SDS 288: Love Yourself

Kirill: Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast everybody. I’ve got Hadelin de Ponteves my business partner from Bluelife AI here with me today.

Hadelin: Hi Guys. How’s it going? I’m so excited to be here on the show.

Kirill: Yeah, this is what like our fifth episode or sixth even. I think it’s our sixth episode in the series with Hadelin.

Hadelin: Yeah. And each time I loved it.

Kirill: Awesome. So if you are not familiar with us by this stage, not a problem. We have lots of courses which have been taken by many students worldwide and also

Hadelin: we have this business Bluelife AI, which is a company that empowers other companies to make massive profits and optimize efficiency by leveraging artificial intelligence at no upfront cost.

Kirill: That’s what we are all about. And today we are talking about loving yourself.

Hadelin: Absolutely. Very, very important. You must respect yourself and love yourself, well in this society today.

Kirill: Exactly. And you said you had a lot to say, so maybe let’s get started with that.

Hadelin: Yes. Well, very simply, the first thing I do is that, I take care of myself. I respect myself. I love myself without being, you know, arrogant. There is a difference between loving yourself and being arrogant like, to self centered. Is that how you call it?

Kirill: Selfish, self centered, egoistic.

Hadelin: And how do I do this? Well, very simply, for example, I eat healthy food because I respect my body. I do physical activities because I know it’s good for my body. I also do intellectual activities because I know it’s good for my brain. I practice gratitude because I know it’s good for my brain as well. So, basically I do all these activities, all these good practices that are healthy, not only for your body, but also for your mind. And that’s super important.

Kirill: That is fantastic. I love it. And you need to take an effort to do it. And the way we came up with episode yesterday. What did we do yesterday in the morning?

Hadelin: What did we do yesterday in the morning?

Kirill: With the masks.

Hadelin: Oh, yes. Oh wow. So yesterday we did a very weird thing in the morning. We put some kind of a mask, right? It was the first time I did that and it was one of the first times you did it because you’ve got this from the haircut. But yes, we put some kind of a black mask and we had to leave it on the face for 30 minutes. At some point it was horrible because it was drying so much. And then after 30 minutes we naturally removed it.

Kirill: It’s called a peel off mask. So it’s a face mask, but it’s a peel off mask. So it dries up and then you can just peel it off in one go. 

Hadelin: If you guys saw American Psycho, this is the exact same mask as in American Psycho. I thought this was only happening in the movies like this one. But no, this thing is real. And this is so weird.

Kirill: Oh yeah, you did even a little video with the quote from American Psycho?

Hadelin: Oh yes. Because, I did some theater before. I took some theater lessons and I knew the script I was practicing on this one.

Kirill: It was very cool. And so the reason why we did that, it’s like, we’re like, oh cool. Well, I had this thing that I bought at a barber shop once and wanted to see how that’s going to… And it was good for our skin, right?

Hadelin: Right. After this we felt rejuvenated like a brand new baby skin.

Kirill: Yeah. That’s just like one of the examples of consciously taking care of yourself, not that you have to do face masks all the time or that we do face masks all the time, once in a while I guess is a good thing. But there’s other ways, you know, like Hadelin said eating healthy, doing mind activities, respecting your body.

Hadelin: Yes. I’ve forgot meditation. I also meditate and this is really, really healthy for your brain and mind.

Kirill: It was interesting what Mitja was telling you about meditation.

Hadelin: Oh yes, Mitja is one of our…

Kirill: Is our company psychologist.

Hadelin: Yes, is our company psychologist. And he said something very interesting, which was the first time I heard this because I heard many theories about meditation. I know the different styles of meditation, but this one was very new to me and it was very interesting. So this is about just being focused on what you’re doing all the time. If you’re brushing your teeth, you have to be focused on the fact that you’re brushing your teeth, how you brush them and think about nothing else. Well you want to give another example? 

Kirill: Yeah. What was, what were we doing yesterday?

Hadelin: While we were playing board games.

Kirill: While we’re playing board games, like focusing on the board game or like when you’re eating food, like focusing on the food. Oh that example he had. He gave you like you were drinking a tea or was it water?

Hadelin: He was actually cooking and he focused only on the cooking, which is why he made some awesome dishes.

Kirill: But remember you were sitting at the table and he’s like “take this glass of water, drink it, and just think only about the glass of water”.

Hadelin: And it was actually very hard because some other thoughts occurred.

Kirill: Mhm, mhm, yeah. So meditation is a, is a one of them. It’s a very big one because we tend to fall victim to our minds and they start to control us rather than the other way around. What else do we have in terms of taking self care? We already mentioned food, exercise, mind, meditation.

Hadelin: Intellectual feeding like reading, it’s really good to read.

Kirill: Connecting with nature.

Hadelin: Yeah. That’s a good one. Disconnecting from social media.

Kirill: We already talked about that. I never understood hiking before. I thought like, what’s the point?

Hadelin: Oh, the point of hiking is to clear your head.

Kirill: Exactly.

Hadelin: That’s so good. Like, when you work really, really hard or have very, very intense days, well, the best way to clear your head is to hike or to drive. I love driving also. I can just drive anywhere, you know, in any direction. And this clears my head. Or go to the beach and see the sunset. This clears my head. So, yeah, this is a very good other advice to clear your head with any practices you prefer. And the next morning you just feel rejuvenated, but on a psychological level.

Kirill: And it doesn’t take long. Right? Instead of in the evening watching a movie or a YouTube video, go to bed early, wake up an hour earlier, go for a walk. It’s so nice and peaceful in the morning. How often do you take care of yourself?

Hadelin: Every day.

Kirill: Every day?

Hadelin: Oh yes, every day. Was it always like this?

Hadelin: Yes, yes. I’m grateful for this actually. For some reason I always felt the need to take care of myself. There are of course, some moments when you do exceptions, you have your guilty pleasures. Like for example, I could very well, take a very non-healthy pizza with my friends, but this is still healthy actually. You know why? Because you enjoy the moment you love with your friends, you are aware that is, it is a fantastic moment you are sharing with your loved ones. And so, this is still healthy actually.

Kirill: That’s very true. Like when you want to be super healthy and for instance, you eat super healthy and if you restrict yourself from any things that becomes unhealthy psychologically.

Hadelin: Absolutely because it is close to obsession. Obsession is not very good, when you want to put your habits to the extreme, that’s not very good because you’re kind of imprisoning yourself, and stopping you from being free to do the things you also want to do. Like, having a pizza with your friends. Of course you should not do that every day. I do it once a month or once every two weeks. And the reason if you keep being healthy the rest of the time, that’s totally fine and you get both. You get the healthy food and at the same time you get the fun and the pleasure.

Kirill: Healthy body and healthy mind.

Hadelin: Yes, absolutely.

Kirill: All right. So that’s, I think that’s some really interesting thoughts. For me it hasn’t always been like that. I, for some reason I think I’m more and less conscious of that and I’m more a victim of my own mind. It often takes over, especially when there’s like lots of projects or lots of deadlines, lots of work and so on. I can go for days without thinking about how am I taking care of myself, just doing things on autopilot. So if I have like good food on autopilot, alright, that’s good, but it’s not a conscious effort. And then I find that I start feeling more and more stressed and then all I have to do is actually remember that I need to slow down. And then if I start going for a walk every day or lying down on the sofa in front of a window when the sun is shining and reading a book, one of my favorite things, or taking a bath, another really cool thing. And once I start doing those, then I feel good again. And I’ve noticed with myself that over the years I’ve slowly, especially the past couple of years, I started getting better and better at making that conscious effort and I’ve started being happier.

Hadelin: Yeah. That, that’s so good. I’m so happy about this for you because I know you had these burnouts before and now you stop having them because you realize that you need to have a more balanced life between work and these things like clearing your head, going for a walk, hiking. And that’s much better for you. That’s much healthier.

Kirill: Mhm. Fantastic. Thanks man. So I guess what do we want to say to tell listeners who, I think if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re already in that group, like a group of people who already work hard. You want to succeed, even in your free time, you’re finding time to listen to this podcast, which is great. And hopefully you’re also taking care of yourself. But what if they’re not? What can they do, what first steps can they do?

Hadelin: Well, let’s just say that the most important step, the most important step is physical exercise. Because when you do physical exercise every day, everything is better. Your energy, your happiness, your mind, your relationship to others. Like everything goes better and somehow everything is connected better. So that’s the most important advice I want to give because, some people forget to do, to practice physical activities and, just like sports, even if it’s only 20 minutes swim per day, that’s amazing.

Kirill: Okay, fantastic. And from my side, I think I would say if I could pick one is going for walks. Just a simple walk without your phone. Something we talked about in one of the previous episodes. Leave your phone at home. Don’t listen to music, don’t take photos. Don’t be tempted with the social media, don’t even be tempted with the phone in your pocket. Just go for a walk and spend like 30 minutes in the morning preferably, when it’s not too hot, when the sun’s rising, the birds are chirping and you’ll feel so much better.

Hadelin: Very good.

Kirill: Awesome. All right. Thank you very much for tuning in to the SuperDataScience podcast, and we’ll see you next time.

Hadelin: See you next time.