If You Don’t Do At Least One Thing For Yourself Every Day, You’re Not Honoring Yourself
How many times have you heard or even been involved in a conversation that goes something like this:
“How’s your life going?”
“Oh nothing special. Just been super busy. focusing on work and school.”
I’m gonna be brutally honest about something; I’m getting extremely tired of hearing from people about how they don’t have time to do things for themselves as individuals. Now look, I understand why shit’s so busy; gotta #hustleeveryday to #paythembills and maybe even got some of that #parentslife going on. I’m not trying to say the world is not a busy place. I don’t know everyone’s life. But, I do know that when I hear someone talking about their life in terms of how busy they are all the time, my first reaction is that I want to shake those people vigorously and scream about how there is a wicked easy solution to this epidemic of busyness!
And let’s not kid ourselves, it is in fact an epidemic. There has already been numerous studies examining how being too busy leads to poor physical and mental health, not to mention how being too busy can cause so much stress. Some researchers and prominent thinkers are even going so far as to say being too busy is a modern day sickness. I’ve even mentioned in a past post about how being too busy, especially around the holidays, can stifle creativity. Again, I understand why people are busy. I am not denying anyone’s experience to need to make $$ for different reasons. But when making money is coming at the expense of self-care and self-love, something is extremely wrong with how life is being lived. Not only that, but when it starts to feel like making money is disconnecting you from living life on your terms, something has to change. It’s no wonder so many people are unhappy!
This is partially why I wanderlusted my way through Egypt, met sage-like artists in Toronto or even took a couple of work exchanges in the states, so I could live life on my terms, rediscovering what makes me happy and take steps to nurture that part of myself as opposed to following the expectations of what society says I should be doing to be happy.
It was only after I bought my ticket to Egypt did I decide to inform my parents of my plans. Naturally, they did not take it well. Granted, before that I told them I was job hunting, so I can understand their shock when I finally broke the news. I still remember one particular lament from that tense phone call, my parents saying something along the lines of “I don’t understand what we did to deserve this!” And while at the time, and even today, I still maintain that this trip couldn’t have had less to do with them than with my own self-care and worth, I would by lying if I said it had 0% impact on my decision-making process. I acknowledge that, in part, they did have some impact on this decision, but not perhaps in a way they might think.
You see, I believe the only thing that separates different generations is each generation’s ability (or lack thereof) to learn from each other. Needless to say, I had plenty of crash courses and lectures about failed dreams from my parents. I’m sure to some extent, the majority of us have experienced a similar conversation with their parents, where one or both parents say something like “Well do you think I pictured myself being here and doing this when I was ______ years old?”
Here’s a better example to illustrate what I mean by learning from my parents. On multiple occasions, my mother has brought up her failed bid to become an art therapist, thanks in part to the 50’s mentality of her parents who wondered why my mom would want to commit so much time and money into an education and a career when she would eventually bear children and switch (like she had a choice) to the full-time job of parenting.
My father barely got through his teen years thanks to his mother signing him up for Scientology’s indentured servitude sector known as the Sea Org before having to literally escape in the middle of the night, thanks to tactics that up until the moment I heard this story, I’d only seen in movies. It wasn’t too long after this harrowing experience my father, who was barely in his early 20’s, met my mom and jumped into marriage, leaving hardly any time for himself to, I feel, get to know himself and what he really wanted out of life.
There have been times where I’ve heard an older adult tell me something along the lines of “I’m sorry we all can’t be frolicking in fields and traveling around the world, some of us have more important priorities to deal with!”
I get that, but we all have to take a break, even from things we love doing. I mean, many occupations allow employees at least a 15 or 30 min lunch break. Even workplaces understand this. Well, to a limited extent anyway.
Again, I understand how priorities change a little once children are involved. However, just as the pre-flight safety speech just before takeoff says, “Make sure to adjust your own mask before helping others.” Or… if you want to get more spiritual about it…
It frustrates me to see so many people working for something else instead of themselves; working for the weekend, workin' 9 to 5, workin’ for that dolla, workin’ for the man, working for retirement, etc. This is one of the main reasons I was turned off by workin’ for the man in the system. As I mentioned previously, part of why I left for Egypt on a whim was because I couldn’t participate in said system until I learned to bring some of that self-love, self-care into my life, doing at least one thing for my self every day. I felt like I needed to balance out my being after spending literally my first 24-ish years on the planet doing things that other people and institutions expected of me. Even now, after having done this and making small steps back into said system with a part time job, it can still be challenging. Even when I didn’t have a part time, and I was roaming around the states, doing various work exchanges in New Mexico and Indiana, I still occasionally found it challenging to do one thing for myself every day, again, due to expectations from others.
When I haven’t been able to do at least one thing for myself, it stresses me out and throws me into survival mode. And here’s the thing, there’s no way we can’t be in survival mode all the time. Also, if we’re all super totally busy now, how much busier are we going to be when the holidays come around? Geesh! I can still hear some in the older generations saying something to the effect of “Well this is what life is, get used to it.” Which, to me, if life really is about not being able to do several, or even one thing for yourself each day, is it really worth living in the first place?
Luckily, as I said earlier, that’s the solution! It’s simple! Just do something, at the very least, one thing for yourself each day. That’s it! And here’s the best part, regardless if that something involves getting ice cream, working out, meditating, grabbing a meal, writing, painting, dancing, hiking; it doesn’t matter. Whatever thing you feel like doing on any given day, make time for it. What is so hard about doing ONE thing for yourself everyday?
Sure, it may only be one thing, but it is a start to cultivating a deeper relationship with yourself, as opposed to NOT doing anything until you explode! I think my sudden departure to Egypt was a kind of explosion in itself. I mean, after that, I did spend the next 5-ish years traveling around, out of the system.
The point is, whatever the thing is you want to do, you can cherish and prolong it. If timing really is an issue, do it at the end of the day. Or at the very beginning. Whatever works.
When we give ourselves a little self love, not only is it rewarding, but it’s a subtle reminder that we can do our thing too. Also, when we do things that make us happy, our brain releases a hormone called oxytocin, which is a hormone secreted, to a certain extent, whenever we do something that feels good. This chemical can sometimes be the difference between feeling like it’s been a good day or a terrible day.
Again, I can’t stress this enough, but all of us have the power to get that oxytocin flowin' through our brains even if we only do one thing for ourselves each day. The only thing stopping you, is you. Honor yourself. Love yourself. It doesn’t have to be anything super elaborate, just fucking do it. Our human lives are short, but they don’t have to be boring and unhappy due to self-neglect.
I’ve written other posts about taking small steps to improving quality of life as well. Below are a couple in case you are curious.
