Me First

Image by kp yamu Jayanath from Pixabay

 My life is busy (isn't everyone's?), and much of the busyness feeds my heart, soul, and self-confidence, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exhaust me. Days have only 24 hours and finding a balance between engaging in those important and necessary activities and taking time for ourselves can be very challenging.

I recently downloaded a book with short daily reflections – not the first one I’ve downloaded like this -- but this one has turned out to be an excellent fit. Not only is the material relevant, but I found an unexpected bonus in that the brevity of each reflection belies its value. 

When we think of self-care, we think of long stretches of time – days off, weekends away, beach vacations -- or at least I do. But in order for self-care to be consistent and effective, it has to fit into our lives. And when our lives are busy, sometimes self-care has to fit into really small spaces. When that happens, it’s important to find activities that are short enough to allow for consistency, but valuable enough to actually give us the self-care boost that we need.

My point (which I seem to have taken a long time to get to) is that the value of the activity doesn’t always lie in the amount of time it takes. A quick reading that touches your heart, makes you laugh out loud, or feeds your spirit is counts as self-care as much as a day at the spa. Even better, it costs only a small investment of time, making it accessible to those of us who don’t have the means or opportunity to go on a cruise or a spa weekend. 

Yet, its impact can echo. Whether we're reading or journaling (or both),  the words can linger long after we've finished reading them. Sometimes, they can even spur us into action, making them (arguably) more valuable than a pricey experience whose benefits diminish almost as quickly as the value of a new car does when we drive it off the lot.

Self-care matters, but we often dismiss it or find that it gets pushed to the bottom of (or even off of) our to-do lists. We all have a few minutes here and there throughout the day. Whether we spend them reading, journaling, meditating, exercising, taking a nap, writing a blog post (or some combination of these) is up to us. How we spend them is much less important than the impact they have. 

The first step in establishing a self-care routine is deciding what self-care means to us. How will you start?