“I don’t have time for self-care” I have heard it said and I have said it myself at times!
But what if investing in a little self-care actually saved you time and money and heartache? I want to share 3 steps that you can do to bring more self-care in to your life.
“I am so busy”, “I am worn out”, “I have too much on my plate”. Where have we heard this before I wonder??
We have all been there, we excel at what we do so we do more of it! The superhuman in us keeps taking on more tasks and responsibility because we enjoy it, we feel we need to, we are required to…whatever the reason is, there are more demands on our time and energy to the point that we have taken on too much!
When we have too much on our plate, that unending to-do list, everything can feel overwhelming and impossible to achieve. That illusive “finished” is always one step ahead of us. Our mood and energy levels will be affected and so too our performance. The juggle is real! If we keep working to this pace, we will eventually tire and burnout is not too far away. It is time to re-think how you are working as it is unsustainable to continue to work like this. It is time to get organised.
So the first step to self-care is to get to know your limits and organise your workload around this. Take some time out of your week this week to look at your diary, look at the demands on your time and energy, and create a percentage measure of the demands; what percentage is work impacting on you, what percentage is family commitments, what other areas in your life a pulling from your energy. Break it down for yourself. For the moment, I want you to just notice what is going on when you see the impact that this workload is having on you
I want you to answer these questions for yourself:
Where is the source of most challenge?
Is some of it avoidable?
Identify the parts that are manageable/ unmanageable?
Can you delegate some of it?
Is there a way to simplify what is happening?
Ask yourself “if I was sick in the morning (and couldn’t tend to any of this), how would all of this be sorted?”.
Who can I ask for help?
So step 2 is to decide what you want your life to look like. What would your workload look like, what would your free time look like? Do you have hobbies that you would like to do? Map it all out; describe what it looks like and feels like. Create a mood board that describes exactly what your life will be like. When you make a conscious decision of how you want your life to look and feel, you can then make choices that support this life that is completely yours. Your values and beliefs will need to be explored at this time as these will have a major impact of how you choose to live your life going forward.
And that leads us to step 3: take action!
Nothing changes unless we change something!
With all this new found awareness, it is important to act on something for change to occur. I am not suggesting a complete overhaul but I would encourage you to choose 1 thing you can do that will bring you 1 step closer to the life you choose. Your future self will thank you for making the commitment to yourself.
