One of the most important relationships you have is the one with yourself. How well do you take care of you?
What Consumes You?
What consumes your focus, your time, and your energy? I’ve lost count of the amount of times I reach the end of the day so exhausted that I don’t want to do anything else. How about you? Exhaustion seems like the prevailing language of our era. If you don’t reach exhaustion by the end of the day, then you did not do enough. I often wonder how this mentality has eroded the life from our beings. True enjoyment of each day flows from a place of balance. Why do we make ourselves the last priority of our life? We have the best intentions, but how can we give something that we don’t have to others? How can we give joy to others if the demands of the day zapped all the joy we had? How can we refresh others if we don’t take the time to be refreshed?
We pour ourselves out so well, yet we don’t take much time to allow ourselves to be poured into.
Refresh Yourself
I cannot remember where I read it, but one of the most important things I have read about time management is that the only part of the day that we control is our mornings. Think about it. So much comes up throughout the day that we often get lost in trying to handle it all. Your mornings are sacred. Before the kids wake or before you open up the never-ending inbox of emails, intentionally take time to do something in the morning that refreshes you. I know, I know, this may require you to rewire the part of you that wants to sleep in for five more minutes, but I promise you that even setting aside 30 minutes in the morning to meditate, read the Word or another book, do yoga, workout, or etc. will help reset and refresh you in a way that enables you to approach the day and its demands in lighter way. Dig deep. Ask yourself what makes you feel refreshed and reinvigorated then take time out in the morning to actually do it. Schedule it, leave all your devices in another room or put them all on “Do Not Disturb” mode, then allow yourself to sink into that moment and be refreshed.
Steal Yourself Back
The day will steal you with all of its demands if you let it. Steal yourself back. Create boundaries. Trust me, no matter how much you do in one day there will always be more to do the next. If you don’t make the work day end somewhere, then the work will run you until your ragged. Cutting off work at a certain times opens up more self-care time in the evenings. Yes, I understand that something urgent may come up that causes you to pull an all-nighter, but that should not be an every day thing. You may think I don’t understand your job, but I used to work in college athletics. The contract I signed literally stated my work hours were from 12:00am to 11:59pm. What I learned after grinding myself to nothing for seven years is that if you don’t take time for you then you’ll end up losing yourself in the work. Think about the consequences of never making time. You could have all the money in the world, but who will be around to enjoy it with you? Will your health be well enough in old age for you to enjoy retirement or will you spend your last years confined to a bed? We always think short-term, but what we do today either invests in us or robs us of the future we always hoped for. When people here “self”-care they often think this means doing things alone, but for me, I am often refreshed in the presence of others so I do my best to make time to reach out or doing something with someone I care for. Self-care can be anything that fills you up: make time to get together with friends and laugh until you cry or if you don’t have friends, then set aside time to join a group and find some.
Remember, nothing happens without the intention to make it happen. Set your intentions for the day, schedule when you are going to make those things happen, protect the time you set aside for those things, and soak it up.
You are important. Don’t neglect yourself.
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Overtaken 