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- Carlee
Do you ever wonder how you're ever going to escape the expectations of others? Hi, I'm Carlee Myers, a stress management expert, and this month we're breaking down the stigma behind being selfish. And I've brought on our amazing guest, Danielle Mercurio, to talk about this. Daniel is paving the way for self-help and spirituality to be recognized as a sustainable force within modern society. As a confidence coach, speaker, meditation teacher and astrologist, she empowers individuals to be successful, intentional and live life with purpose.
- Carlee
She has spoken across the country, inspiring people back into their greatness by igniting their truth. And, you know, she is also a comedian. So you may have seen her with "Does This Make Me Look Spiritual?" or her podcast series, The Daniel Mercurio Show. I am so excited to have you.
- Danielle
I'm so excited to be here. I'm so excited when I realized it was today.
- Carlee
I love it. So I'm curious, as I'm sure we're all really curious. For those of us that already know you, because you're a big deal. How did you get here? Like, how did you get to this place where you reclaimed selfish, where you are like in touch - the whole nine yards,
- Danielle
Right. Absolutely. So, you know, I was born a triple Leo, I feel like I was born meant for the spotlight. However, I did not grow up in an environment where that was really recognized. And from a place where, you know, I think for a lot of us, we can say like we had all these dreams or hopes when we were little like we can think back and we were like, "I want to be this when I grow up."
- Danielle
And everyone's like, yes, yes, yes. And then you're like, OK, let's implement it. And all of a sudden, parents and teachers are kind of like, "Oh, well, we didn't mean like that big or that bold. Like, why don't you just kind of do this instead?" And so for me, I felt like I had all of these big ideas about what it meant to be kind of a spot like in the spot, like when I grew up, I also felt like it actually wasn't possible.
- Danielle
So I spent most my life kind of just like becoming a people pleaser and showing up for everybody else's timelines and doing what I thought I was supposed to. And I thought that if I followed the rules enough, I thought if I did what everybody told me, not only would it give me love and validation, eventually, somehow I would get to a spot where I would have enough independence people to do what it is that I want. However, when you spend your whole life trying to please everybody else, you're never going to create that space or that time to do what it is that you really want to do.
- Danielle
Right. And so it just kept building and building without me even really recognizing how deep it was. I battled with depression in and out through my teens, college years. And it wasn't until I graduated college, I did elementary ed degree which wasn't my choice. Nothing wrong with being a teacher. I am a teacher technically today in a lot of ways, but it wasn't what I wanted. It wasn't the major I wanted. It wasn't the life I wanted.
- Danielle
And so when I left college, I was lost for a few years. And I was still in this state of confusion. Still in this state. Why isn't it working? How come I am doing everything society wants from me and I'm still not happy. I'm still not satisfied. And so instead of getting help per say, I started to move into what I call escapism, which is reaching for things outside me. Men, drugs, alcohol, didn't matter.
- Danielle
It was anything for me to get outside of myself. And I did that day in and day out, trying to please the world by day, destroying myself by night. And eventually, it caught up to me in my mid 20s and I had a rock bottom that was pretty awful. And it was awful enough to finally get me to a space where I needed to get help and through giving myself permission to get help and taking it seriously. I started to heal this relationship with I have to be good for the world. I have to please everybody else. And instead, I can put everybody else on the backburner and put myself first. And not only is that OK, it is necessary. And through doing that, I started to redevelop my own allyship with myself. I started to become my own best friend. Didn't happen overnight, but I started to see the beauty in becoming your own best friend. And through that, I realized and recognized I had to start to do that for others.And that's kind of the abbreviated journey of how it all went down. And it's been almost 10 years now since that kind of shift.
- Carlee
Wow. Wow. So you're now like you made that shift. You went through that journey. You know that. That it was it didn't happen overnight. And, you know, there's lots of hard work and all of that. So I'm curious, like, what do you like for the listeners at home, What do you recommend as like baby steps or just the next step that we can take to start putting ourselves first to stop focusing on what society or the people in our life expect of us?
- Danielle
That's totally because it all seems like a great idea. And when we go to put it in reality, we're not you know, we still aren't putting ourselves first or somewhat creating boundaries because we don't know how. And so we've got to develop the foundation within our own self. And so for me, when I first got to got into the self-help world, a lot of people were throwing positivity at me and self-love. And I I wasn't into it. To be honest with you, because I was like, I judge myself every single day. I look in the mirror and I'm mean, I can't put a positive note like an affirmation on my mirror and tell myself I love myself every day. That's too far. I'm not there yet. So I started to ignore all the over positivity and self love stuff. And I started to just say, well, what, instead of self-love, what if I could focus on self OK. Today I woke up and that's OK. I'm not going to entertain anything that's kind of on my mind. I'm not going to entertain any noises when I start to judge myself or beat myself up. I'm also not going to worry about championing myself because I don't even know how to do that. And so I started with this process of self OK. And that's what I encourage for all of you, too. What can you do when you wake up in the morning? Don't reach for your phone right away. Because what we're doing when we reach our phone besides to turn up our alarm. And we're going on Instagram. We're checking our emails. We're immediately giving our power away. We're saying everyone else comes first immediately because now I'm checking my email, my Instagram, and I'm looking at everybody else before I even look at myself. So when you wake up in the morning, take a moment, take a breath to say good morning and make it really simple. Look in the mirror and say, let's try to do our best today. And the more that we can kind of be in the space of neutrality, not really trying to be overly good and also not entertaining the negativity, we can start to shift and we can start to create a really nice baseline. And then from that baseline, then you can start to weave in some more words of encouragement. Then you can start to explore this notion of liking yourself more saying like positive things. And it starts to shift and build from there. So meet yourself where you're at. Don't try to be like overly positive in love with yourself person right away and meet yourself where you're at and just try that for a while.
- Carlee
Yeah. It's almost like going on a date with somebody that you've never met and being like, I love you. And you're like, I'm lying to myself.
- Danielle
Totally, totally. He'd be like, there's the door. Here's the check.
- Carlee
Yeah. And we've a lot of us do that to ourselves. So like to build the relationship, it only makes sense to just be realistic. So start slow.
- Danielle
Totally.
- Carlee
Yeah. So what like what does selfish mean to you?
- Danielle
Yes. So selfish. You know, when I first started to come up, when I started to hear that word. Of course immediately I thought guilty. Right. Like I felt guilty. I felt self like selfish was being spoiled. It was being just, yeah, all these kind of negative connotations. And then once I realized, like, no. Being selfish is self-care and being selfish is space. I create space for myself. And that is selfish. I need time where I'm not worrying about anyone else or anything. And I am able to make a choice in that moment how I want to spend my time, what I want to do in that space. And I don't owe an explanation or a justification to anyone.
- Carlee
And I think, like we were talking before like in the studio, like pre-show about how like this also can come down to. First of all, it's the space. Like, I feel like at the end of the day, it's like it's the space. And we were talking about how, you know, like, OK, you get your you write your to do list, you keep your to do list. And that's great. But like you, the space is the most important space for you on it is the most important thing.
- Danielle
Absolutely. Because you know what? Like, sometimes you're just going to have to say no to people and you might have to disappoint them. But you know what? That's way better than disappointing yourself all the time.
- Carlee
Yeah, for real. So we want to know, just from those of you who are listening at home, like, how do you like how have you in the past created a practice where you're making choices to put yourself first? And has. Have they worked? Have they not? We're curious so just comment below. Let us know. And at this point, you're probably wondering why we're so hype about being selfish and aside from the obvious, right? It's important to put yourself first. Take care of yourself. I've co-founded a conference called Selfish Philly and Danielle Mercurio is our MC. So we are so freaking excited about it! It is going to be such a freaking good day. We're gonna have amazing content, free facials, free massages, Philadelphia's best wellness resources and speakers and the whole nine yards at the event. We will be talking about what it means to be selfish across the board. And I'm not just talking about the easy stuff either. We're gonna be real. We're going to be talking about money. We're gonna be talking about pleasure. We're gonna be talking about some of the most difficult things that those barriers. Right. We're talking about that earlier in the show, the barriers, being realistic about putting ourselves first. So it is gonna be one of the biggest wellness events in Philadelphia that Philadelphia has seen of the year. So to find more information, make sure you click the link in our description or if you're watching on Instagram, the link in our bio. Now, thank you. I want to give Danielle Mercurio one last big virtual hug. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
- Danielle
Of course. Thank you. I'm so excited for Selfish Philly!
- Carlee
It's gonna be amazing. So this concludes this episode of The Stress Less Show, if you've enjoyed this week's episode. Let us know by giving us a big old thumbs up and hitting that follow or subscribe button. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next week.