You know how I harp on good self-care all the time in these blogs and vlogs. Why do you ask? Because at the crux of what interferes with our ability to love our own stories is the strong programming and conditioning that taking care of oneself is somehow selfish. I’m going to help you blow that whole idea out of the water entirely.
Being good to ourselves has long been considered as taking time away from those we love or our purpose in life. As if the time for self-care is an indulgence that draws us away from where we “should” be. Well I am not a proponent of “should”ing on ourselves. For a long time in my own life I bought into this programming and conditioning that I must first put all things other than myself ahead of me and if I had time left over, then I could do the things I wanted. I have since changed my tune and am a strong advocate of others doing the same.
What research shows us over and over again, is that making self-care an afterthought compromises our ability to do the “selfless” things we want to do. It cripples us because as we run on empty, without enough care for ourselves, we start to do permanent damage and sometimes irreparable damage to ourselves as a result. Then we are left with less ability to care for those we love or serve our life‘s purpose.
This seems so backwards when you read it, right? It makes good common sense that you would need to be in your best shape in order to do the things that those who depend on you, need from you. Well, its not like that hasn’t occurred to humans before this. But it still bumps up against other social programming and conditioning that evaluates for us what is “good” and “not good” self-care. Well…guess what? All the conditioning is doing is preserving a system that supports and values self-sacrifice above self-care. It just gets sneaky about how it does it.
Take physical exercise for instance. This has popularly been thought of as a suitable form of self-care in the past 50 years or so, and something that one can make time for in their life. But think about the whys behind this. Is this meant to help us as a form of self-care? Or is the popularizing of this more to do with the strong programming and conditioning around how we look being a strong indicator of our worth in our culture? And furthermore…isn’t there a ton of money that is being made by a handful businesses as a result of the exercise industry? Seriously! This is not being done with our individual best interest in mind.
Now, this doesn’t mean exercise can’t be a fine form of self-care. It just means we must really shift our entire perspective on what it means to be “selfless” versus what it means to be “selfish”. All this month, I will be showing you how self-care is the cornerstone of being selfless, counter to what our social programming and conditioning has been telling us all along. Take a look at last week’s and this week’s vlog to learn more.
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