Ask Nakeia: Am I Failing?

I Hope This Helps, The Podcast, Podcast Shownotes

Can I join you on the journey?

Every week, I share stories, lessons, encouragement, and practical healing and growth practices from my life and work with others.

Hey Beloved, I'm Nakeia

Apple Podcasts | Spotify

“You will feel like you are failing whenever you are not fed.”

We are back with the Ask Nakeia series, where I answer a question from a listener. You can submit your questions to be answered on the podcast at thepodcast@nakeiahomer.com.

This week, we get into a question that you may relate to if you have ever felt like you were failing at life.

Question

Today’s question comes from someone whom I will call Joanna. Joanna shared her heart, what she has been experiencing in this season of her life, and I won’t go into the details of the email because it was very personal. What I will share is the one question she asked, after pouring her heart out: Am I failing? Am I failing, Nakeia?

Joanna expressed some issues on the job, some issues in her home, which is her marriage, her life as a mother. She even expressed some issues she has being a caretaker of aging parents and the boundaries she’s had to put in place with both her parents and siblings. All the work she is doing is really exceptional. As I shared with Joanna in a short reply, I don’t know how she’s doing any of it. It’s a lot going on. It is a lot on her plate, and I understand why someone would feel like they are failing when they have all of that on their plate at once.

I can’t see you, you know this, but raise your hand if you have ever felt like you were failing in life, in love, in your career, and even personally. Like everything you are trying to do is just not working, and you are doing all the things, and I mean all the things…

I have certainly felt like a failure as a parent, as a friend, as a daughter, as a wife. I felt like a failure in life many times. And every time I felt like that, I was stretched beyond my capacity, and I was not being fed. And what I want to share with you, Joanna, today…

Answer

You will feel like you are failing whenever you are not fed.

You will feel like you are failing when you are not feeding yourself, which is essentially providing for yourself, which is essentially meeting your needs. So you will feel like a failure when your needs are not met. And if you are saying, “Yes, Nakeia, I have felt like a failure. I have felt like I was not provided for, like my needs are not being met”, I want to share with you some areas where you must consistently feed yourself.

You must feed yourself physically. You must feed yourself emotionally. You must feed yourself spiritually. And you must feed yourself mentally.

You must be physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally fed at all times. And I want to quickly break down what it looks like to be fed in these areas.

When you are fed physically, you are meeting your mobility needs, your fitness needs, your appearance, and your nourishment.

When you are fed emotionally, you are aware of your feelings. You are feeding yourself in terms of how you feel, how you cope, how you are regulated, and how you are managing stress. You are feeding yourself things like joy, happiness, and comfort. All of those areas of your life are full. Right? They are okay as far as your capacity.

When you are fed spiritually, your soul is fed. You are in alignment in your life. You are connected to yourself, to God, to the divine, to others. It means you are operating in your purpose, and of course, your faith is on full.

When it comes to being mentally fed, mentally is different from emotionally because emotions have to do with your feelings, and mentally is a cognitive thing. It is a cognitive process. That means your thinking is on point, your reasoning is on point, your logic is on point. You are okay when it comes to your mind.

You need to be full or fed in all these areas to show up fully in other areas of your life, like your family, your career, your obligation to care for or support parents or siblings, or whoever.

Ways to Feed Yourself

Physically

Imagine the next two weeks of your life (because sometimes that’s all it takes. Two weeks, maybe a month, but I want to start with something accessible. So let’s say two weeks.) Devise a plan for daily movement over the next two weeks.

Movement looks like stretching, walking, weight training, running, walking up and down your steps, doing some jumpin’ jacks, walking in place… Whatever you have the physical capacity to do. Create a two-week plan. And by plan, I mean I will do this on Monday, on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday at this particular time, 5 a.m., 5 p.m., 12 p.m., 10 a.m., or whatever time you allot for physical movement. I want you to devise a plan.

The second thing is I want you to choose a meal plan for the next two weeks, a meal plan that nourishes your body. So we’re talking hydration, protein, fiber, fruit, all the things you need in your body to support you physically. Create a meal plan for two weeks.

Example: I eat the same exact thing every Monday through Friday for two straight weeks. No exceptions. I know exactly what I’m going to eat on a Wednesday. I’m going to eat a piece of toast and some fruit, lke a piece of grapefruit or an apple for breakfast. For lunch, I’m going to have some form of protein with the salad or just veggies, maybe leftovers from the night before. And then for dinner, I’m going to do the same thing. I’m going to have chicken, salmon, or shrimp with a salad on the side.

Creating a meal plan helps with decision fatigue. This helps with discipline, creates a habit, and it helps to guarantee that you are nourished.

Next, create a hygiene regimen. Appearance is something that I include in being physically fed because a lot of people complain about how they look. When you are overwhelmed, stressed, or depressed, your appearance is a telltale sign. This is true for everyone I have worked with, this is true for everyone I am friends with, and this is absolutely true for me. If you do not see me in lipstick, I am overwhelmed, stressed, or depressed. If you do not smell perfume, body spray, or something, I am depressed. If my hair is not slicked back in the ponytail or curled, I am stressed, depressed, or overwhelmed. Something’s going on. So I want you to create a hygiene regimen that takes care of all of those things so that you are not able to complain about how you look because you are caring for yourself in that way.

*Tune into the full episode for details on my hygiene routine.

And those are just a couple of areas that I identify based on your email and based on, general things that we need to do collectively But you can identify other physical things that you are going to do over the next two weeks.

Emotionally

Create a journal practice to help identify your emotional needs. What are you feeling? What are your complaints? What are you coping with? What are you trying to regulate? How is your stress? I want you to journal about these things. You can use prompts if you have a struggle with journaling. You can Google prompts for emotional well-being, prompts for managing stress, prompts when I’m feeling ugly. You can Google anything, and I promise you, the internet is going to provide an answer for you. If you struggle with prompts, there are prompts at the end of each chapter of my latest book, Habits for Healing.

If you don’t like writing in a journal, try using a voice note. I have been sharing (on social media) some of the video notes I use as personal check-ins to make sure that I am okay emotionally. You can try that as well.

The next thing I want you to do is create affirmations for the season you are in. So if you are stressed, if you are overwhelmed, if you are struggling in your career, I want you to create affirmations that are specific to that need. And by “affirmations,” I mean create a sentence or two that your highest self will agree and identify with. Perhaps you don’t feel this way in the moment, but the best, most favorite version of yourself does. I want you to agree with the highest version of yourself.

Example: Let’s say you feel ugly. You feel like you are failing in the area of your appearance, like you’re at an age where you thought you’d look better, feel better, etc. You can affirm: I am learning to love this version of myself. That is true. You may not love this version of yourself right now, but you are learning, through this two-week practice, to love yourself in this season of your life.

I love myself in this season of my life.

I honor the body that is carrying me through the struggle.

That was a personal affirmation of mine. I honor the body that is carrying me through the struggle. Very true, very aligned, very demure. Create affirmations. To help, there are affirmations at the end of each chapter of my latest book, Habits For Healing.

The last note I have here for emotional wellness, or how to feed yourself emotionally, is deep breathing. Now, you might be saying, “Why are you putting deep breathing in the emotional tab?” Here’s why: When I am ruminating over difficulty or when I am speaking negatively to myself because I feel like a failure, I interrupt that thinking and that negative self-talk with deep intentional breathing.

This may sound like:

You’re failing. You should have been here by now. You should have done this by now. You should be a better mother. You are not a good friend.

I interrupt that rumination by breathing deeply. And deep breathing does so much more for your body. It activates your parasympathetic nervous system, sending a message that you are calm, not just stressed. It improves your heart rate variability so you can breathe better during difficult times. Shallow breathing sends messages that put your body on high alert. Then your hormones are out of whack. When your hormones are out of whack, your appearance is out of whack. When your appearance is out of whack, you feel bad about yourself. There is this emotional cycle of overwhelm that you can interrupt by breathing deeply.

*Listen to the full episode to hear my personal deep breathing practice.

Spiritually

I encourage you or invite you to resurrect your faith. Resurrect your faith in yourself, in your God, in your life, or wherever you need to expand or nurture your faith. You can do that through reading, music, fellowship, prayer, or meditation. I want you to activate or resurrect your faith.

As part of your journal practice, I invite you to uncover what you truly believe or what is true for you in this season of your life. What is true for you? Sometimes the truth is difficult to sit with, but I want you to be brave enough to sit with what you believe.

Also, as part of your journal practice, identify five core values. What do you value in this season of your life? Is it friendship? Is it faith? Is it honesty? Is it purpose? Is it loyalty? What do you value in this season of your life? You can decide this in every area of your life. What do I value in relationship? What do I value in friendship? You can do this however you need to, based on your particular life and the season that you’re in.

And then I want you to set a new standard for yourself. And I will likely do a podcast on standards later, but a standard is something that you measure everything else in your life by. So what are your relationship, friendship, and professional standards? What does that look like for you?

And lastly, I want you to make and keep small daily promises for two weeks straight.

Mentally.

Start reading at least 30 minutes a day. You can read in the morning, in the evening, or in the middle of the day. But I want you to read something. It can be nonfiction or fiction. It can be self-help or poetry. Just choose something that will really feed your mind.

I also love a good crossword puzzle. Remember, when we talk about mentally, we are speaking of the cognitive processes of thinking, reasoning, and logic. So we improve that by doing things that activate your executive function, such as doing a crossword puzzle. There’s an app that I love called Letter Peak. Those types of activities are really good for your brain.

I also want you to engage in self-study over the next two weeks. I practice self-study by picking a word or a particular interest, and I research, research, research. I go to Google. I watch videos.

Example: Let’s say I’m going to study “love” because I want to identify my beliefs and values around all things love. So I’ll go to YouTube, and I look up academic lectures on love.

There are some amazing articles on the New York Times, and the Harvard Review has really good articles. There are things everywhere, so look up whatever you want to study. And I don’t want you to just use AI. I want you to do the digging and the research yourself. Again, we are improving our cognitive process by activating our executive function.

And the last thing that I have here is to make a decision a day. A decision a day. One of the reasons we “fail” in life is that we don’t make decisions. And I put fail in quotes because I don’t necessarily believe that we are ever really failing. We are in progress in every season, as every version of ourselves, and we are working to get it right. The work includes failing. We need to make decisions about everything, so if you hide behind “I don’t know”, often I want you to get to know over the next two weeks. That is why you are choosing things like your meals for the next two weeks. All of these practices are linked.

Make a decision, at least one meaningful decision every single day.

Final Thoughts

I shared three to four things in every area: physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental. But like I told Joanna in an email reply, you know you. You know the life that you are living, and you know the life that you want to live.

You can add some practices you think of concerning your physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental well-being. Remember, when you feel like you are failing, you are likely not being fed.

You will feel like you are failing when you are not fed.

You must meet your needs so that you are not operating at a deficit. I always share that you need to gather as much support as you can, and often that support doesn’t come, or we don’t have access to that support in the form of another person. I have been there when it was just God and me, and that was it. And during those seasons, I had to make sure that I was fed physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.

Now, I did not bring up therapy because I know that Joanna has a bit of a struggle in that area. But if you have the capacity to reach out to a therapist, that is a good way to feed yourself both mentally and emotionally. If you have access to therapy in the form of one-on-one or group, I would encourage you to reach out for professional support.

Remember, you will feel like a failure whenever you are not fed. Your job in this season of your life, in addition to all the other things, is to feed yourself. Feed yourself physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.

Until next time, beloved, I hope this helps.