It takes exactly the same amount of time to not take care of yourself as it does to take care of yourself.
How do I know? Because everyone gets the same twenty-four hours a day. No one gets more. Some people take that twenty-four hours and manage to raise kids, write books, have hot sex, forgive themselves their belly pooch, and all the other stuff you keep thinking you’ll get to “someday — when it’s not so crazy.” Guess what, honey? The crazy is not your circumstances. The crazy is you.
When you start treating yourself well, you will find that everything else gets a lot easier:
• When you are rested, your mind is clear, and you make better decisions.
• When you are well fed, you are less reactive, and you can more swiftly process information.
• When you are stretching yourself creatively, you become a better problem solver.
• When you feel great about yourself and how you look, your confidence empowers you.
You would never let a child run around ragged, exhausted, underfed, and undercuddled, would you? So please, stop thinking that you taking excellent care of yourself is a luxury you can’t afford. Because the opposite is true: neglecting yourself is a luxury you can’t afford.
The world needs you. The world needs your good work. The world needs your love, your compassion, your insight, and your great good humor. Especially when things get tense, like in traffic jams and at the airport and in line at the grocery store behind the person who’s trying to use an expired coupon and at family events (bless!) and at that horrible monthly sales meeting — and everywhere else you are, too.
The world needs your good work.
LITTLE CHANGES ACTION STEP: Stop rushing. Give yourself a moment of transition between activities. Before you get out of the car, or go into the meeting, or pick up the phone, take three deep breaths (4:7:8) and think something nice about yourself. Just a microsecond “reset” will allow you to be more present and attentive, even when your schedule is jam-packed.
Dear God,
The daily grind has got my Spirit by the neck.
There are too many things to do, and I am exhausted down to My bones.
Even the things I like to do feel like a chore, and in all this ordinary chaos,
There is no room for me to make art.
But I hear you whisper that I was not created in your image
To run errands.
And that a year from now, no one will remember the imperfect nutritional value of tonight’s dinner, but everyone will remember the piece I create.
So, just for today, I will claim some time — ironclad, nonnegotiable, uncompromising, turn-off-the-phone time — to do the work that you designed me to do.
That is my promise to you, so that I might fulfill your promise of me.
Love,
Me
5.
I’M GOING TO INTRODUCE YOU to a wonderful and somewhat radical phrase, and I want you to write it down right now: “Nothing is more important than my well-being.”
You picked up this book because you want your life to be better. And I am here to tell you that the only way your life is going to get better is if you start treating yourself better. So say this phrase aloud and see how you feel about it: “Nothing is more important than my well-being.”
As we move through this work, you’re going to need to repeat this phrase to yourself over and over again. We’re not just putting self-care on the list as an afterthought. We are moving it right up to the very top of the list. In fact, it might become the whole list.
I realize how crazy that might sound. After all, I once walked around with pneumonia for six weeks because I was so busy holding down three part-time jobs (delivering flowers, which was miserable; office receptionist, which was unspeakably dull; and teaching acting, which was great), producing a play at my theater company, appearing in a successful late-night improv comedy show, and still keeping up with the housework that I didn’t notice that my bad cold had turned into something much more serious. The idea of taking time for my own self-care was so remote that I became quite, quite ill.
What thoughts start racing through your mind when you imagine letting the betterment of your own well-being make your decisions for you? “That would be so selfish. . . . I would never do anything for anyone else. . . . Too many other people rely on me.” But is that really true? I bet that when you are well cared for and your inner monologue is friendly, you actually get more done for the people around you. And what if everyone took great care of themselves? What if everyone was well fed and well rested and had a kindly inner monologue going on? Could be a whole new world.
Let’s unpack this “Nothing is more important than your well-being” a bit more.
The negative voices in your head are not more important than your well-being. Your old stories are not more important than your well-being. Even the demands of your family, the pressures of your job, and the good opinion of others are not more important than your well-being. I’m not saying those things are not at all important, of course. They are important. But they are not more important.
Let’s keep going: Your bank account, or what you believe to be the reality of your finances, is not more important than your well-being. Your ego and your big idea about who you are or who you’re supposed to be or where you should be by now are not more important than your well-being. Your desire to be right is not more important than your well-being. Your desire to be liked, your desire to be appreciated, your desire to be approved of are not more important than your well-being.
Pause right there: Can you imagine if you put your well-being ahead of your desire to be approved of? Sit with that for a second. What does that look like? Let’s say you’ve got a morning meditation walk scheduled, and suddenly you get a call telling you that a client is freaking out. Your self-doubt might take over, and you might sacrifice the walk so that you don’t feel like a bad businessperson or just a plain old bad person. But if your well-being is the most important thing, then you go on your walk with the understanding that you will return shortly, better able to be of service to your client. Can you see how radical this is?
Make some notes for yourself about what challenges might show up and appear to be more important than your well-being. (The kids, the boss calling, a headache, a phone call, social media, fatigue, an old story that makes you ask, “Why even bother?”)
What are some of the things that you currently believe are more important than your well-being? Go ahead and write them down. You need to identify these things and
