Live a better life by just being better to yourself.
We are a nation of doers. And yet, no matter how much we accomplish, we feel we are just not doing enough. If this resonates with you, you are not alone. When clients call me for time management coaching, they seem startled when I tell them I can’t help them do more, because I don’t think that’s the answer. What I will do is show them how to do more of what brings them joy and less of what drains them. It’s about being kind to ourselves daily – giving ourselves the love and respect that we so freely give to others – regardless of whether we crossed everything off our to-do list that day. We all deserve it.
What’s the one thing that you are not doing enough of that you would like to do more often? Whatever this activity is, schedule time for it once a week for the next 3 weeks, just as an experiment. And honor that appointment as you would any other (client, doctor, and dentist).
“Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans” –John Lennon
Make time for yourself and your life because if you don’t, who will? It’s easy to get lost in all the chores that have to be done each day. We all have busy lives and there’s never enough time in a day. But a day turns into a week, a month, a year and before you know it, a whole lifetime. Let’s not let the years pass without doing what matters most to us. At the beginning of each month, before your calendar fills up, schedule time for your self-care activity once a week. Here are some of my favorite self-care actitivities to give you some ideas and get you thinking about what you’d like to do:
Take a walk
Go for a bike ride
Put your favorite song on and dance or close your eyes and relax
Read for pleasure (novel, magazine)
Listen to a book or inspirational speaker on CD/ipod
Sit with a cup of specialty hot chocolate or tea
Look at photos you took while on vacation
Soak your feet in dishpan with marbles and Epsom salts
Go for a manicure
Write in your journal
Call a friend
Spend some time on a hobby i.e. beading, knitting, baking, etc.
Pet your dog/cat
Massage your feet or your temples with essential oils
Give yourself a facial (use steam from a boiling pot with a towel draped over it)
Browse through decorating books and dream
I encourage you to create your own list and put it on your bulletin board. I hope you will share your ideas and/or success stories with our community by commenting below. What’s on your self-care list?
Well said Hellen…and so true.
Funnily enough, a family member was just telling me the same thing.
I think I need to listen and follow the advice.
Eileen
I have been sooooo bad about this lately! I had promised myself I would take the last 1/2 hour before bedtime to TURN OFF the computer and unwind with a cup of tea and some knitting. That 1/2 hour window has been getting narrower in recent weeks because I’ve had extra work. I need to figure out how to take that time back and still meet my deadline.
All of this is certainly true, Hellen, but sometimes the trick isn’t just making sure the self-care is included on your own personal calendar. I don’t know about anyone else’s situation, but if you’ve been a caretaker for bloody forever and suddenly you decide that it’s your time to shine (or at least to have a quiet cup of tea without being asked to serve as the equivalent of a small country’s support staff), people sometimes get seriously upset about that. I found that once I started including myself on the list of priorities, I found out a lot more than I wanted to know about what kind of a life I’d been living, and what kind of a life I needed to move toward.
I’d be interested to know how you, as a person who has chosen this profession of helping people yank themselves out of their crap, have dealt with what lies below the surface for so many of us who haven’t taken the time to go for a walk, or read a book, or even close our eyes to listen to a song. I’m sure you’ve run up against this situation over and over again, and for every article saying “take time for yourself!” there is a person out there who is afraid of what the consequences of doing that might be, not just in the balance of their immediate surroundings, but internally, as well.
That said, if you’re out there and you’re worrying about how everyone around you is going to react if you take time for yourself, line up a few support systems (they’re out there and you know it) and just go for it. You may end up shutting a door you didn’t know you needed to shut, but getting to the next open door is totally worth the hell in the hallway. Testifying, right here.
Thanks, Hellen, for reminding me of the leap of faith I took, just to get out there and go for a run. I’m still here because I did just that.
Lee Ann, you make a great point. If people around us and not accustomed to seeing us set boundaries, and all of a sudden we start doing so, it will be a big change for them. And as we know, change is hard for most people, even if it’s a positive change. Yes, you will probably get resistance, but I hope everyone reading this will find the courage to stick to your guns. Taking time for yourself will make you a happier person, I can attest to that, not only from personal experience but from seeing my coaching clients experience the joy that comes from it – especially over the long term. Those that truly care about you will notice the change and eventually accept any inconvenience they experienced as a result. The consequences are that, yes, this process may lead to some relationship decluttering, but do you really want to have these people around you in the first place? You asked me what I thought ‘lies below the surface’ and my sense is that it is low self-worth. But I believe everyone deserves a break, no matter what. The challenge is making folks (especially women) believe it. I run up against this all the time with my clients. You are right, support systems will definitely help with that. Thanks so much for posting this; I’m happy for the opportunity to dig a little deeper. By the way, I would be interested to understand more about what you meant by ‘consequences…internally as well’.
For me, insisting on taking time for myself resulted in a bit of an uproar in my relationship. I don’t think I knew how much of a risk I was taking, emotionally, to get out there and take the time to run. I thought I was just trying to take a breather, release stress, and, frankly, celebrate the fact that I could actually remain upright (I had cranial surgery to repair an aneurysm, and was extremely glad to have the ability to walk, much less run).
But I’d also been a caretaker, in this marriage and in my previous marriage, and was so mired in the need to smooth things over and avoid conflict that when my running resulted in accusations of turning into a different person, one who didn’t care about the family, well…that was a rough road, internally. If you’re used to being the one who does for everyone around you, and one of the “everyones” tells you that you’re slacking on the job, your first instinct tends to be to say, “yeah, I guess I should look at that…” I never wanted to be accused of being the bad guy, the one who is making life rough for anyone else.
Luckily, I had people around me who know when to call a spade a freaking shovel, and the act of (very physically, via running) taking care of myself somehow broke through that big wall of denial. It ISN’T okay to live a life with no time for oneself, and it ISN’T okay for me to continue to spend my life with someone who devalues me when I make an effort to better myself and live my life joyfully, however subtle that devaluing is, and however insidious that need to do for others had become in my life.
I am still a caretaker at heart, but I know the value of what I give, and I know I can’t reliably give without taking care of myself as well. Anyone who feels it’s okay to belittle my self-care while at the same time demanding that I care for them can kiss my lycra-clad butt, if they can catch it as it flies out the door, down the street, and across that next finish line.
It thoroughly sucks to discover you’ve made a mistake in choosing a partner. It sucks even more to discover you’ve pretty much made the same mistake twice, only the second time it looked different and somehow more right. Much of the internal shift I experienced in realising this was a result of following advice to take time for myself. It was frightening, only because I’d never really done it before, and while I thought I was a strong person (mothering and running a household requires strength, for sure), I’d never found the intestinal fortitude to stand up for myself. Standing up for yourself is damned scary.Taking time for yourself, if you’re used to only taking time for others, is really a tangible, obvious way of standing up for yourself.
So worth it, though. So many people around me told me that I was worth this self-care, and I believed it out loud, but inside, I don’t think I did. The reaction of my then-husband to my self-care, rather than one of support and tenderness, was one of entitlement and disappointment. And I felt that the people telling me that I didn’t need that kind of person around me, in my view, didn’t understand why I stayed. He was my husband, and I’d made a commitment to him.
And then *I* stopped understanding why I would stay, because I started understanding what I needed to not only survive emotionally, but have a life I could feel proud of.
This is a pretty out-there and open response to a list that includes the simplest of things– a cup of tea and a song, so simple but so important. And yet, if it will help someone else in the same type of situation, I’m happy to be an open book. I know that there are other people out there whose clutter, and whose lives that have no room for self-care, cover up an inability to understand their own worth and nurture themselves. Surrounding oneself with people who recognize what you have to offer and respect your needs helps to keep that self-care going.
A kick-ass pair of running shoes can’t hurt, either.
Thank you so much for sharing that Lee Ann. I appreciate your openess and I knowthere are many people that can relate and will be inspired by the courage you’ve shown.
On the topic of giving yourself what you deserve, and judging whether or not you “deserve” it:
When my boys were in grade school (we were living in the Chicago area), there was a story in the news about a student at one of the top universities getting his first below-A grade of his life, and committing suicide. This led to a lot of talk in the media and in the schools about pressures to be perfect. As the parent of two gifted children, that got me thinking. And talking with my kids, though they were too young to fully understand the tragedy.
A few years later, I was at a conference for parents and teachers of gifted children, and one of the speakers talked about pressures to perform which gifted children face, and how most of us in our daily lives, after we leave school, no matter how gifted and motivated we are, do not “earn” an A every day, and that many days we’re lucky to get Cs. That produced more thought and more conversation with my kids, about how a realistic goal for life after school would not be an A+ every day, but to know and accept that most of your days aren’t going to be close. I used the expression “a B-minus life”, meaning that you shouldn’t give up, but still try to be responsible and do as well as you can under the present circumstances, and that you will have your good days when you accomplish a lot, which you should be happy with and proud of, and that you shouldn’t beat yourself up when things just go wrong, and that it’s okay to give yourself permission to be content with less than unattainable perfection.
Many years later — when my older son was about 30 — he used that term, the B-minus life, and how it had guided him to contentment in his life. That was an Oh-My moment for me!
I grew up in rural Kansas, in 4-H, whose motto is “To make the best better.” When I was about 50 years old, I was talking with some new friends unfamiliar with 4-H and they were horrified — what, you do your best and it’s never going to be enough?? I hadn’t thought of the motto in that way, but in its more positive sense… but this conversation surely did make me think, about how my entire life had been imbued with this striving to improve even the smallest details and actions of my life. I had to think long and hard about this, and recognize and accept that even when you try hard, some days your best just ain’t gonna be very good — and that’s really, truly okay.
I had also read “Cheaper by the Dozen” as a student and while it did inspire me to organize myself to some extent, being a fairly scatterbrained and easily distracted kid, to this day I find myself annoyed at the sort of pressure it did put on me to analyze and micromanage myself.
I did grow up with unconditional love, though my parents did have high standards encouraged me to do my best. As a female, I was also raised to be self-sacrificing and to please others. My husband did not have that unconditional love, and still had that pressure to perform, plus the standards of he-manliness which boys were held up to. We’ve been married 43 years and it’s still a daily concern, and often a struggle, for both of us to try to find contentment in the present. It’s not easy, but the sooner you can adapt yourself to the idea of a B- life, (or a C life if that’s more realistic), the more contentment and happiness you may find. Life is uncertain and unpredictable, and treating yourself well is not something to be put off for “someday”, or you may miss it entirely.
Twila, thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience and wisdom. I know your story will really hit home with a lot of readers – I know it did for me. We all put so much pressure on ourselves, and our kids are watching…and learning. Thanks for a great reminder to ease up.
You’re welcome — thanks for listening!