Self Care Starts with Self Awareness
Last week I did a presentation on self-care. Self-care is one of my favorite and more popular topics, and I have presented on this topic numerous times. Self-care is at the crux of all we do. If we aren't caring for ourselves, nurturing ourselves, we aren't as happy, productive, and engaged. Self-care is also such a 'buzzword' these days. We all know HOW to care for ourselves.
As I was preparing for the presentation, I pulled out my usual information about taking care of the self-body, mind, and spirit. I looked at my information on taking three deep breaths, getting enough sleep, exercising, eating right, and drinking enough water. Then, I thought about my struggle with self-care. It isn't so much that I don't know HOW to do it or don't know what the ideal steps to self-care are. It is that I get so caught up in my to-do list, obligations (real and imagined), and the anxiety that surrounds them that I don't even notice that my neck is hurting or my breath is shallow and from my chest.
I am most successful at self-care when I am taking the time to build self-awareness; when I take the time to notice how I am feeling, to pay attention to my body and not just what comes next. I have found, self-care has to start with having the self-awareness that we need to take care of ourselves. To break the cycle of push, push, push, we need to establish the time to do that. We need to establish rituals that break us out of our familiar patterns.
Rituals such as:
Every time you hit a stoplight, take three deep belly breaths.
At work, every time you hang up the phone, take a drink of water.
Every hour get up and walk around or do some stretching.
When you are eating a meal, pay attention to what and how you are eating.
When you are in the shower, take the time to be in the shower, not reciting your to-do list.
When we can establish these rituals we bring to break the cycle of push push push, we hop off the proverbial treadmill for a period and bring awareness to our mind, body, and spirit. From this place of awareness, we can then bring some self-care, self-acceptance, and self-love. The trick is to engage in the rituals and after each ritual or as we are doing the ritual to bring awareness to our body, mind, and spirit.
Self-awareness gives us a chance to tune into what we are feeling, what we need and how we can best care for ourselves. The bottom line without self-awareness, there can be no self-care. Without self-care, there can be no growth because we are too freaking exhausted from life's obligations to think about what we need, want, and desire.