C’mon, it’ll be good for you!

A friend gives you a gift. Do you receive it with expressions of happiness, compliment the beautiful wrapping, open it with care (or tear into it with eager enthusiasm!), exclaim over the rightness, the thoughtfulness, the pleasure of the gift, and then warmly thank your friend? Or do you take it with a grunt, while glancing at your watch to see if you have time for this, rip it open and then set it aside without comment, to get on to the next thing in your so-important to-do list?

If you choose option two, you’ve just lost yourself a friend! Obviously, that’s not what’s going to happen.

And yet … response number two is how very many of us approach self-care. We very often feel we ‘don’t have time’ for it. Some of us think we don’t deserve it! And at the very least, there are always ten other ‘more important’ things we ‘should’ be doing.

Consider that for a moment. Other things are more important than taking care of ourselves. Taking care of ourselves isn’t something we ‘should’ be doing. Do we really believe that?

Even in the midst of a crisis, there is still room for self-care. In fact, I’d argue it’s more important then.  It may be something as simple as walking around your back yard a couple of times in the fresh air. It could be as brief as three deep, slow breaths as you consciously relax your jaw, neck and shoulders.

We need to view self-care as essential, not an add-on, if/when there’s time. We need to see it as a gift to ourselves, and to treat it with as much pleasure and gratitude as we do gifts from others.

Every morning, I give myself the gift of meditation. It has been life-changing for me, my meditation time. When things get crazy, I give myself the gift of a few minutes to pause while I sip a cup of tea, and I really, really savour those few minutes of peace.

Sometimes, yeah, I do those things with an attitude of resignation: “C’mon, just do it. You know it’ll be good for you.”

Thing is, it is good for me! And it’s always worth it.

It’s good for you, too! What are your favourite self-care things to do? What do you do when you have lots of time? What do you do when you feel you have no time at all?