Episode 93: Visibility, Self-Love, and Stepping into Your Future Self with Chef Carla Contreras

Podcast

Episode 93: Visibility, Self-Love, and Stepping into Your Future Self with Chef Carla Contreras as a guest on Dear Self with Love

"Visibility is not always easy for me despite being on two cooking TV shows including Chopped! on the Food Network." — Chef Carla Contreras

This week’s episode is a repost from my friend Jenna Knapp and her Dear Self With Love Substack. Real deal, this was not supposed to be a podcast. Jenna originally sent me a Google Form asking me to share my experience as a Dear Self With Love planner user. My intuition instantlywantedto respond to these questions, but instead of typing I connected my computer to my microphone, put my headphones on, and hit record (and let’s be honest, did a few practice sessions).

I knew I wanted to use my voice, in a big and bright way that shows you who I am, imperfections and all. Visibility is not always easy for me despite being on two cooking TV shows including Chopped! on the Food Network. My comfort zone lies in interviewing others. This time, I decided to try the other side of the mic and answer Jenna’s questions. As you will hear, this is more than just a planner. It is a way to approach life and offers a deep connection to Jenna and her community.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

What’s in This Episode:

Jenna first asks me to share more about what I do. As a Food Stylist, Content Strategist, and Podcast Host, I talked about how I support my clients to see content creation as a dream world — a space to play and invent. I teach them to listen to their tiny whispers that come from inside them vs. seeing me as a marketing guru telling them what they should do. In my opinion, content is really energy. If you've ever experienced someone telling you that they "love your energy," it's exactly that! Creating the channel for your unique energy to be expressed.

Jenna invites me to share my personal definition of self-love. For me, it's layered and nuanced. It encompasses things that I wouldn't have answered, even just a few months ago. It's loving ALL the parts of me, including those that aren't perfect, get it wrong, and are experiencing feelings like deep grief. It's accepting all those parts so that I can show up to work, to create content from the most honest place possible.

Jenna wraps up with a future-based question — "How are you supporting your future 2025 self currently?" Deciding to use my voice and get vulnerable with Jenna's community (and you) is how I'm taking care of my future self presently. Being visible is something that I teach my 1:1 content strategy clients, participants of The Content Retreat, and members of my new Confident Content Collective. Recording these responses was me leaning into my future self, stepping into a new chapter of my own visibility. Curious, tell me in the comments, how are you leaning into your future self, what does it look like to step into their shoes?

Topics Covered:

My definition of self-love and how it’s changing through a challenging season

What’s my definition of content and how it can support you and your dreams

My journey with the Dear Self With Love Planner over the past two years

My two favorite parts memorables (as a way to connect with my kids) and mirror affirmations

Using the planner as a practice to end my months and cast out my future self

Writing the year ahead letter as part of my practice and forgetting the “special place” I put it

We can’t wait to hear your thoughts about this episode. Leave a comment below!

Please tag me @chefcarlacontreras on Instagram so I can continue the conversation with you.

Eat Well,

xo Chef Carla

PS: If these ideas and concepts around creating content from an aligned place interest you. I invite to join us live online for the preview of opening day of The Content Retreat Saturday 9/21/24 and if it’s aligned join us for the full experience Sunday 9/22/24.

About Chef Carla Contreras

For the last 25 + years, I’ve worked as a trained chef in: Restaurants, hotels, as a chef instructor at three culinary schools, and personal chef in New York City.

Since 2013, I have been sharing my gift of content creation with publications and brands like Better Homes and Gardens, The Wall Street Journal, Shape Magazine, justBobbi.com, Nutritious Life, Well + Good.

In my personal brand, I not only show up for the hard things, I own them and then share them with the world, like my $38,000 lesson I learned in my business and evolution of a Digital Entrepreneur over the last ten years.

In my online courses, I bring my years of experience as a trained chef, content creator, health and life coach, and meditation teacher to help you with you shift mindset around cooking & the content creation process. Learn more here

Find + Work With Carla:

Online Courses & Books: Learn more here

Instagram: @chefcarlacontreras

Full Transcript:

Chef Carla Contreras is a food stylist, content strategist, and podcast host who has been using the Dear Self-Love Planner for the past two years. She defines self-love as deeply nourishing and caring for herself through practices like rest, movement, mindfulness, and hydration. The planner has supported Carla's self-love journey by providing prompts for reflection, connecting with the community, and opportunities to envision her future self. Her favorite sections include the mirror work and the "memorables" section for capturing daily joys and lessons. Carla has also participated in the Letter-to-Future-Self activity in 2023, she has yet to open the letter (it’s in a special place, she has yet to find it)! Carla has so much gratitude for using the Dear Self Planner. It has helped her deepen her self-love practices and connect with the supportive Dear Self Community.

Dear Self with Love Transcript 

Chef Carla Contreras  (00:00):

Hi, dear Self with Love community. I am so grateful to be here. My name is Chef Carla Contreras. I'm a food stylist, content strategist and podcast host. You can find me, chef Carla Contreras, across all social media platforms and nourishing creativity on Substack. This is such an incredible honor to be asked by the dear Self planner founder, Jenna Knapp, in order to speak about my experience with the planner over the last two years, and she sent me some questions and I'm like, I'm going to answer this via my voice so that you can hear my excitement, my joy, and the pure love that I have, not only for Jenna and the community, but for having this planner in my life and also having Jenna's Zoom calls and meditations and prompts in order to move me forward to my dream life. And I invite you to tune in to hear parts that may spark your journey, your dream life, your future self. 

(01:19)
So the first question is what do you do? Do you have a day job or a creative passion? And for me, yes, I told you I'm a food stylist. I'm also a content strategist. So what does that mean? I support people with their content. And what does that mean? Because content can sometimes feel like a dirty word, and content really is what you're listening to right now. It could be a podcast, it could be a newsletter, it could be a social media post. It could be a pin on Pinterest, it could be an article that you share on LinkedIn. It can be all of these things in any of these things. Content is a dream world. It's a place in space to play in order to share your message and your work and or dreams with the world. And I support people in helping that land with other people so that they can create community and connections. 

(02:26)
And I do this through one-on-one coaching, and also through my content retreat and the newest container that I have, the Confident Content Collective where we come together to have content retreats. And what does that mean? I support them with their content. And through the collective, there's also workshops. What is the practical day-to-day? How do you do it? How do you create a podcast? How do you start your substack? How do you create pins? What if you wanted to start posting consistently on LinkedIn? What does that look like? And also, there's other aspects of this because if you're listening to this podcast, perhaps you're interested in mindset work. Perhaps you're interested in wellness, perhaps you're interested in other forms that support shifting you into a different reality. And the content retreat and also the collective supports that type of work as well. There is so much to what I do in the world that could be an entire audio in itself. 

(03:45)
I'm also a mother of two. I live outside of New York City. My favorite movement practice is Pilates. I love sipping ceremonial cacao. I invite you to share who you are in the comments below. I shared with you my social media chef Carla Contreras. My website is carla contreras.com, and my substack is Nourishing Creativity, and that is about nourishing your creative process. What does it look like for you to nourish your creativity and what does that process look like? And that may be something different every single day that may be something different every single season of your life. And in my podcast, I interview creatives and entrepreneurs about their process, about how they nourish their creativity and also more importantly, how they move through creative blocks. The next question is, what color is your current planner? So this is actually my third planner. I had a gold and I had a blue last year, and this year I have, it's a reddish orange color and it's gorgeous. 

(05:09)
And I feel like I shared a picture of this on the Etsy store. So if you're curious of what that looks like, I also had a wildly successful giveaway with Jenna. It was on Instagram and 2021 (correction 2023) and we shared a reel together. And I feel like that reel had over 800 comments. It was wild and incredible. So you can check that out on it. How long have you been using the planner? Well, two years. How do you define self-love? I invite you to write this in the comments below. How do you define self-Love? For me, I feel like this is my question. How do you define creativity? This self-love prompt allows me to reflect on the fact that I put in so much effort, and I want to say that with intention, effort and care into taking care of myself. And I created a method. 

(06:19)
I had a podcast previous to Nourishing Creativity called Show Up Fully. And in that podcast I created a show up fully method. And there were actually two guiding principles that guided me since 2018 where I had a breakdown in my health. And for 2019, I chose the words rest and deep nourishment as my words of the year. I feel like in 2018, this was radical. I don't feel like we're sitting here in 2024 thinking that these words are radical. But during the year, I added the words rest, deep nourishment, movement, mindfulness and water. These are my five things that I do to take care of myself, to nourish myself. And this is how I define self-love is nourishing myself deeply, taking care of myself deeply. And that might look like going to bed at 8:00 PM with my children. That might look like making myself greens or a salad or a smoothie that might look like me canceling a meeting last minute because I really don't feel well and possibly have a migraine that might look like me showing up even though I have the migraine and really enjoying time with a friend. 

(08:04)
These are all things that are mostly free. And right now I can even feel it like self-love could be me pouring a glass of water because after I hop off this audio, this podcast, I'm going to pour myself a big cup of water. The next question is, where are you right now in your self-love journey? I am deeply in it. I am deeply exploring what it looks like to love myself, exactly how I am right now at this moment. And this includes being in deep grief. This includes all of the things that are happening in the world around me. This happens with me accepting my body, my age, my limitations, things that may be unseen, like my hearing loss in my right ear. It's loving all of those parts, even the things that I might not get right, things that I need to apologize for. 

(09:22)
It's loving the smile on my kid's face. It's really taking the time to sit down and have dinner with my family to close the laptop. These are all ways that I love myself. How has the dear Self-love Planner supported you on this journey? Oh my gosh. So this question is amazing because I love the end of month reflections, and Jenna recently has done them recorded, which I really love. I love the community aspect, but I also love the fact that I can put this on sit down with my planner and a journal. So let's be honest here. I like to write, (I use) a planner and a journal, and I like to be in the energy of what was the last month, what do I want to see in the future, and where do I want my future self to go? I think that there's a beautiful process here of honoring the past, the present in the future. 

(10:44)
So this is the biggest way that the planner has supported me. The next question is, what is your favorite prompt or section with the planner? Okay, if you haven't had the planner in your hands, I'm going to give you a walkthrough. So in the beginning, there's a big section on how you plan out your year. There's also these beautiful sections on mirror work, like what would you put on your bathroom mirror? And I'm going to invite you to pause and to think about this. What is something that you could look at every single day that would remind you of your magic, of your beauty, of the light that shines within you? And could you imagine seeing it on the mirror every single day? Another section that I really love equally as much is the memorables. And this section was started by Jenna's mom. When Jenna was little, her mom used to write these little notes like what was your memorable today? 

(11:56)
What did they want to remember? And I feel like I deeply connect with this because I have two small children and I really want to remember, take a snapshot of what was beautiful for that day. And sometimes it's what was messy that day? What do I want to remember? Because there are so many lessons and so many joys that are within our days, and how can we celebrate this? So I'm going to say we as a collective, as a community, how can we celebrate ourselves? And I'm going to invite you into this space, and maybe that's what you want to drop into the comments too. And I keep inviting you into the comments because I want this to be an experience where you and I are in community. We are having a conversation, we are talking to each other, and I feel like that is such a gift that is so special to me, and this is what this planner does as well. 

(13:09)
This isn't a section in this planner, but this planner brings people together. The next question is, what prompt or section surprised you the most? For me, it was the mirror work. The mirror work was a real surprise, but it also has become a favorite. And the next question is, have you ever participated in the beginning of the year activity where you write a letter to your future self? If so, have you experienced opening the letter? So for me, I have written the letter, and I did this at the beginning of 2024. I believe that's when we did it as a community with Jenna. But here's the thing, as I thought about this question, I'm like, I have no idea where I placed this letter because Jenna gave us the option to mail it to her, which she has a kit. She has a kit. And I've actually gifted this kit to people because I'm like, this idea is the coolest. 

(14:15)
And if you're not familiar with this concept, you write a letter to yourself one year from now, and literally you could do this today. It does not have to be on December 31st or January 1st. It can be any time. And it's really interesting how you literally write things into being, at least that's my perspective on it. So no, I haven't opened it and no, I have no idea where it is. So that's fascinating to me. The last question is, what's one way you're taking care of your future 2025 self? Currently, I'm doing that by being with you right now. I'm doing that by using my voice, by sharing my experience, because I rarely share my voice unless it's on my podcast, unless I am the host and here I'm on the other side doing something that I normally don't do, and that is leaning into my future self. I am so grateful that you are here, that you are listening, that you are with me, that you are part of the Dear Self with Love community, and I would love to connect with you, sending you so much love and many blessings.

Disclaimer: I am a professionally trained chef and certified holistic health coach; I am also Nutritious Life certified. I am not a nutritionist or RD. I am not a doctor or qualified healthcare professional.

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Always seek the counsel of a qualified medical practitioner or other healthcare providers for an individual consultation before making any significant changes to your diet and lifestyle or to answer questions about specific medical conditions.

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