So we are entering the busiest, happiest (ideally), most stressful time of the year. With holidays, lots of family time, expectations, memories, and more, this time of year can be fraught. A lot of times, our strategy to make our way through it is to power on, strong arming and willing our way through the season. And while that technically works, it doesn’t really allow us to enjoy and be present for what we are experiencing.
This year, I want to encourage you to slow down a bit. In the midst of all of this doing for others, it’s especially important that you keep yourself fueled and sustained. There are eight weeks until the new year and what I want to encourage you to do in these last 55 days of 2016 is take a moment each day to just take care of yourself. The moment can be just minutes long or, if you have the time, more than that. Any deliberate self-care, whether it is one minute of stretching, a twenty minute bath soak, a 30 minute bath, a 45 minute phone catch-up with a dear friend, an hour of reading, a two hour lunch break, etc. will profoundly fill your well. You might think you don’t have time to do it but after you experience the restorative nature of self-care, you will realize that you didn’t have time NOT to do it. Self-care is such a profound reset for our souls that what we get from ourselves after that nourishment is all the proof we need to keep going with it.
So right now, here’s your challenge. Ask yourself, “What do I need right now more than anything else that I have the resources to provide for myself?” And then make that care happen as soon as possible. Often, what you can need can happen pretty soon.
The answer bubbles up, “to stretch my back out” and you can do that immediately. Or it might be that you need to meet the need later if the answer is, “a soak in the tub” and you are at work. Sometimes, it might even need to happen a few days later when the answer is to “see my best friend” and it’s a couple days before you can arrange lunch, a walk, or coffee.
Irregardless of when you can actually meet the need, you begin to meet the need when you ask, answer, acknowledge and plan for it. So, your answer is “a massage” and you call for an appointment and it is three days away. No worries. Even as you hang up that phone, your body unknots a little bit in relief because it knows that you heard it, acknowledged it, and honored it by making an appointment. Even with the massage 3 days away, you are already feeling the benefits of that self-care.
But one self-care challenge is not enough. To follow up that exercise, I want you to do one self-caring thing a day. At the end of each day, consider what you have before you the next day and make a conscious commitment to your self-care. Ask yourself, “what will I do tomorrow to care for myself and when will I do it?”
Need some suggestions? Take a look at this list (you can even print and post it somewhere as a reminder):
Follow through over and over again; and you will experience yourself and your life in the most profound way. Here’s to profound self-care as we nurture others this season.
