Our bodies, minds and spirits are like complex high performance sports cars. They need regular care and maintenance in order to run smoothly and at their best.  But, too often, we take better care of our cars than we do of ourselves.  In the next few posts, I’m going to provide some information and inspiration to support and encourage you to make yourself a priority by making self-care a personal habit.
The list of self-care activities is endless and what works for you is based on  personal awareness and choice. You need to know what fuels you, what takes care of your mind, body and soul. For some, it is time alone, for others it is time with others.  Often for me, a 30 minute walk with my dog allows me to clear my head and resolve an issue that I might otherwise spend hours struggling with at my desk.  I have a client who swears by her weekly massage, others who couldn’t survive without regular exercise, still others who are devoted to their meditation practice.

There is no prescription for when or how often you should engage in self-care, but it is most useful when it is built in to your life as a regular practice, vs. an auxiliary event to be scheduled into your already over scheduled life.    Think of it as preventative medicine.  When you feel thirsty, you’ve already begun to be dehydrated… when you are feeling the need for self-care, you’ve already started down the path to stress and burn out.  Filling the tank before  you feel drained by  life’s challenges:  those difficult aspects of your job,  rocky moments in your relationships, hiccups in your daily routines,  makes you more resilient in these situations, much more able to handle the bumps in the road.

The cost of not taking good care of yourself can be high.  I know so many brilliant, successful
people who burn out.  They’ve been saying for years that they know they should take better care of themselves but they just don’t have time… then, they crash and burn and are no use to anyone.  Stress related diseases, short tempers, damaged relationships, poor work performance are all symptoms of lack of self-care.

What you do doesn’t matter…That you do something is what’s so important.

To identify effective self-care practices for yourself, think about things you’ve done or places
you’ve gone in your life that have renewed you, fed your body, mind and soul.  Listen to yourself when you say things like, if I only had time, I’d…  or I wish I could… and do that.  Experiment with different approaches until you find things that work for you.

When I talk to clients about taking time for themselves, they say things like, I know I should but… or ya but, who will make dinner?  or I’ll do it as soon as I finish baking brownies for Jimmy’s class party, or some iteration of a story that makes ‘me’ time a mere thought and never a reality.

So what changes do you need to make in order to actually have ‘me’ time?  First and foremost,  you have to change how you view it.  You need to see it as an investment vs. an expense.  And,  you need to schedule it… regularly… before you need it.  When you feel thirsty, you’re already dehydrated, so to avoid dehydration, you should drink water all day long.  Similarly, when you feel like you really need ‘me’ time, it’s already too late.  If you build ‘me’ time into your life, take time for yourself before you are in desperate straits,  you’ll find that you don’t drive yourself to the edge.  In times of high stress, you’ll have reserves to draw from.

Scheduling time for yourself allows you to take time when it works for you around your other obligations and it allows you to schedule other things around your ‘me time.’

Let me give you an example.  I have a client, Kelly,  who had always wanted to take a yoga class.  She joined a gym that offered what she wanted, but she never seemed to get there.  Something always got in the way.  Sound familiar?  I asked her to look at the schedule and choose a class she wanted to go to that was at a time that she was usually the least busy.  Then, I suggested that she put that class in her calendar, like an important appointment.  (An appointment with yourself is an important one!)  I told her that for a month, she was not to allow anything to get in the way of that commitment.  I suggested she think of it this way:  if you had a doctor’s appointment that you had waited months to get and, the morning of the appointment, someone asked you if you could do something for them, what would you say?  Here are some options:  “I’d love to help you out but I won’t be available until 11:00″  or “I wish I could but I have another commitment, have you checked with Jane?”  or simply, “I’m sorry, I can’t.  I have an appointment.  Maybe next time.”  Or, thinking about that same appointment, you wouldn’t get up in the morning and ask yourself if you felt like going.  You have an appointment.  You honor it!  Especially when it is with the most precious person in your life… YOU!

By the end of the month, Kelly’s yoga practice had become a habit.  And, she loved it.  On those rare occasions when something got in the way of her going to class, she made time to practice yoga at home.  The effect carried through to all areas of her life.  She felt more fit, more relaxed, more patient and more productive.  She had invested time in herself and everybody around her benefited!

So, what’s one thing you’d do if you had ‘me’ time?  What are you waiting for?  Get your calendar out and put yourself in there… in ink!

In my last post, I suggested that you think about and determine what you might do to take good care of yourself in order to renew your energy.  Is it a massage?  A weekly meeting with a therapist?  A daily cup of tea? A hike  to the top of a mountain?  Maybe there are several things on your list.

As they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  Now that you know what you want to do, how are you going to make it a reality?

The first thing you have to do is to give yourself permission to take care of yourself.   Tell the truth, now.  When you think about taking time for yourself, what messages do you hear inside your head?  Come on, I know they are there.  Things like, “I don’t have time for that.”  Or “I can’t afford to do that.”  Or, “Good mothers don’t miss their kid’s sports events.”  Or, my husband will get mad if I do that.”  Sound familiar or do you have completely different chatter going on?

Those messages, may be your biggest roadblock.  If you think that you don’t deserve time for yourself, if you believe that you are the only one capable of doing all of the things you do, if you worry about what others will think or how they’ll react, your self talk and worry is holding you back.

To overcome that barrier, ask yourself:

1. Is this really true?
2. How do I know it’s true
3. What are some other possible ‘truths’?
4. So what if it is true?
5. What’s the worst that can happen?
6. Aren’t I worth it?

Still not convinced that you’re worth it and that taking care of yourself will deliver great returns to others in your life?

Take five minutes, grab a pad of paper and a pen and find a quiet space where you can sit comfortably, undisturbed.  Close your eyes and imagine yourself enjoying whatever your preferred self-care experience is.  Really see yourself engaged in the process.  Notice how your whole body feels and sink into those sensations.  Hear the sounds around  you and feel the energy that is flowing in you.   Sit, immersed in that experience for a few minutes.    Then, when you are ready, come back to the ‘reality’ of the room you are in.  Grab your pen and paper and write down what you were doing, how it felt and how you benefited.  Jot down anything else that comes to your mind as a result of your experience.

If you want to have a more permanent image, create a vision board that paints a picture of your unique version of self-care and its benefits.  Make it so vivid and compelling that you can’t resist taking action.

In my next post, I’ll share some tips on how to turn your vision into action by  creating “me-time” so you can actually experience and reap the benefits of your self-care vision!

Y

Many of us face the holiday season with mixed emotions.  We love the idea of the holidays but reality doesn’t always match up with our expectations.  We often end up stressed out and disappointed.

 When I refer to the holiday season, I’m talking about the time leading up to Thanksgiving and continuing until just after the New Year.  It doesn’t matter what religion you are or what your holiday practices are.  That period of time tends to be one that is marked by family visits, high expectations, social pressure, financial stress, over-eating, too much to do and too little time to do it.

Often, as families, we do things out of habit rather than by conscious choice.  We celebrate holidays in the same way year after year, eat the same foods at holiday dinners, put the same decorations in the same spots around the house and entertain the same guests.  While tradition and ritual is great, sometimes it’s good to shake things up.

You can change your holiday experience for yourself and your loved ones by making a conscious decision to do some things differently.  You may not transform your family into something it is not and the holidays may still not look like a Hallmark movie, but you can make some adjustments that will make a big difference for you.

1. Identify the things you love and want to maintain about your holiday habits and traditions.
2. Identify one or two new or different things you’d really like to have be part of your holiday celebration.  Perhaps you want to volunteer somewhere or you want to see a seasonal show. Perhaps you want to do more ‘home-made’, whether it’s food or gifts or decorations.  What is something that would be meaningful for you to do and be stress-less?
3. Imagine just how you want to feel during the holiday season.  Do a visualization to capture the full effect of you living your ideal holiday.  Notice what is present and what is not present.  Write down words and phrases that describe your vision for a fabulous experience and live into it.
4. Discuss ideas for doing things differently with family members to get their ideas and buy in.
5. Be bold. Create new holiday habits that may become rich, long lasting traditions.

Click here for more support on de-stressing the holidays or  view our Holiday Bracelet collection.

Wow, the stuff upset it made of.

I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day.  She was busy helping her daughter get ready for a semester abroad in South America.  There was much to do.  And, aside from these preparations, my friend, a busy physician and generous community volunteer, also had a long list of patient phone calls to return and meetings to plan for. 

Being a teenager, her daughter decided it was time to go shopping for necessities for her trip.  I mean, it was time RIGHT NOW.  Not a few days ago, when her mom suggested they go, not tomorrow night when she had already made plans to be with her friends but RIGHT NOW!  And, on top of that, the daughter had just learned that there were very few plane tickets left on a flight she wanted to take for a vacation trip she was planning with her boyfriend in December.  So, that needed to be dealt with RIGHT NOW too. 

Now, if you have teenagers, or remember the days when you did, you know what I’m talking about.  If you are a teenager, you’re probably saying to yourself, “And your problem with all of this would be?” 

Being of sound and rational mind and removed from the situation as you are reading this, you are likely saying to yourself, why didn’t the mom just say no.  Why didn’t she say, “I can’t take you shopping right now, dear.”  or “Go ahead and make the plane reservations yourself. You’re a competent, capable young lady.”  I’ll tell you why…  STRESS!

The daughter’s unreasonable requests and sense of urgency arose from stress as did her mom’s reaction which was, in her words, not one of her best parenting moments.  Underneath it all, both, aside from being busy, are nervous about this upcoming trip.  And the anxiety hadn’t been identified or expressed.  So, it came spurting out in their interaction like toothpaste from the tube. 

This kind of upset happens often and it usually isn’t about the specific thing that might trigger it.  For example, how often do we (women) get upset because our husband’s (sorry guys) don’t take out the trash?  I mean really, is the trash that important?  No. And, it generally isn’t about the trash.  It’s about some other unmet need or frustration and it comes out because it’s safer to identify and talk about the trash than whatever the real source is, if you even know.

We want to be all things to all people, we want to have it all work out.  We keep giving and doing and contributing and then, all of a sudden, we get to our personal tipping point.  The proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back, and we didn’t even see it coming.  We were too busy to notice that we were dangerously close to the edge. 

In hind sight, what my friend said she wished she had done was to say to her daughter, “I know this is important to you but I can’t go right now.  Let me do these 3 things first and then we can go”, or “I’m sorry, it just won’t work for me to go tonight, let’s look at our calendars and figure out when we can both go.”   Or she might have stopped and realized that perhaps her daughter’s sense of urgency was generated by her own (the daughter’s)  stress and anxiety and addressed that. 

What she regrets doing is losing her temper.  So today, in the calm after the storm, she will take a few moments and process the interaction with her daughter, mend the bridge and the two will move on, having learned a little more about themselves and each other.

And in the future, and the lesson for us all, is to monitor your own stress level and create ways to take care of ourselves so that we can be our best selves in the relationships that are most important to us.