For women, taking time for ourselves – self-care – can feel very uncomfortable at first, but it is absolutely necessary for us in order to feel empowered and to protect our mental, emotional and physical health.
I know you want to: enjoy life; make a difference; feel connected in your relationships; have certainty about a bright future and feel good about your body. And setting a good example for friends and family and being a good role model for your kids (regardless of age) is probably important to you, right? You deserve to feel enthusiastic about your life. You deserve healthy relationships, fulfilling work and good health. You deserve a body you feel good in that is healthy and energetic. You deserve Me-Time even for just 15 minutes per day where you can focus on you and feed your soul. Whether a good book and glass of wine or tea is your style or yoga and meditation or prayer, do something that feels good to you. A walk around the block with some favorite energizing music or a quick dip in the pool or laughing at cat videos on YouTube may work. Whatever Me-Time activity you do is completely up to you, just be sure to do it.
Me-Time is self-care and allows you to feel relaxed and peaceful and worthy of good treatment no matter how anyone else treats you that day. It is empowering and boosts your self-confidence and emotional well-being.
As women, we’re brought up to take care of everyone else and only for ourselves if there is time left over at the end of the day, which there rarely is. This is a highly flawed system and adds to the epidemic of low self-esteem among women worldwide.
I know you love your family and friends and want to be there for them but you can’t if there’s nothing left of you.
You will be a better role model for everyone in your life if you treat yourself to daily Me-Time. It doesn’t have to be long, it just has to be done. And it has to be all about you.
It will get easier with practice just like anything else does the more you do it. If at first it feels selfish, remind yourself that self-care (Me-Time in this case) makes you an even better version of yourself and stronger and more loving and energetic for everyone in your life. I disagree with selfish being bad anyway as I see it as taking care of yourself. Self-centered on the other hand is only thinking of yourself to the exclusion of everyone and everything else and is narcissistic (arrogant pride).
Those who truly want what’s best for you will honor your Me-Time and honor you for practicing it. Notice I didn’t say, “taking it,” because you are not taking anything away from anyone else. Those who have a problem with you taking time to nourish yourself have simply been programmed by you not doing it before. It’s time for both of you to get reprogrammed!
If there are some who still don’t like you having daily time to yourself, could they be the ones who’ve been draining your energy all along? When you enforce healthy boundaries for yourself, like Me-Time, a side benefit is finding out who cares about you and who only cares about you for what you can do for them. This can be a bit painful at first but deep down, you’ve always known and it’s time to begin trusting that fabulous intuition of yours. 😉
Understand also that you will begin to attract emotionally healthy people into your life when you take good emotional care of yourself. That’s another side benefit of Me-Time.
Now, leave a comment and tell me what your self-care, Me-Time will consist of. What time of day? How long to start with? What will you do?
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