Tag: self-care

Take Care

There’s a member of the team that usually gets overlooked. And yet, if you don’t take care of that member, the business will never get to the place it could be. That member is the person in the mirror.

We are always taking care of others. We tell them when they’ve done well. When they mess something up and feel bad about it, we are there to make them realize everyone makes mistakes and encourage them to do better. When we see somebody struggling too long, we encourage them to take a break or come back to it in the morning if the hours late.

Quite often, we forget to do these things for that person in the mirror. Wait a minute, isn’t that person in the mirror ourselves?

If we do all this good for all these other people and help them make their goals, shouldn’t we do that for ourselves? It is not selfish, petty, or childish for us to take care of ourselves. It is necessary because if we go down, how can our company stand?

Self-care and self-compassion are vital to everyone in every organization. It is as essential as anything we accomplish.

Protocols

It’s another day, and my list of things to do is growing, and growing, and growing. I was explaining to a good friend yesterday a portion of what I was trying to do. The conversation helped me to realize how much I’m trying to accomplish and made me ask the question, “Am I actually accomplishing something, or am I just continuing to add to the heap?”

Often, I feel like I am trying to level a mountain, and it just keeps growing under me. How does this come to be? Not being able to say no very well. Wanting to do many things. And the biggest of all not having a robust set of procedures to help manage my personal and professional life.

Most successful people have some plan to help ensure good self-care. Good self-care helps to ensure you are ready to do good for yourself and others.  They start with a set of protocols for self-care. They have a process and a time for preparing and going to sleep. They have a set of actions and a time for getting up in the morning and know what they’re going to do to prepare for the day. These protocols may be identified as morning rituals, standard operating procedures, processes, or something else. It doesn’t matter what they’re called the only real question is whether or not they work. Protocols only work if they are used.

If you don’t have protocols for self-care, it is never too late. You set your mind to the fact that you will try something and stick with it.

You can set a time to go to bed, and prepare for that time by curtailing the use of interactive electronics about an hour before then. You could choose to write or read instead of playing computer games. Sleeping in a cool room without much light gives you better rest.

Plan when you will wake up in the morning and what you’re going to do. What do you need to do to feel good at the start of the day? Take a shower? Shave something? Exercise? Grab caffeine or something to eat? Go over your plans for the day?

You can do many things to improve life and make it work in your favor. Only you know what is best for you. You are the one that will know for sure. I can tell you that a little planning and commitment can go a long way in helping.

%d bloggers like this: