Your life matters.

In the last few weeks, many of my clients have expressed an increase of anxiety, worry, feeling a loss of control, and not taking care of themselves. Many have stated that much of their time is spent worrying about other people, other events and crises, and just about anything but themselves.

They often say that all these other things matter more than taking care of themselves and often add that if they do self-care or even think about self-care they feel selfish.

Self-care is not selfish. It is sustainability. It is resilience. It is rest. It is renewal. It is filling your vessel so that you have something to pour out to other people and things.

Self-care is immensely important. Especially in times like these. Just the overwhelming nature of anxiety and worry and adding serving other people and things is so great that we can easily find ourselves crushed.

We then feel hopeless, defeated, tired, empty, sick, and lost.

Many people push back at the idea of self-care because they think it must be some grand gesture or huge undertaking that they assume they have no time for. But self-care can be minutely small and still have a huge impact.

If you get up five to ten minutes earlier before anyone else and spend time alone just gathering yourself and your thoughts. You can have a cup of coffee or tea, read a short uplifting or motivational item, sit and watch the sunrise, meditate, deep breathing, a warm washcloth to your face, stretching, yoga, or anything you can put in just a short few minutes.

It can change your life.

If you schedule all this time for other people and their needs and events and other things or events and it is in your calendar of things you have to do, there is nothing stopping you from scheduling time for yourself in the exact same way except you.

Make time in your calendar for something just for you. Again, it does not have to be grand or huge and does not have to consume a lot of time. But it does have to be just for your, to serve to fill you up, to build you up, to give you strength, to reset your mind, to feed your body. Something to relax you or invigorate you as you need.

Plan for your self-care. Schedule it. Follow through with it. Accept it. Know that it is for your good and therefore the good of everyone and everything around you. When you are filled and cared for, it is so much easier to fill and care for other people and other things.

Vary your self-care to serve all the parts of yourself. Sometimes you fill the creative you. Other times you fill the physical you. Still other times you fill the mental or spiritual you. And even still other times you fill the you that just wants to take a power nap.

Try something you have always wanted to do but felt you had no time or that it was selfish to do so when so many other people and things needed your attention. Have you ever wanted to paint, or learn to crochet, or mix essential oils, or make a body scrub, or try a something active, or start a journal.

ANYTHING works for self-care as long as it is about filling yourself up in some way or replenishing some part of yourself.

Do not wait until you think you will have more time. If you have time for other people and other things you have time for yourself. Choose to love yourself because your life matters.