This Valentine’s Day (and every other day), don’t forget to show a lot of love and care to the most important person in your life – YOU!
Here are some reasons why it’s so important to show yourself some love.
You’re the Most Important Person in Your Life
Caught up in the rumble of life, meeting competing demands on our time and resources on a daily or even hourly basis, it’s easy to let ourselves and our own needs get lost in that shuffle. Such is the game of life. We show up. We perform. We crash. Then, we do it all over again.
We do what is asked of us so we can keep rooves over our heads and food in the bellies of ourselves and our kids. We make personal compromises in order to keep the peace. We pick our battles, meaning we take a lot more than we wish we had to. We tolerate some pretty intolerable stuff sometimes. We give more than we have. When we’re all out of reserves and someone needs something from us, we dig deeper, and deliver. Just about every time.
And all the while, the needs we ourselves have in order to keep the ole’ engine running begin to get ignored. Soon, we’re doing all for others. We have nothing left for ourselves. We put the well-being of others above our personal well-being partly because taking care of them is taking care of ourselves. If you don’t feed the baby, bad things will happen to a lot of people. So we do as we need to do.
We know that taking care of others is the right thing to do – because if we don’t, they clamor for us to meet their (endless) needs. When we can meet their needs, they are satisfied, content, and peace is restored to the world. Others not only give us permission to take care of them, they downright demand it. It’s when we don’t take care of them that the apple cart gets all upset and things start flying.
And sometimes, taking care of ourselves is seen by others as time spent not taking care of them, and they don’t like that very much. That means, taking care of ourselves sometimes involves fighting against some pretty powerful forces put out by people that want all of our energy for themselves.
So, self-care isn’t easy. No one tells you “thank you” when you do acts of self-care, like happens when you help others. So you get no gratification from the outside. Your only reward is internal. And for a lot of us, that is rarely enough. That little voice is too meek up against all of those on the outside clamoring for our energy.
So we continue to take care of others, at the expense of ourselves. We have no idea what we’re getting ourselves into when we do this…
You Are Number One in Your Life
Some of us are fortunate enough to have a partner who prioritizes us and our needs. Who is always sensitive to what we’re experiencing and helps soften the landing for some of life’s more challenging falls.
But whether we have this kind of support or not, we have to realize and remember that the most important person in your life is you! You are the only one you have to live your entire life with. And you’re the only one responsible for taking care of you.
This also means your decisions for your life are your own. All of them. And it means that you and you alone are responsible for your well-being. Making sure you feel okay with yourself and the world is no one’s job but your own. We want to put that load on someone else’s shoulders if we can sometimes, making them carry our burdens with us. We do this by mistreating them until we are satisfied they share our misery and can feel our pain. Our burdens are so heavy sometimes, too much for one person alone to bear it seems.
But our burdens are our own. And they are no one else’s responsibility to carry. We need to figure out ways to lighten our loads not by sharing them with others, but by removing some of their weight. We do this through self-care and self-love. We place ourselves and our own well-being first in our lives. Not at the expense of offending others of course, and we learn to gently set proper boundaries so people don’t expect more from us than we are willing to give them and loosing all sorts of havoc to fly around.
We take care of our own needs. We know we must take time to wash our hair and cut our toenails and pay our bills. We must also take care of all of our other needs too. We need to be sure we have fun! That we experience joy and happiness in healthy ways on the regular, not just self-indulgent hedonistic pleasure through things that will harm us. That we nurture and honor our own bodies through healthy diet and exercise habits. That we take care of our emotional well-being through exercises to improve our emotional intelligence, helping us evolve to the next level of our development and become a better human. We are sure we listen to the little spirit voice inside of us, and follow it whenever and however we possibly can. We take the time to meditate for self-care, knowing it heals the body, mind, and spirit, and it helps bring lasting peace to wounds old and new.
We take time to take care of ourselves in every way.
Self-Care is Other-Care
We take care of ourselves so we can be the best human we can be. This helps us live lives of greater joy, ease, and peace every day. But self-care is not a purely selfish act. Taking care of yourself is taking care of others.
The flight attendant’s safety message always says to put your own oxygen mask on before helping another – why? Because you can’t help anyone if you become dead struggling with their mask because you can’t breathe. You have to take care of yourself first. Only in taking care of yourself and making sure you’re okay are you any good at all to anyone else.
You cannot be your best self for anyone else if you’re not simply your best self. The better you are within yourself, the more you can show up for them and be there for them. For example, it’s hard to feel compassion for another’s suffering if you yourself are suffering deeply. It’s hard to be patient with others’ shortcomings when you feel irritable and cranky. It’s hard to accept others’ mistakes as simple human error when your patience is thin. Think for a second about how quickly you become cranky, impatient, and irritable when you have a headache or stomach ache or toothache? And think of how cranky and irritable you become with just a little pain.
But when you feel good within yourself, when you feel happy inside, you are free to give the gifts of compassion, patience, tolerance, and acceptance in abundance. And when you can extend compassion, patience, tolerance, and acceptance to others, you make their world a lot more peaceful.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Self-Care is Necessary
Taking time for yourself is not an act of selfishness or self-centeredness. It is an act of self-care, and it is necessary.
We must all give ourselves permission to take care of ourselves in ways that make our souls sing and hearts dance! We must give ourselves permission to have fun in this life, even outside of the boundaries we seem to be living within. We are alive human beings! And we can celebrate our aliveness in so many ways!
The more we celebrate our selves and our joy at being alive, the more we are able to show up for everyone else in our lives. As we take time for ourselves through meditation and other forms of self-care, we become stronger and more solid in our core. And this, makes us nicer, kinder, more compassionate, more patient, more tolerant, and more accepting of whatever life throws at us. It also makes us happier and more peaceful inside.
Life is to be enjoyed! And it’s our job to find healthy ways for us to navigate our stressors large and small so that at the end of the day, regardless of what life threw at us, we can still say we enjoyed the day. And equally importantly, we can be sure to help others enjoy their own daily journeys just as much.
Paradise Found and Self-Care
We at Paradise Found created an entire retreat around healthy self-care. Not the self-indulgent kind, but the healthy kind that cultivates good habits. We’ve based everything on the science of happiness, a collection of scientific research that shows what leads to good health and well-being in several life areas. We’ve got food that is healthy as well as delicious, and a daily schedule that starts with mindfulness meditation and then includes a multitude of activities each designed to increase your wellness and vitality in various ways. We’ve got plenty of intellectual stimulation as well as physical activity and rest time.
You’ll leave here healthier, happier, more at peace, and with new knowledge to help you continue on the path toward more peace and happiness in your life, wherever you are in your journey and whatever you’re enduring at the moment.
Contact us today! +1 415 326 6186. Let’s get your questions answered and your booking started. Register here.