Commitment can be difficult.
Especially when it’s a commitment you must make to yourself because you’re used to taking care of everyone around you and forgetting to do the same for yourself.
If this rings true, please hear me when I gently suggest that you’ve gotta stop this behavior or your light will burn out. This will leave you unable to help anyone do anything because your health and state of mind will be completely depleted.
Self care isn’t a one time thing. It’s something you must do over and over again every single day.
For giving people, this may be a hard thing to do because you won’t know where to begin. So to help you out, I’ve put together a list to help you get started. Take this list and make your own. This list is mine but in my attempts to stay vulnerable, a.k.a. real and raw, I wanted to share with you to let you know that while I’m great at giving to others, I’m not always great at giving to myself.
Without further ado, here is the list:
1. Start a love file. Document the notes you have, quotes you love and things that remind you of love in the world and in your life. It’s great to read it later when you need it most.
2. Not to do list: Make a list of things that will make you stressed and avoid them like the plague at least once a month. i.e. Work, people that make you feel unloved, bad emotions, unhealthy environments, et cetera.
3. If you make decisions with your heart, using your head can be a difficult thing. To change that, make decisions with your head when you’re going through a rough time.
4. Step outside without your phone. Go for a walk, run in the park, go cloud-watching, and lay on a blanket outside and watch the world with childlike eyes and a wandering spirit.
5. Change up the paths. Take another route to work, the grocery store, or doctors office. It’s a fun way of making neural pathways in brain; which make you feel happy and healthy.
6. Change up the way you brush your teeth, your morning workout, or even the way you eat. It’s making something you do every single day feel less redundant.
7. Goof off for five minutes as often as you can throughout each day. Playing isn’t just for kids, don’t ever forget that.
8. Create a deliberate habit, and routinize something small in your life by doing it in the same way each day—what you wear on Wednesdays; Mean Girls wear pink.
9. Do a mini-purdge. Recycle three things from your wardrobe that you don’t love or regularly wear.
10. Edit your social media feeds, and take out any negative people that don’t care about you nor your feelings. Life’s too short to be friends with people that don’t make you feel loved. That’s not friendship.
Make a commitment to yourself, even if you’re a commitment phobe to yours wellbeing. You have to promise yourself that you will hold your wellbeing sacred against all things. Nothing is worth losing yourself to nor losing your integrity to build someone else up.
