Author and motivational speaker Lalah Delia (Vibrate Higher Daily: Live Your Power) is known for dropping nuggets of wisdom on the ’gram and in the bimonthly online classes she hosts that focus on transforming, structuring, and navigating life. Delia’s own journey to self-care and self-empowerment was spurred by a downward spiral that included suicide attempts and a brief time in jail. “I was turning up because I was expressing pain [and] I knew that I had to do the healing work to heal myself,” says the Los Angeles-based mother of two, who shares how she uses those core principles to navigate through her day.

Lalah Delia in various settings including reading, relaxing, and meditating PHOTO BY INDIA X

4-5 AM: I wake up early. My day can become so busy, so I like to spend quiet time where I’m just listening—in my relationship with the Most High—to say, ‘What do you have to say to me today? Let me just be present and slow down and listen.’

PHOTO BY INDIA X

9 AM: After I have my personal time, I get my 12-year-old son ready for home school. I create his schedule every morning and make sure that his day has a personal flow [and] that he has self-care time. My workday starts after in collaboration with my co-creative partner and co-creative director, my daughter. We’re creating content all day long; we’re editing content.

PHOTO BY INDIA X

1 PM: I have lunch and, throughout the day, there’s a lot of tea happening—herbal tea, herbal tonics, flower essences. My kitchen is a healing space for me—I call it a kitchen spa—so I have things in there that remind me of healing like affirmations, images that bring healing to me, books that mean healing or represent healing, even colors.

4 PM: We wrap up work and after that have free time, whether I want to listen to music, move my body or run to my favorite juice spot here. I just spend time inside and slow down and just spend the rest of the day in gentle living, slow living, to where I’m just really mindful of my free time and how to use that as a way to restore and rejuvenate my body and to pay attention.

6 PM: I was having a hard time turning off and stepping away from work, so what I do in the evenings that I find is very helpful is to have something that is soothing—like a healing or a calming tonic or a massage—to really set the mood for the evening, show the brain that now we’re shifting. And when we do that every day, it really helps to program our subconscious mind and the body to know that we have this to look forward to in the evening.