You know that I’m pretty passionate about practicing smart self-care, right?
I write, coach, and speak about it. I lead retreats about it.
You could almost say that I eat, breathe, and live self-care. (Oh I wish it were that easy!)
Why do I do this? Because after almost 17 years as a business owner, I know this to be true…
To live a happy, healthy, sustainable life, you MUST have balance between work and play. You MUST take time to fill up your own gas tank. You MUST integrate aspects of your whole life (relationships, spirituality, career, fun, health, financial, etc.) not just one or two small aspects of it.
But sometimes we get carried away with our self-care goals.
In our pursuit for a better, healthier, more integrated life, we start to put “shoulds” into our lives.
A lot of our self-care goals sound like this:
- Pray or meditate once every day
- Call 2 friends for a pep talk
- Write 3 things you’re grateful for each day
- Exercise 4 times per week
- Eat 5 servings of veggies per day
Those are all good self-care practices but they are awfully goal oriented, aren’t they?
Achieve. Accomplish. Do. Strive.
Sure, sometimes it feels really good to check things off of the “to-do” list. But when there’s a numerical goal attached to them, they can feel like “shoulds” and if we don’t achieve them, we don’t feel it’s good enough. Surely calling one friend supports our self-care. Exercising three times per week is still pretty great. Eating four veggies a day definitely supports our health.
So what if you try practicing self-care that doesn’t have any numbers attached to it for a change?
- Take a blanket and sit under a tree and gaze up at the sky
- Take a stroll near the river and talk to the birds, squirrels, and turtles
- Play with your child (or grandchild or niece/nephew or neighbor) on the playground
- Take a work day off and don’t make plans… just see what calls to you
- Talk lovingly to yourself
Be. Breathe. Enjoy. Relax.
Aaaah… that sure feels different, doesn’t it?
When you release the numbers and any expectations around your self-care strategy, it feels more open, expansive and peaceful. And THAT’s a worthy goal for anyone!
Revitalizing Action: I invite you to choose one thing that you’ll commit to doing in the next few days that fits the bill of non-goal-oriented “no shoulds” self-care. Send me a note, I’d love to hear about it!
And if one of those things is committing to go on retreat with me in April at the next Revitalization Retreat (which is completely non-goal self-care oriented), we’d love to have you. Early bird deadline ends today!
Here’s to self-care without shoulds!
Elizabeth