Do you know people who don't take care of their own needs because they are so busy taking care of other people's needs? Whether it's your spouse, boss, children, pets, friends etc., there is always something to do for someone and guess who doesn’t get taken care of?
I wouldn’t be surprised if you were one of them. I’m talking about time to exercise, de-stress, take a walk in the park just to unwind, etc. “There just aren’t enough hours in the day,” people say or “I’ll get that massage as soon as such-and-such happens.”
To that, I say baloney. It’s a cop out. A bunch of you-know-what.
Here’s the secret that so many of us don’t admit or realize: we do have the time, we just don’t consider our own needs a high enough priority.
Let’s say you need to exercise. You know you need to exercise, but you just can’t find the time. Then you break a tooth biting down on a hamburger at lunch. Gee, guess what? You suddenly have the time to go to the dentist!
How can that be? It can be because when your tooth broke the dentist suddenly became a priority and bingo, you made the time. Something else didn’t get done, but that’s OK because that “something else” wasn’t as high a priority as getting your tooth fixed.
This begs the question, “Why don’t we consider our own needs priorities?” That, my friends, is the issue.
It’s not a time issue, it’s a priority issue. You simply must give your own needs priority because if you don’t, eventually you will be unable to do whatever has you so busy.
I like to use a car as an analogy. (I don’t know anything about cars but I can almost always use them for analogies no matter what point I’m trying to make!) If you are very busy taking people everywhere in your car, what happens if the car breaks down because you didn’t maintain it properly?
Are you still able to take some people where they need to go? No, you can’t take anyone anywhere.
The same is true if you don’t take care of yourself, if you “break down” because you haven’t been taking care of your own needs, you won’t be able to do all of those things that are making you so busy!
Don’t take the time to take care of yourself, make the time to take care of yourself. Sure, it takes a small chunk of your day but think of it as an investment toward your ability to do everything else. If you really think about it, the alternative isn’t pretty.
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Edited by Malu Banuelos