WHY YOU DON'T DESERVE SELF-CARE (PART 1/3)

Lately I’m obsessed with self-care: it’s benefits, what stress has to do with it, how to have more self-care in our busy life and why it’s so important. In this 3 part series I want to talk about self-care and what it has to do with self-love.

Self-care is an act of self-love. You can express self-love through giving yourself time, which sounds ironic, but we give our time—our life—very lightly to activities and people, but we struggle to give it to ourselves. Once you make time for yourself, what do you do with that time? You can use it to do something that brings you joy, a healthy ritual (physical, mental or emotional), learning something new, resting, doing something exciting or something that’s a ‘complete waste of time’ but that you enjoy.

Self-care is a pillar of our self-esteem, it’s a reminder of our worthiness and a relationship healer.We actually wait until it’s too late to take care of ourselves:

I’ve been so stressed, so I deserve a massage.

I was so busy working I didn’t have time for lunch, so I deserve this dessert.

The kids are finally asleep, so I deserve this bath.

But this is the truth:

You don’t deserve self-care.

Deserving implies that you have to earn it. If self-care is as expression of self-love, why do you thing you need to earn your self-love? It’s crazy! Love is something that we are, therefore self-care should be something that we just do, not something that you do just when you feel you deserve it.

How about getting a massage, before your lower back hurts. Taking a bath because it feels good. Taking your vitamins before you start getting sick. Resting before you’re exhausted. It sounds counter-intuitive. But this makes sense, my friends! You know your own tendencies and you know your limits.

For example, I know I tend to overbook my schedule and I know I’ve hit my limit when I start getting back pain. Now I know that I need to work on my belief that ‘busyness means I’m important’ and I need to go to my massage therapist before I’m in back pain.

This is what it comes down to: work on my beliefs and take small, preventative self-care actions.

Of course there will be obstacles. I’ll go into them on my next blog post and I’ll also show you how to get over those obstacles (so stay tuned).

For now, over to you: What do you currently do for self-care? How do you know you’ve reached your limit and you’re in need of some self care?