How is your self-care? Do you take excellent care of yourself? Is self-care high up on your priority list? For most of us, we do the bare minimum we need to keep ourselves functioning – able to work and do whatever else we want to do. Just.
It’s the equivalent of putting fuel in your car to keep it running, but never washing it, caring for it, servicing it, MOTing it, checking the oil or doing anything above what you have to do to keep it running. Until it breaks down, then you’ll take it to the garage.
When we do that with ourselves though, it isn’t as simple as a mechanic ‘fixing’ the problem. Sometimes the problems caused by chronic lack of self-care are deeply damaging and can take a lifetime to live with or improve.
Most people I know who pay attention to their self-care (including myself) are those who’ve been through serious health issues that have forced them to re-evaluate their lives and how they care for themselves. But you don’t need to wait for an illness to strike, you can move self-care up your priority list today.
Why? Because when you are well cared for, you feel better. When you feel better, life is easier. When life is easier, it’s more enjoyable.
I’ve been working as a coach since 2002. The number one issue I find with clients? Lack of self-care! It’s a factor in illness, in stress, in feeling low, in feeling bad about themselves or their lives.
Whenever a client comes to a session feeling despondent about their lives, or they’ve been feeling under the weather, or they’re confused or conflicted, I always ask them to check their self-care. 99.9 times out of 100 it’s low.
In the nineties, I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (which later turned out to be MS, but what’s in a name?). Self-care is the number one thing I learned that helped me to manage my symptoms (mainly fatigue) and feel 1000 times better.
Self-care makes a huge difference to how you feel – body, mind, heart and soul. But don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself.
Take a moment now to breathe into your heart (we’re going to ask your heart how cared for you feel because your head might lie, saying ‘yes I’m fine’ when you’re not). Take 3 deep breaths into your heart. Then ask your heart “How much am I caring for myself scale of 1-10, where 1 is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘I’m cradling myself in the arms of love’?”
If your head tries to jump in and say “no, no, it’s higher than that”, ignore it. Breathe back into your heart and ask again. Let the answer come from your heart. You want the true answer. There’s no point falsifying this one – like your fuel guage, if it’s empty, you need to know or you’ll run out of fuel.
Whatever the number is, your mission for today is to raise it by one point. That’s it. Just do something for your self-care. If you need ideas, either google ‘self-care ideas’ or ask your heart “what do I need?” (merely asking this question is GREAT self-care!) and do that.
If you repeat this practice every day for a week, I’m sure you’ll notice what a difference it makes to feel cared for. It’s a small shift, but making self-care a higher priority can make a huge difference in your life.
Prefer to watch? The video version of this article is here. And in part 2 of the series, I talked about what to do for your self-care. Watch it here.
