Always do your best………make yourself a priority, and take care of yourself. Some of us have created lives where we are busy being busy, we race from one meeting to another, we fly home at the end of the day and then we fly out of the house to run errands, taxi kids to activities, take care of other family members and we never seem to stop and give a thought to ourselves. We have been raised to think that self-care is selfish and that to make ourselves a priority is somehow bad. The reality is that if you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t have the energy and the joy that can be a part of every day….you’ll be running on adrenalin and it will be there for everyone to see.
If your way of handling the stress of everyday life is to simply suck back and reload then you are making plans for a meltdown. If we deny our own feelings, if we are pushing ourselves and not taking care to rest, to pause, to indulge our own needs then we have nowhere to put all of our frustration and so we carry a simmering rage that shows up in our short tempers, our overwhelmed energy and our impossible schedules . In an airline emergency, they tell you to put the oxygen mask on your face first or you won’t be any good for anyone else. Life is like that too, if you won’t take care of yourself first……then you won’t be the best that you can be for those who depend on you. So make a promise to yourself today……practice self-care, commit to a reasonable schedule……. and you’ll be a better you.
Cheryl Richardson said “You can’t make sanity of an insane situation. The truth is this….if your life is chaotic, your schedule is overcrowded, and your brain is too full to think straight, the key to reclaiming your life, has a lot more to do with what you remove from your life than how you organize it. One of the most immediate ways to feel the effects of this level of care is to become very discriminating about how you spend your precious time and energy. Think about the things that you would like to stop doing, in order to protect your energy and to honour your values. The goal is to develop an absolute no list, that over time, makes you feel safe, protected, taken care of, and free to be your best self.”