Forgiving Self-Care.
/How many times have you been told that self-care is the best care? For me, I think I am somewhere around the million mark for how many times I have heard that I need to take care of myself. Yet when it comes to "taking care of ourselves", we can often find that there is not enough time in the day to do it all.
Sometimes taking care of yourself means saying no... to yourself, to loved ones, to employers, to friends. Albeit this sounds easy in theory, there is a major hurdle that we sometimes don't think about when it comes to carving our time for ourselves by saying no to others: guilt. With each no, a little bit of guilt may creep in. I am THE WORST at saying no to others. I am a super woman until I am knee deep in 'have to dos' and stretched so thin that I am barely human, let alone super woman. When I do say no, I find myself feeling tremendously guilty or fighting a hefty dose of FOMO.
I see this same cycle of yes, yes, yes, breakdown, yes yes yes, breakdown a thousand times over when working with college students and young adults. It is ingrained in our generation to take on each opportunity with gusto. However, in most cases, that is doing more harm that good. We need to say no. We need self-care. Without it, we turn into miserable zombies drifting from one half-assed project to the next.
That's why I took a break from this blog. I needed to say no to something. The guilt of not writing has slipped into my subconscious a million and a half times since March 19th when I last posted. Each time, I tucked that guilt away and remembered one of my favorite adages: you cannot pour from an empty cup. My cup has been drained by travel, job-searching, moving, wedding planning, and a million other things. The guilt will have to wait. My cup needed some filling. It needed some self-care.
So what are you going to say no to next time you need to make time for self-care? How are you going to tell the guilt to GTFO? If you can answer these two questions, you are well on your way to a full cup.
