, you must optimize the body as
well. This focus on your overall health will boost so many
contributing factors towards your Self-Care. Exercise itself provides
benefits on a physical and mental level including:

MEMORY
Did you know the best time to take your hardest class is actually
AFTER a workout? Read John Ratey's book “Spark” to learn more.

ENERGY
The number of mitochondria (the part of your cells that produces
energy) in your body increases when you workout.

CONFIDENCE
The results of productive physical activity can increase confidence
and help your social skills.

ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION

Exercise acts as the first line of defense against these by
rebalancing hormones and neurotransmitters.

The mind and body are two parts of a whole so it's essential you take
care of both. Damage at the cellular level can alter your entire
personality, creating long term consequences.
 07

ENTROPY
Entropy is the idea that everything in your life moves towards chaos.
Your emotions, body, and self-perception all have negative forces
working against it daily. The 2nd law of thermodynamics says we can
counter this if we introduce energy to create that order. This is where
Self-Care comes in.

Self-Care introduces energy that disrupts the natural disorder of life.

We want to create enough positive energy to outweigh the negativity
that life can create.

Q&A TAKEAWAYS
Find the harmony between pursuing mastery towards your individual
goals, and engaging in social connectedness with people you care
about. Both are needed for healthy human nurturing and
development.
 08

THE ULTIMATE SELF-CARE

REGIMEN
This regimen will cover habits and practices you should be focusing
on throughout your Self-Care journey. Once again, the purpose of
focusing on these is to optimize the performance of your body and
mind. Let's start off with daily basics before moving on to other
areas.

SLEEP
Nothing is more important than getting proper rest. The fact that
lack of sleep can lead to hallucinations and other damaging effects
should show how essential it is. To develop the healthiest sleep
habits you should consider:
a. Going to bed at the same time every night to build consistency.
b. Not setting an alarm. Sleep until you wake up. You don't want to
practice sleep deprivation. Get the rest your body is telling you it
needs.
c. Eating your last meal 4 hours before bedtime. This prevents
digestion from interrupting your sleep during the night.
d. Sleeping in a completely dark room. Get the room as close to
pitch black as possible to eliminate chances of light interrupting
your sleep.
e. Using white noise to mask disruptive sounds.
f. Sleeping in a cool room. This lowers your body temp to help you
sleep better.
g. Using sleep to cleanse your brain. Your brain shrinks when it
sleeps, helping remove toxins.
 09

EAT RIGHT
You are what you eat is a saying, but it is also very true. Everything
you consume contributes to your cellular being and literally becomes
a part of you. If you eat crap, your cells will be formed by that crap.
Even if this works for the moment, there will be long term
consequences.

To move towards a better diet try:

a. Experimenting to find the right diet for you. What foods DON'T
make you feel foggy and tired after you eat them? Eat more of
that and avoid the ones that do.
b. Eating whole food whenever possible, and avoiding added sugars.

EXERCISE
As John Ratey has stated, exercise helps ward off and reverse the
negative effects of stress. Implement some form of exercise into
your daily life for all the reasons we discussed previously.

MEDITATION
This practice helps ground your nervous system by teaching you to
drop your fight or flight reaction down to 0.

Breathing from your diaphragm, which is commonly associated with

meditation, also helps reduce stress. The practice of focusing on
your breath helps break you from the cycle of negative thoughts
trying to hardwire in your mind.

CONNECT WITH THOSE YOU LOVE

The need for connection and intimacy is built into all living things.
From simple conversations to full-on hugs, find ways to feed that
 10

connection for your own wellbeing. We aren't designed for long term
isolation, which is proven to have negative effects on your mental
and physical health.

LEARN DAILY
Humans have an innate drive to get better and gain mastery. Feed
this by learning more and more every day. There are no limits on this,
either. Books, videos, podcasts, fiction, and non-fiction are all great
ways to feed your mind and move closer to mastery than you were
yesterday.

DO HARD THINGS IN SERVICE OF

SOMETHING THAT MATTERS
Doing something hard, especially if it's in the service of something
you believe in, will motivate you like nothing else. The reward of
conquering those challenges is you getting you closer to the person
you want to become (which should excite the hell out of you). Some
handy examples of hard things you can practice daily are:
a. Cold showers
b. No sugar diet
c. Fasting or intermittent fasting
d. Working out
e. Carrying a burden for someone you love

PLAY HARD
Remember that despite how hard you work, joy should never be
missing from this process. Taking time to do the things that you love
or integrating them into workflow is a necessary balance.
 11

Q&A TAKEAWAYS
· You can increase your stress threshold by doing something
frequently and trying to push further over time. Make sure to
track your progress as well. For example, start a new workout
regiment by doing as many pushups as you can before burning
out. Do that amount only for the first week (with proper rest).
Starting the 2nd week, add more onto your set to gauge what
your new burnout limit is. Even if you can only bear to add 1 more
to your set, continue this over time and track your progress.

· When balancing rest and mastery, prioritize rest. Rest is vital for
efficiency and should be treated as such while pursuing your
goals.
 12

MAKING IT STICK
The only way to make everything we've discussed so far stick is by
taking control of the way you think. If your thoughts are still buying
into the idea that "Self-Care might be beyond my depth and
capabilities," you MUST learn why that is your emotional reaction and
change it. Otherwise, those negative thought patterns will override
any progress you make by defeating you before you even start. Only
do and believe that which moves you towards your goals from now on.
This process includes the following practices:

STOP FEEDING YOURSELF THE NEGATIVE

STORY YOU THINK ABOUT YOURSELF
Regardless if it's true. You need to be living within a narrative where
you're in control of your life and your choices directly correlate to the
changes you want to make. You are not a helpless victim of your
habits. Understand that if you continue to NOT eating properly, NOT
going to the gym, and NOT getting proper rest, you WILL NOT become
the person you want to be. But once you make a choice to start and
commit, the change will follow.

FIND A HIERARCHY YOU CAN THRIVE IN

Operating in a space where you know you're good at something you
love doing makes you feel good about yourself. This feedback is a
necessary part of Self-Care as a source of positive energy to boost
you up during your journey.
 13

STOP COMPARING YOURSELF TO OTHERS

Comparison is the thief of joy. No matter how much you have, if you
keep comparing yourself to everyone else's standard, you will never
be satisfied. Counteract this by:
· Finding intrinsic value within your life that matters to you despite
what everyone around you possesses.
· Focusing on You vs. You. Are you getting better every day, or not?
Compare the today version of yourself with the yesterday version
of yourself.

BE AWARE OF PROXIMITY
We don't usually seek out things to compare ourselves to. It's often
natural to compare to what we see every day. Work at breaking
yourself free from the idea that just because they're near you, you
have to compare yourself to them. Do this by remembering the only
useful comparison is you today, vs you yesterday.

DEAL WITH YOUR TRAUMA

You have to find out what from the past is making you feel insecure.
What baggage is weighing you down consciously and
unconsciously? A therapist is a useful source for surfacing and
unwinding these emotions.

TAKE SELFISH TIME

Hard work needs to be complemented by just doing things you like to
do. Take selfish time with no big agenda to just enjoy life the way you
see fit. Otherwise, none of this work will be worth it.
 14

HAVE A VALUE STACK

1. Prioritizing taking care of yourself (especially before you try to
help others) has to be valued. Revisit the "Where People Go
Wrong" section from earlier for why.
2. Make growth a daily end goal and practice. Allowing yourself to
move backward cements weakness in your habits. Grow or die
has to be your mantra.

As you take all this in and begin implementing it into your life,
remember none of it will come easy. Don't get discouraged by not
getting things perfect the first time. Every long-term goal requires a
long-term process. As long as you prioritize learning, you'll always be
moving forward. If you slip up, don't dwell on it. Get right back on
track.

I promise all the hard work will be worth it in the end.

 15

Q&A TAKEAWAYS
· Getting Unstuck by Reframing, Releasing, and Forgiving your
trauma connects to Self-Care because it helps remove things
standing in the way of you moving forward. That forgiveness
relieves you of baggage and clears up negative thought patterns
tying into the past.

*Check out our "Stop F*cking Yourself Up and Get Unstuck" class
for in-depth details on the Getting Unstuck process.*

· No matter how hard you work, don't forget to take care of your
body. Your success and physical health go hand in hand. Read
“Spark” by John Ratey for more on the importance of this.

· Some frequent contributors to anxiety to be aware of are:

1. Your diet. You need to eat the right foods that will feed your
neurotransmitters properly.
2. Temperature conditions. The extremes of being very hot or
very cold can trigger anxiety. Learn the optimal temperature
for you and how to appropriately respond when you find
yourself in the extreme.
3. Exercise. Physical activity is one of the first things
recommended by doctors to deal with depression and anxiety.
4. Sleep. Get the proper amount of rest to make sure your body is
moving optimally and efficiently.
5. Your internal narrative. What story are you telling yourself
every day? Look at this as a mental diet. What story are you
choosing to consume about yourself?
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· Be careful what label you reinforce to yourself. Being an introvert

is okay, but using that as a reason to not be open to the anxiety
of new situations or new people can backfire. Being
uncomfortable is still a natural part of growth, regardless what
label you subscribe to.

· Others’ beliefs may not align with your Self-Care values. In this
situation, instead of feeling attacked or attacking them for
thinking differently, accept that you just belong to two different
belief systems. Your wants and needs are different, and that is
okay. You don't need to diminish yours or theirs to coexist. Just
focus on your path and what it requires.

· The Self-Care process is continuous. Focus on getting better in

each area every day. There is no ceiling. This mindset is how to
avoid the "I'm still not good enough" mental trap.

· Alarms are a simple tool to help build a routine. Setting a

reminder to practice a habit you want to have long term may
serve useful to you.

· Some elements of meaningful relationships are:

1. Trust
2. Shared interests
3. Compatible Personality Type
4. They Make You Feel Better About Yourself
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ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS

AFTER WATCHING THIS CLASS AND DOING A DEEP REFLECTION ON
WHAT WAS TAUGHT, ANSWER THESE LEADING QUESTIONS TO HELP
BUILD YOUR SELF-CARE PRACTICE:

01 Understanding Your Why

Implementing Self-Care in my life matters because…

The very real consequences of not doing this are...

02 Put Yourself First

Putting myself first is the right thing to do because...

The people in my life that will benefit from me putting myself first
are… (also explain why they will benefit)
 18

03 The things I value most about improving are…

State Your Values

04 Create A Mirror Affirmation

Every day in the mirror, I will repeat the phrase...

This phrase will help me remember...

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05 Fill out each category with a DETAILED plan of:

Create a Regimen

· What your current regimen is

· What your new regimen will look like and how it will help you reach
your goal
· What practices and tools you will use to stay consistent

Sleep:

Diet:

Exercise:

Meditation:

Social Connection:

Learning:

Hard Things:

Play:

Use whatever structure works for you. It can be a letter to yourself, a

calendar, or just a list. Revisit your new regimen over time and journal
your progress.
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06 To make Self-Care a permanent part of my life I promise to…

How to Make it Stick
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