Episode 3: 5 Must Know Daily Habits with Essential Oils

Hi, my name's Katie McGiven. I am a Wellness Advocate with doTERRA. I'm also a wife and a mom to four. My oldest is 15 and my youngest is 1, so we have about every age group within our home. I'm also a registered nurse. I've been a nurse for 18 years and I've been a Wellness Advocate for doTERRA for the past six. I love advocating wellness and also teaching people how to use essential oils as another tool for their health. One of my favorite quotes is from Whole Living and it's, "While you can't shut out illness entirely, you can make your body a place where health thrives." 

 

 

Today, I'm going to be talking about habits, five must-know habits that are really going to improve your overall wellness. These habits that I'm going to present are habits that are really going to have an impact on your health for the good. 

 

One of my favorite tools for creating habits or improving habits is this book and it's written by Gretchen Rubin. It's called, Better Than Before, Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives. What she does is she approaches habits as not a one size fits all. She has four different tendencies and you can take a free quiz online and you can determine your approach to expectations and habits and then she also gives you free tips. So this is a free online resource. It's really important what we do on a daily basis to have the biggest impact on our overall health. 

 

 

The first habit that I want to present is positive mindset. Our mindset is what fuels the rest of our habits and has a huge impact on our entire health, our mind, our body and our emotions. Research shows that those who experience frequent, positive emotions are not only healthier, but they also live longer lives. 

 

One thing that I've done this past year that's really helped me with my mindset is affirmations. So if you don't know a lot about affirmations, it's basically self-talk, it's how you're talking to yourself, and it's kind of like a mini meditation session. Basically, you're affirming to your mind and also your feelings how you want to act or how you want to feel that day. It's the “I am” statements, and they're very powerful. Something that I do that has helped me create this habit is just to have a journal. I happen to use the Five Minute Journal; it's my favorite, because let's be honest, we all have five minutes. In part of that, there's a space where I can put my affirmation for the day. And some of my favorite affirmations are things like “I am enough.” I have four kids, and so I'm constantly trying to have more patience and so I tell myself, “I am patient, I am loving, I am trying, I am unstoppable.” Those are some of my favorite affirmations.

 

I like to combine them with aromatherapy. As you know, our memory is strongly associated with smell and so we can use this to our advantage. If we combine aromatherapy with our affirmations, then when we do that affirmation later in the day, or even next day, it's going to help us remember what we said and also bring back those feelings of that particular affirmation. 

 

Some of the oils that I like to use, my favorite is Balance, because it's a very grounding blend and I just love the aroma. And lately, I've been combining it with Neroli. This is really good for your nervous system and it just smells really good together, so you should try it out if you have it. I also love Peppermint and Wild Orange. This is great to use in the morning because it's going to help wake you up. And then, in the afternoon, around 3:00 when you have that afternoon slump, it's just going to help be an awesome pick-me-up. This happens to be Emily Wright's favorite combo for a diffuser blend, so you can also use it in the diffuser. A couple others that I like are Motivate and Cheer and that just really helps me to start my day and start me off on the right foot.

 

 

All right, so our second must-have daily habit is improved relationships. And you might be wondering, “how do relationships have anything to do with our overall health and how can I use oils to improve my relationships?” Research shows that social support is as predictable for our health as obesity, high blood pressure, and smoking, which to me is mind-blowing. When I first heard this, I didn't believe it, but 20 years later, I do believe it, because I have seen a lot of different people in my lifetime and patients and how they respond and their health circumstances. It really is true that the better our relationships are, we're going to be not only healthier, but we're also going to be happier. 

 

I wanted to share with you this resource that I found on doterra.com. So if you go to doterra.com and you just put in the search bar “positive thinking,” it'll being up a bunch of different articles. I really liked this one. It quoted Sean Achor, which he has some awesome Ted Talks and interviews online that you can watch. But he's a happiness researcher and also a positive psychology expert. He recommends to improve our relationships that we send a two minute message every day, it can be a text message, an email, a phone call's even better, being in person is even that much more powerful or better, and that's going to help not only our overall happiness, but again, it's going to help with our wellness. Studies show that if you do this, it not only benefits the person who receives the message but also the person who sent it. 

 

You might be wondering, “how can I use oils to improve my relationships?” doTERRA actually has an emotional aromatherapy system that I love and I've used to improve my relationships. Some of those oils are Console, Passion, Forgive, and Peace. A couple years ago, I had a situation with a family member, it was actually my sister and I was pregnant, so my emotions were all over the place and we just, I needed to forgive her and she needed to forgive me. That week, I had decided to use the oil Forgive. Usually, I don't like the aroma of Forgive, but it really helped me through a tough situation and helped me mend that relationship. I've decided that you could combine the two of really taking relationship inventory and using essential oils or these particular blends to help you improve your relationships. I also use these oils with my kids. So if they're not getting along, which I know is totally shocking that they wouldn't get along, but I send them to their room and then sometimes I'll even send in some oils and I'll say, figure out which one you need and then when you're ready to come out and be around other people and be nice, then you can come back and be around everyone. 

 

 

All right, our third must-know daily habit is sleep. All of us can improve on this, I know. A third of those in the United States don't get enough sleep. We're supposed to get seven or eight hours of sleep and this is going to help our entire body function better. It helps us to restore and rejuvenate while we're asleep. We're going to have more clarity, our body is going to function better. 

 

I found this resource on doterra.com. It's all about sleep, it's an ebook. So if you go to doterra.com and go to the search bar and just put in sleep ebook, it's going to bring this up, and it has all kinds of information as far as tips and hygiene for sleep and then also essential oils that you can use for sleep. If you are struggling to get quality sleep or enough sleep, make sure that you look at this ebook. It's a great resource. 

 

Last year, I had a newborn in the house and I knew that I didn't have time to not be well. One thing that I really tried to do was get enough sleep. In the past, with my older kids, I would stay up and clean, and do things that really didn't matter. With a newborn, you don't always get a lot of sleep at night, but I always made sure that I snuck a nap in if I could or I had a family member watch the baby so that I could sleep and I was able to stay healthy all year long. 

 

Then, I like to put oils on my feet at night right before I hop into bed. And lately, I've been using Magnolia. This is a very calming oil. It has a high Linalool content. Linalool actually helps you to relax and helps to improve the sleep that you're getting. I'll put that on. Then I'll put on some body butter. This has Wild Orange and Douglas Fir and Frankincense. It smells amazing and then it's the actual base of the body butter, is very nourishing to the skin, and so it really helps your feet this time of year when the weather is dry. I follow it up with some of those comfy socks and of course, I chose purple for doTERRA today. 

 

I also like to use On Guard on the bottoms of my feet. I don't know if you've seen this topper for the Fractionated Coconut Oil, but it makes it really convenient. It's a pump that you can actually buy on doTERRA's website. You can just tack it on to your order. I'll do one or two pumps of the fractionated coconut oil and one or two drops of the On Guard and just massage that into my feet occasionally, if I know that I need an extra immunity boost or if I know I need to be protected from any seasonal threats. I also like to use it on my little guy. I have a one-year old in the house and I'll just put this on his feet at night, especially when seasonal threats are high, to help keep him healthy.

 

 

The next habit that I want to talk about isn't going to be very popular, but it's true. If you can reduce or even eliminate your sugar intake, you're going to be a lot healthier and experience more wellness. 

 

As a nurse, I've seen a lot of people with type II diabetes. It's actually on the rise. Children are getting type II diabetes, so if you can reduce your sugar intake or even eliminate it altogether, you're going to reduce your risk for type II diabetes, you're going to reduce you risk for obesity or even being overweight, and that has its own concerns in itself. You're also going to reduce inflammation and I don't know if you know this, but inflammation is the root of most chronic illnesses. You're also going to improve your immune system. All these things are important to be as healthy as possible. 

 

Just so you know, I am actually a recovering sugar addict. This last year, I've been able to lose 45 pounds, and 30 of those pounds came from eliminating sugar altogether. I want to share with you the most helpful things for me for creating this habit that has really improved my overall health. Since I have done this, my mind is more clear, I have more energy, I have less mood swings, and I've also been able to go shopping for some new clothes because I've lost some weight. But one of the most helpful things for me is to have a support group. We talked about how social support is really important. This helped keep me accountable, and I'll actually text some of my friends who are doing the same thing every single day and let them know what my plan is for the day and then I check in at night and just let them know how the day went. Then, I've also incorporated affirmations like I talked about, and I also have been trying to get better sleep because that really helps. Then, I've also been using some different oils. 

 

One of my favorite is this Cinnamon oil spray. This helps me with my cravings and it also is great for your metabolism. So what I do, I just filled it mostly to the top and then one to two drops. Cinnamon is very, very potent, so a little bit goes a long way. It's also a hot oil, so you want to make sure that you dilute it plenty, so that's plenty of dilution. And then, I'll just spritz it in my mouth like that and it's really good for your oral health, it's very cleansing and purifying. It also helps soothe your throat if you need that as well and then it just helps freshen you breath. 

Another one that I found really helpful is Slim & Sassy. This also helps curb your sugar cravings or your appetite. I use this one at night quite a bit, just under my tongue, like one to two drops. Then another one that I like to use is Peppermint and I'll just do one drop under my tongue. This is really powerful and so, if you've never used it, just be prepared that you're going to have a major wakeup call and you'll also, it'll open up your sinuses as well. It's so powerful that for me, it redirects my thoughts, and I think about something else besides food, and it just really helps curb my appetite. 

 

 

The last habit that I want to talk about is exercise. Something that you want to keep in mind with exercising is that everyone is different. You want to do what feels right to you and if you need to talk to your doctor, make sure that you do that. If you're not the type of person that wants to get up at 5:00 A.M. and go to a boot camp class, like me, I would never do that, you want to pick an activity that you're going to do over the long haul. So for me, I'd much rather go on a walk with a friend or go hiking or do some stretching, yoga. But choose something that you can see yourself doing long term. 

 

And if you haven't been exercising, make sure that you break into is slowly. A few oils that can be really helpful is Deep Blue rub, or Deep Blue. This oil really helps to soothe the joints. Then I also love using Aroma Touch. Then, one of our favorites is Frankincense. This really is powerful for a health inflammatory response and just really helps the soothing process also. 

 

 

I want to end with one of my favorite quotes and it comes from Gandhi, and he says, "It is health that is real wealth, not pieces of silver and gold." I want to challenge you to just use one of the habits that I've talked about today and use some of the tips and the oils that I've suggested. But take action and start somewhere and just remember that it's progress not perfection.