Hey there! Thank for joining me for part 2 of my self care journey. (If you missed part 1, you may want to go back and read last month’s blog) It’s been about a month and here are three things I have learned:
- Self care isn’t just about bubble baths and manicures. Although those are pretty awesome.
- Self care is also about setting boundaries. Hard to do, but so worth it!
- Self care time can be found when you lower your standards in other areas of your life (like laundry) and relinquish some control of how those tasks are completed.
Remember last month when I was struggling with finding time to wedge self care in – going from finding excuses as to why I shouldn’t do it at all to figuring out sneaky ways to make it count for at least one other purpose?
That kind of thinking wasn’t getting me any further away from burnout, in fact,
I was catapulting towards burnout like a comet.
Turns out, while self care can be bubble baths, drawing, yoga, journaling, running, etc, those are not the only things that count as self care. If you have trouble finding time for self care, it might mean it’s time to set some boundaries.
Yea, I know, I tensed up too when my coach said that word – BOUNDARIES. But, I had two choices: Comet headed for burnout or having a little chat with the fam about boundaries… The choice was obvious (sort of). It was time for a discussion with my dear husband and darling teenagers.
There was no logical reason that I took on all the laundry, shopping, cooking and cleaning while also running a business, writing a novel and being the emotional support person for everyone. No wonder I was headed for burnout!
Yes, my family could pitch in, but I had to be okay with things not being done exactly the way I would do them. Easier said than done, my friends.
My son forgot to put fabric softener in, but our clothes were clean. My daughter left a bit of spaghetti sauce on the outside of the pot when she washed it and put it on the drying rack, but I scraped it off with my thumbnail. My husband reheated leftovers for dinner but it’s a work in progress and it freed up a half hour for me to do other things, like a mini manicure 🙂
It was hard to turn laundry over to my teenagers, my brain wanted to revert back to the “it’s just easier if I do it” line. There was some amount guilt over getting some writing in while my husband did the dishes. It took some practice to remind myself that taking a walk would not just be good for my body but good for my soul. I had to remind myself that I was actually doing my teenagers a favor by teaching them some necessary life skills! I was also modeling behavior.
My husband and I lived together in college and we fell into some pretty traditional roles early on in our relationship. It was what our parents had modeled for us and we in turn, began to repeat the pattern – but times have changed and it was time to change our dynamics too so that the bitterness I was beginning to feel didn’t continue to fester, and I could avoid total burnout.
Doing something from a place of resentment rather than love is not a long term plan and that goes for laundry and exercise. Self care is all about giving yourself the privilege of meeting your own needs, whatever those needs are. For some, it may be rest, for others it may be daily movement or creative expression, or any combination of those.
For all of us, it is loving ourselves enough to acknowledge and honor our needs. We can’t show up as our best selves if we are drowning in resentment and on the brink of burnout.
So, while it’s a daily practice and I’m still learning… I’m happy to say, self care looks different. Before, it felt wrong to even have needs. Now, I’m okay saying I have needs. Before, I felt I should justify self care by attaching diet mentality to it, (an attempt to make myself smaller) which made it feel icky. Before, self care felt like another obligation in a long list of “to-do’s” but by turning over some of those “to-do” items to my family members and lowering my standards on how those tasks were completed, I created more time.
Once I created more time, self care no longer felt like such a struggle to wedge in.
What might your self care routine look like if you take weight loss off the table?
What is holding you back from participating in self care and what might your life look like if you had more time for self care? I challenge you to ask yourself these questions and also consider what you are giving up by not making self care a priority. What boundaries do you need to install and where can you lower your standards to create time to invest in YOU?