I think we women, (do you like how I use the royal “we”?) are extremely good at looking after everyone and everything else.
At our core we are nurturers. It’s kinda like it’s in our DNA.
For some the nurturing “urge” is fiercely strong, for others not so much and that’s OK too.
Including this trait as part of our overall makeup doesn’t take away any of our power.
“I believe in the power of women. As nurturers, we have a unique ability to care and share and make the world a better place.
Women Who Inspire are women who are making a difference.”
Donna Karan
What I find it does do is… it causes us to take our eye off ourselves. We expend so much of our energy nurturing all the different areas of our lives, we have no time, let alone energy, to look after the person who matters most.
I’ve said to so many of my clients …we leave ourselves, our health and our waistline on the back burner. And when left on the back burner for too long, we simmer slowly away…
In the beginning we often don’t notice. We don’t look in the mirror, or perhaps more truthfully – we avoid it. We may feel something physical, like an ache or a pain, we reach for a quick fix or we push it out of our mind. Negative emotions may surface to the top of our thoughts but we shove them down into that big black bag so that we don’t think about them and briefly hope they go away.
But they never go away… they just disappear into the dark for a while. Sometimes for days or weeks, often months and in many cases years…
Eventually we reach the bottom of the well. Our reserves run out, we’re exhausted, overwhelmed and our health suffers. That often shows up in one or multiple ways – our unwanted weight, our lack of sleep, being devoid of energy or, our bad moods – stressed rather than calm, sad rather than happy…
And we soldier on….
Sound familiar?
We know intuitively that something has to change but at first we ignore such thoughts. We don’t have time to think about ourselves and even if we do consider some self care, more often than not we feel we are being selfish.
Self care is not selfish.
Looking after you, carving out time especially and only for you is crucial. Most importantly for your health but also, it enables you to be fully present in the relationships you have with others, so that the nurturing, if you choose may continue.
8. Then choose what area/s you’d like to make changes to first ie Food, sleep, stress.
9. Then this is important – Chunk that list down, otherwise it can all seem like too much hard work and you put it and you again on to the back burner. I can’t stress enough how important this step is.
So how do you chunk it down? Choose ONLY one thing on that list you’d like to change. ie eat only when I am physically hungry, go to bed at 10 pm every night etc. I don’t want you to overwhelm yourself with more than one. Baby steps.
10. When you feel like you have mastered that change and made it a habit, then move on to the next and then the next one after that and so on.
The beauty about doing it one step at a time is momentum will build.
When you lean in, even gently, to taking care and looking after you first, you will see and feel the benefits sooner rather than later.
I promise you, your body and mind will thank you for it.
Be Healthy, Happy & Amazing!
Caroline x