how to build a foundation, the #selflove100

welcome to the first official episode of the self-love archives.

in this episode, we're putting one foot in front of the other, and building a sturdy foundation that's going to help us flourish.

so many good things in the show notes:
download the #selflove100 challenge, a guide to loving yourself more here, and make sure to sign up for the self-love archives newsletter officially launching in september.

the easiest way to find out your birth chart and your rising sign (use whole sign):
https://chart.chaninicholas.com/

if you're a beginner to astrology, and want to learn more read: you were born for this  by chani nicholas and others i've shared here: https://amzn.to/3qFKCiV

a reminder: you are beautiful 

connect with julia on instagram @beautybyjulia + tik tok @juliasalvia

unlock more archive content on instagram @theselflovearchive + tik tok @theselflovearchives

sign up for the self-love archives newsletter: www.theselflovearchives.com

Transcript

julia salvia: 0:00

I'm sure you find yourself asking this question so many times. Why is it that every time I try to start something, do something, or be something, it all crumbles? It's like this never ending circle that you can't get out of. But let me ask you this. What would happen... If you furnished a home, painted the walls and decorated, but the foundation of that home wasn't sturdy? The house would eventually crumble. And if you keep building a house on top of a broken foundation, it will continue to fall over and over again. We are our own home. And in order to love and continue to love that home, we need to make sure that we're creating a good foundation. And in today's episode, that's exactly what we're going to be talking about. Welcome to the Self Love Archives. I'm your host, Julia Salvia, and if you are new or you are just joining us, thank you so much for being here. I'm your new bestie, the big sister that you've always needed and your self love guide, and I'm going to show you how to love yourself more. This was the story of my life. Always feeling like I'm in this never ending loop. I'm doing all these things. I'm... integrating all of these amazing things into my life, and it just continuously crumbles at some point. And I keep asking myself, what is wrong? Why does this keep happening? The word foundation kept showing up in conversations and sessions. Like I was in a Reiki, chakra, sound bowl, and crystal session all at separate times and the word foundation came up. It came up in conversations with other people when me and friends are just catching up on our lives. When I was in an astrology session when I'm reading a book or choosing to pick up a book or listening in on something, like the word foundation just kept popping up and The psychology behind it all, was the word foundation continuously literally popping up? Maybe. Maybe not. But every time it did, it was setting off this like light bulb in me. And I told you guys, when that happens for me, my intuition being like, Woo! Hey girl, pay attention because this is what you need to know right now. So it only makes sense that we... would start the official, first episode with foundation and talking about how to build and create a foundation, but most especially how to find out what that means to you and how you define foundation and what you need in order to create your foundation because there are different foundations for different things. And I would assume that would mean that there are different foundations for different people. We all need different things in order to thrive and in order to flourish. The word foundation, too, is actually kind of funny because if you knew me as a beauty creator, January, by the way, will be 12 years of being a creator in general, which is absolutely insane to me. Foundation, obviously, is the base. of our makeup. But there's other things that... That, you know, come after that. That we need to build and create the makeup or the roots that we need in the soil in order to grow the flower, the plant. You get, you get what I'm saying. So in order to build something, and allow something to grow, we need a foundation. We need to build this foundation. And it needs to be a good one, it needs to be a sturdy one. We need to know what's in it. what it's being built with. So I think it's, I think it's overall just so interesting how for the longest time when I thought of the word foundation, I'm thinking about the makeup I'm using on my face. I'm thinking about my foundation Fridays. I'm thinking about reviewing a foundation. I'm thinking about makeup, but now, every single time the word foundation came up, in the past couple of months for me, it really meant something completely different, other than makeup. I mention the roots of a plant, or its foundation, in order to help it grow. In the past couple of weeks, I was learning a little bit more about chakras. And it's something new, new for me. I'm not too too familiar with it just yet. But what I do know about chakras is that the very first chakra, the base chakra, is the root chakra. And when I came across this in... The conversations and sessions, I was in hearing that word foundation and base and kind of just defining that first initial step, like conquering the root chakras the first thing in healing and conquering all of your chakras. And I was like, well, that's not really a surprise. That makes so much sense. In the same way that it makes sense that you have to build the foundation of a house before building the rest of the house. I actually have right here a couple of, crystals that are representative of the root chakra, or the foundation. And I have them here to inspire me a little bit more in regards to this episode. Because I will say, building a foundation is not something that comes easy to me. And I want to mention that to you because if you really relate to the preface of this episode of feeling like you're in this never ending circle, this could also be you. Building a foundation could also be something for you that's just so difficult. to do. It sounds like it's the most simple thing in the entire world, right? But you're just like, no, I want to get to everything else. I want to get to step two. I want to get to decorating the house. I want to pick out the marble and the floors and I want to do everything else except for the foundation. I don't want to build it. I don't want to do it. But when I tell you that if we can figure it out, if I can help you figure out what your foundation is and we can focus and you can focus on that. More. Everything else is going to come so much easier for you. And you're not going to see your growth crumble. We're not going to see ourselves as much going from step 50 and then falling back a million steps. We all know what that feels like. I know what that feels like. So let me ask you this. What does foundation mean to you? If we define foundation literally, it's the base of a home, it's the principle, it's the start. It felt aligning to start our self love journey together with an episode figuring out what our foundations are. Because it's the start of everything. It's the base. So what makes up your foundation? I want you to think about this for a second. Wherever you are, whether you're going on a silent walk or sitting down listening to this, take out your phone your notes app, a piece of paper, or make a mental list in your head. Totally up to you. And I want you to list out everything that makes up your foundation. And that could be what you need to have, what you need to be doing, what you need to be feeling, what you need to be practicing. For me initially, When answering this question. These things were like drinking water, going to the gym, having a clean home, getting my finances in order, having good relationships, eating healthy. Having a great morning routine, etc, etc, etc. I could go on and on, like the list was so big. And I want you to continue to make this list of everything that you think you need to have, or be doing, or practicing in order to have a great foundation. Be detailed. It's gonna help. So once you've created that list, and let's say it's like a page. It's fucking overwhelming. Right? You have this huge list of all of the things that you feel that you need to be doing or need to have or be practicing and it seems like it's so far away. Like it seems like it's impossible to have or be doing all of these things all at once. And you're right. It is. But all of those things that you listed are important to you. I want you to remember that. Because all of these things that you just listed are important. But take this into consideration. Your foundation is created and built with things that are in your control. So in that list, remove everything that you can't control. For me, that was having... Good relationships. Of course, there are things within that that I can control. I can set boundaries. I can be kind. I have some control. But relationships, besides the one with yourself, all relationships besides the one with yourself, take two people. And you're not in control of the other person. So anything that has to do with directly another person. I don't want you to necessarily remove it from the list, but I want you to kind of put it to the side. We want to focus on what the priorities are, what your priorities are, what your foundation is. This is about you. So now that you have this list, I want you to prioritize like two or three things, or put the entire list in a bunch of different priorities. If you're still having difficulty prioritizing two or three things from this list, I want you to take this into consideration as I read more and more into astrology. And how our birth charts worked, I felt like I was able to pinpoint and focus on exactly what makes up my foundation. It almost made it easier for me. It kind of clicked for me that if I'm ever overwhelmed, I mean you're talking to an overthinker right now, I overthink like nobody's business. I definitely have a multi potentialite personality and am someone who like to do a lot of things at once. And I know that already about myself. But astrology helped me focus on, two to three things. That's why I never simplify things down to one, because it's just never gonna be like that for me. So, if you wanna prioritize one thing, girl, by all means. Me? I just know it's not possible for me. I need two to three, and that is simplified for me. So as I was looking into this astrology for my birth chart, it essentially pinpointed what I need to be, have, and do in order to stay on my path. and flourish. Or what is going to help me find my way back to my path from a not so good place. And it kind of clicked as I was reading through and learning more about my birth chart. So if you're open to it, let's dive into that and let's figure it out like I'm an email. Or like I'm leading a class. Let's dive in. Let's dive into that and let's figure out what that is for you. So there's a really important part of our birth charts and that's our rising sign. You've definitely heard about this before. It's different from, not necessarily different, but it's different in regards to its meaning. You could have the same sun sign as your rising sign. So your sun sign is. You know, the day you were born and that makes you, for me, it makes me a Pisces because I was born on February 28th, or if you're born on September 1st, that makes you a Virgo, You could be a Pisces rising and a Pisces sun, but the rising sign has a different meaning and a different importance and value in your birth chart than your sun sign. And we're focused on the rising sign. If you don't know what your rising sign is or you don't know what your birth chart looks like As we dive into this a little bit more, I left a bunch of information in the show notes for you So you can go and figure it out. And I also want to mention this book that Helped me bring everything into perspective if you are a beginner to astrology, it is called You Were Born for This, Astrology for Radical Self Acceptance. It's by Chani Nicholas. It does such an amazing job at sharing what the planets, the houses, and the signs all mean. and connecting the dots for you. So when you know what your rising sign is, there's actually an even more telling connection to the rising sign. And that is your birth chart planetary ruler. Each of the signs, Virgo, Leo, Pisces, Gemini, Sagittarius, all have a planetary ruler. A planet that rules the sign. We're going to use my chart as an example. I am a Virgo rising. So Mercury rules Virgo. It also rules Gemini. But in this case, Mercury rules my rising sign, so I'm gonna look to where I have Mercury in my chart. And this could sit anywhere, in any house, in any sign, and it's important to note that you have 12 houses and you have all 12 signs in your chart. But your rising sign, according to Chani too, is the motivation for your life and the steer person of your ship. So this is kind of like, what is steering your life and to know the planetary ruler is so important so that you could pinpoint where it Sits and then kind of figure that out. So I have Mercury in Aquarius which is the sixth house of health wellness and routines. If I look back on moments in my life where I'm flourishing. I'm on the right path. Everything is great. Those things are usually going really well for me I'm doing things that are purposeful to me. So, when I'm flourishing... All of those things are in place. I'm practicing my wellness, I'm taking care of my health, and my routines are routining. Now, when I'm not flourishing, all of those things are shit. All of those things are not in a good place. My routines aren't great, I'm waking up at all different times of the day, I'm not taking care of my health, and I'm... not in a good place. But when I'm pulling myself out of a funk all of those things, health, wellness, routines, and a little bit of work, all of those things are what gets me back on track. These are all of the first initial things that I implement in order to get back on the right path. to be in a good place. In order to flourish. So I wasn't looking into astrology to specifically find this. I wasn't reading into it because I wanted to find something that was going to help me with my foundation or my routines or anything like that. I was just reading and it was like a missing puzzle piece that I just wasn't getting. And as I mentioned to you before, all of the things that I initially wrote out for myself that I thought made up my foundation. Half of them, or most of them, actually have to do with this house, or with this importance of this house, of health, wellness, and routines. I'll give you another example. So, if you have a Taurus or a Libra rising, your chart is ruled by Venus. And let's say your Venus falls into the fourth house. The fourth house is of home and family, and that's kind of however you define what that means for you. But if you have a Taurus or Libra rising, and your Venus falls into the fourth house because that's the ruler of your chart, the fourth house means home and family. So your foundation is going to be Maybe a clean home, or a great environment, being surrounded by family. It's going to be very focused on the house that that planetary ruler sits in. Or if we say that maybe the Venus sits in the ninth house, which is of education, learning, travel, those three things are your foundation. So, maybe reading is something that's super important to you, or learning more, or traveling more. Those are foundations of your life that can help you flourish in all of the other areas of your life. Think of it like that. So for me, if I'm doing health, wellness, and routines really well, I feel as though I'm able to conquer and flourish in all of the other areas of my life. If you're open to it, if you're open to astrology and you have a willingness to learn about it a little bit more, this is the way that it can help you figure out what your foundations are. Especially if your list isn't that large, or you're not sure where to focus, or you feel overwhelmed by the list that you created, or you don't know where to prioritize. This can be a really great tool to help you understand where you should start on your self love journey. So, I put a tarot card actually in the book to hold the page. Cause I'm going to list out all of the planetary rulers. But I wanna read the tarot card., and this is actually so funny. It's not even a tarot card, it's, it's a card from the deck if you take anything from this podcast, take this with you. It says, You are a badass being, full of life, love, and possibilities. Through this deck, may you find a path to your best self. I love that. If that isn't so aligning, I love that so much. And it's red, which is the color of the root chakra. crazy. Crazy, crazy. Okay, so I'm gonna list out all of the planetary rulers for you. So listen for your rising sign and the planet that rules that rising sign and then go into your own chart and look for where that planet is. And I kind of want you to focus on the house that it sits in. So there's house 1 through 12. And like I said, in the show notes, All the information is there to figure out your birth chart and I give you a really easy one so that you can pinpoint where your planetary ruler is, and you can look up what the house means and that will give you kind of some direction if you are using this astrology to help you. So, Aries and Scorpio. Their planetary ruler is Mars. Taurus and Libra, planetary ruler is Venus. Gemini and Virgo, the planetary ruler is Mercury. Cancer's planetary ruler is the Moon. Leo's planetary ruler is the Sun. Sagittarius and Pisces ruler is Jupiter. And the ruler of Capricorn and Aquarius is Saturn. So, as I said. I don't want you to necessarily simplify or delete anything off of this list that you made. I never want you to put yourself in a box. But I want you to pick... Two or three to start. The saying that I always come back to whenever I'm feeling anxious or overwhelmed or just not living in the present and overthinking absolutely everything is one step at a time. Every time I say it, I think about this one song that was on ABC Family, Christmas Time. Christmas! We're almost in fall season, by the way. So excited. If you know me, you know I love Halloween, so. Anyways, it's a Christmas movie it's such an old movie and Chris Kringle's in the forest and I think he runs into Jack Frost they're in the forest and if you know what movie I'm talking about or referring to, he's trying to help the old man to walk and get out of the forest. And it's just this very positive moment. And he sings the song one foot in front of the other. That's exactly what plays in my head every time I say, one step at a time. But I think that one step at a time is such an important thing to remember and to say to ourselves. So when I was trying to create better routines and habits in my life, I start small, one thing at a time. When I'm pulling myself out of a bad place, I'm talking really bad. I'm doing absolutely nothing. Like, I'm sleeping all the time. I'm barely eating. Every time I've been in that depression, the first thing that I start with are so simple and so easy. It's brushing my teeth and making my bed And those seem like the smallest things that I could do to start putting one foot in front of the other. To start doing one thing at a time. I think sometimes we overthink so much and we are so overwhelmed with the world or our thoughts or our feelings that we almost paralyze ourselves where we can't move forward. So I start small. It's that one thing, one small step at a time mentality. I came across this challenge called the 75 hard. The premise of the challenge is that you follow all of these, things that you need to do daily and I think some of them are great. It's, you know, 45 minutes outside, drinking a gallon of water, taking a progress picture of yourself, going on a diet, any diet reading 10 pages of a book, And if you didn't do one of those daily, you needed to start over at day one. That was the catch. You needed to start at day one. I've tried the 75 hard two or three times. I think I got to day 40, I got to day 30, and there was something about the 75 hard that wasn't clicking for me. It's very much based in discipline, which I think is a great thing. I think we all need discipline. It's like the word foundation. Like, the word foundation doesn't really sound that exciting. The word discipline doesn't really sound that exciting. It's... It's very Saturnal, very Saturn it's very masculine, and coming from me as someone who struggles with those things, I wanted to push myself to see if I was able to complete this challenge. And something about this challenge didn't stick. but I enjoyed. and appreciated everything that this challenge had me doing daily. I had to kind of ask myself, well, why? Why aren't these things sticking? Is it because I don't have good discipline? What is wrong here? We needed a different challenge. We needed a challenge that pushed us and created discipline in the same way that this challenge wanted us to create more discipline in our lives, but in this way that was realistic and doable and that was kind to ourselves and our mind and our bodies. So I started to do things that made me feel better, things that also pushed me to be better. But also, took into consideration things like my life, my emotional well being, my healing, and even my psychology and my cycle as a woman. I realized that I actually, in my calendar, was writing all of these things down and kind of crossing them off every single day that I would do them. But I wasn't being hard on myself at the end of the day. If I drank... You know, nine glasses of water instead of ten, or if I only read a chapter of a book rather than two chapters. Like, I wasn't being hard on myself about those little things. I was paying attention more to the consistency of it all. And choosing to do all of these things for myself. Because I knew that they were going to... be good for me. That's when I came up with the Self Love 100, and it became this foundation. The Self Love 100 became this foundation of loving myself more. You've heard me say this before, Self Love is a journey, not a destination. And the Self Love 100 is the premise of that. We're going on a journey of doing these things in order to help us love ourselves more. Now, this challenge was definitely created with the inspiration of what's good and what needs to be fixed about the 75 hard. But also, what I feel can help all of us. So I've kept the daily practices while specific, also pretty general so that you can replace them with whatever foundationally is better for your well being. The daily practices for the Self Love 100 include drinking a gallon of water a day. Our bodies are made up of like 70 75% of water. Why wouldn't you fuel your body with what it's made of? The second thing is nourish and fuel. I don't think that we need to go on the next fad diet. No, I know we don't need to go on the next fad diet. And for someone who has a lot of trauma behind how and what I'm fueling my body with, the word diet is just not It ain't it. It ain't it, sis. We're, we're not going on a diet. I want you to nourish and fuel your body in the best way that you know how to. The third thing is take a picture. As a creator, this one comes really easy to me, because I take pictures and videos all the time, every day. But I know that this may be A little pain point for some people but I'm not asking for you to take a picture and share it with the world I want you to take a picture for yourself because it's so much easier to see your progress when you have something to look back on And it's kind of like that thing where, you know, we're looking in the mirror and talking to ourselves. I want you to see yourself. It can be such an uncomfortable thing to truly see ourselves, but it's a beautiful and inspiring thing. It's a transformational thing to look back at a picture of yourself seeing how you've changed. And I'm not talking about how you've changed in regards to your weight or your hair or what you physically look like. I'm talking about the energy and how your energy has changed. And that's why I want you to take a picture. And if you want to do a video, if you want to take a Polaroid, I think that would be so cute. I want you to see and be proud of what you see when you see how your energy has changed and how it's shifted in this challenge. Number four. Journal. There is nothing better than having something to look back at. Like pictures, right? I love being able to see the topics that I used to write about in my old diaries or the notes that I used to take in my notes app. All of those things help us work through our thoughts what's going on in our heads, remind us of things. If you want to create this video journal, like vlogging every single day. I think that's a beautiful way to go about this challenge too. And that's how you'll see me also go about this challenge. Cause I am restarting it with you. You can physically journal, like write in a notebook or a literal diary. I want you to get excited about writing about your life and about your thoughts, positive or negative, whatever they are. It's just for you. The fifth thing, one hour of activity. Anything that gets your body moving. And if you want to start, which we'll talk about this start with 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever's doable for you. And that could be walking, yoga, working out, it could be stretching, it could be anything that you want. Get your body moving. It could be dancing. Number six, rest and recharge. Because at the end of the day, Your phone's going to die and you need to put it on the charger to charge it. And if you don't, it's going to be dead. And the same thing goes for you. If we don't rest and recharge, we can't show up. We can't be 100% ourselves. And I want you to be able to show up. I want you to be able to have energy. So whatever rest and recharge means for you, I want you to do that. Number 7 is spend time with yourself. Whatever it means to you. This spending time with yourself could be that moment that you take to journal. It could be meditating. It could be going for a walk and just being within yourself. Spend time with yourself without any distractions, with no music, not listening to a podcast or a book. Just being within yourself, being comfortable with just being with yourself. For me, this looks like my silent walks, which is when I go on a walk and I listen to nothing. I usually put my headphones in I think just as like, a just in case. I want to listen to a podcast or music and what actually always ends up happening for me is that I don't listen to anything. I start just thinking to myself. And I'll actually sometimes journal during this moment too. So, I'm getting like three things in. That, half hour to an hour. I'm walking, so I'm getting my activity in. I'm journaling, because I'm voicing into my notes app to myself. And I'm spending time with myself. The next one is affirmations. These can come in the form of writing down what you're grateful for. Talking to yourself in the mirror. It can also come in the form of journaling. Telling yourself that you are beautiful, you are capable, you are enough, you are worthy. Giving yourself like that little pep talk. Because all of those things that I just said are so true. You are worthy. You are more than enough. You're beautiful. You are stunning. and it would be a shame to not remind yourself of that every single day. Those are the eight daily practices of the Self Love 100. The Self Love 100 is meant to be a guide more than it is a challenge. It's a guide of daily practices to help you love yourself more. To help you build on the foundation of you. I want this to be a challenge. That guides you along the journey one step at a time to be the best version of yourself I'm sure that I'll talk about and share more about the self love 100 in my own vlogs about the challenge, I created a 100 day calendar for you so that you could follow along. You can sign up for the Self Love Archives newsletter in the show notes, so make sure to also check that out. There's so many good things in the show notes today, so many good things, so please make sure to check that out so that you can download your own copy of the Self Love 100 Challenge. So now that you know your foundation, Now that you know, what is going to help you flourish, what you're going to be able to fall back on when things get tough, I want you to focus on it for the next week. Use the Self Love 100 or just be more self aware of implementing these pieces that create your foundation and see how you feel. We have currently entered Virgo season, which as a Virgo rising we are in my season. Love it! But we are also in a Virgo Mercury retrograde and that is nothing to fear. Do not fret I think that retrogrades are really lovely time to Review and look over your life, and especially because this is a Virgo Mercury Retrograde during Virgo season, the one thing that I want you to remember that I will leave you with is that perfection does not exist. We do not need and we are not trying to strive for perfection. What I want you to strive for is loving yourself just a little bit more today, and a little bit more tomorrow, and a little bit more the next day. Thank you so much for tuning in to the self love archives podcast. I appreciate you to the moon and back and I will see you here, same time, next Sunday. Bye.