Authors: Lori Deschene
Those requirements are different for everyone. Some people need more alone time, others, more socialization. Some people require more downtime, others, more activity. And our needs change over time, too, depending on where we are and what we're going through. Sometimes we need to push beyond our comfort zone; sometimes we need to cut ourselves some slack. Sometimes we need more time for contemplation; other times we need to stop thinking and get going. This means we have to frequently reassess what we require physically, emotionally, and spiritually; and we have to stay open to changes as we navigate new situations and challenges. Most importantly, we need to see self-care as an integral part of our happiness and fulfillment—something that enables us to be who we want to be, not something that lengthens our to-do list and prevents us from doing what we want to do.
Books and articles on self-care often suggest that we can't help others until we help ourselves and then reference the airplane instructions to secure our own oxygen masks before assisting others. I've also written these words. It's true that taking care of ourselves better enables us to support other people, but it's not just about increasing our ability to be good for others. It's also about acknowledging that we deserve to be good to ourselves.
How do we identify what we require in this moment for our overall well-being? Why do we feel so resistant when it comes to doing the things that we know are good for us? How can we communicate our needs to other people, particularly when they voice needs of their own? Countless Tiny Buddha contributors have addressed these questions on the site, sharing their experiences and insights. Some of those include . . .
by Cat Li Stevenson
Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul
.
—M
AX
E
HRMANN
A couple years ago, I realized that I had lived twenty-eight years without knowing what it really means to love and take care of myself.
In 2010, I took some wonderful trips, trekking and exploring Costa Rica, Bangkok, and Taipei. My husband and I bought a second home, and I fully engaged myself in the improvements and the creativity of decorating a fresh canvas. I ran several races, including a half-marathon, and finished well. I joined a swanky health and fitness club where I could take trendy aerobic classes. I was “taking good care of myself.”
Life was good. I worked hard; I played hard. The end. That was the story I projected. But it was hardly that simple or fabulous. There was a whole lot of turbulence in my life that I was trying to fix externally.
My grandma—who became the closest female in my life after my mom passed away—moved back to Taiwan after living in the states for twenty-five years. Instead of sitting with the hurt, acknowledging
how I felt, I planned a trip. I reasoned with myself: “No worries, I'll visit her in Taiwan in a few months.” I booked a flight and put a Band-Aid on the fact that my grandma would no longer be thirty miles from me but instead over seven thousand miles away.
My baby sister—who opened my heart more than I ever thought possible—left for China. Due to financial hardship, my parents had decided that it would be better for her to live there with her grandparents for a few years. I fought it at first but then subdued my feelings by validating that this was the right thing to do. I remember waving good-bye to her from the taxi with this creeping feeling of sadness and then just stuffing it away.
While traveling overseas, I became pregnant and felt so much joy. My heart grew ten times bigger. It was that same bliss and expansion I'd experienced with my baby sister. After seven weeks, we learned that there was no heartbeat, and we'd lose the little bean to the universe. I remember feeling overwhelmed by grief for a few days and then bounced back as quickly as I could. I was back at the gym running full speed a few short days after my surgery.
Back at home, I became very busy trying to lease our current house and move into the new one. I remember my mother-in-law expressing sincere concern for me. She said, “Cat, I don't mean to be hard on you, but you're doing too much.”
I remember becoming irritated and defensive. I responded, “Don't worry about me. I know it seems like I'm always doing things, but I really do take good care of myself.”
After all, I worked out six days a week. I ate healthy meals. I drank sixty-four ounces of water daily. I had girl lunches. I had weekly date nights. I scheduled massages when I was stressed. And on most nights I even slept a minimum of six hours.
I took good care of myself—on the outside. On the inside, I buried vulnerability. I played the resiliency card. I sought out quick fixes. And I convinced myself I was okay. I wasn't taking care of myself emotionally at all. Unconsciously, I'd placed “I'll deal with it later” labels on several situations as they'd trickled into my life, unplanned. Somewhere along the overachieving path of seeking perfection and always looking into the future, I lost myself when these labels accumulated. I managed to forget how to take care of my inner world. After neglecting what was really going on in my life, I ended up curled into ball in our bedroom corner, head buried in my knees, feeling a heavy amount of pain all at once.
Humans are amazing, though; we adapt, we heal, we are capable of growing stronger. When we acknowledge that changes, challenges, and hardships are there to deepen us, to remind us that we
do
get second chances, and that we are each made up of love, compassion, and healing, something remarkable happens.
With this new awareness, I ended 2010 with the promise to live differently. I made a decision to wake up each day, wholly, by connecting to who I am—to nurture myself from the inside out, to be with life instead of delaying it—and, in turn, my days started to become more inviting again.
In 2011, I traveled to connect instead of using it as an escape. I became a morning person and started each day with ample time for writing, reading, and practicing yoga instead of rushing into the office, fighting traffic, and always feeling behind. I found peace by journaling and peeling back layers to heal the hurt that was buried beneath instead of pushing it away.
I started acknowledging my accomplishments and mini-successes and celebrated with small rewards instead of rushing to the next best thing. I slowed down, simplified tasks, reduced my online time, and committed to less instead of doing, moving, and achieving, simply for the sake of it.
I felt. I embraced the sadness I'd been carrying with me and leaned into my fears instead of placing a patch on them. I listened to my body. I became a vegetarian and practiced mindful eating instead of counting calories and agonizing over whether or not I consumed too many carbs.
I chose to let go of the stories I kept replaying about the past and the worries I created for the future instead of clinging on to fear and anxiety. I practiced saying no to the commitments that didn't serve my values instead of saying yes to everything and shorting myself with each added responsibility.
I created sanctuaries—weekly time for me to relax and just be—instead of waiting for burnout before replenishing. I followed my intuition and listened to myself in meditation instead of thinking and overanalyzing to the point of exhaustion. I asked myself
questions and allowed it to be okay that I didn't have the answers right away instead of being hard on myself for not knowing.
I began fully acknowledging the present in its entirety—every aspect, including the playful, joyful moments, and the uncomfortable, challenging ones. Suddenly, the world took on a different appearance—a kinder, more meaningful, more abundant and compassionate glow.
When we take the time to reconnect with ourselves, replace our fears with trust, and learn to let go of the things we cannot control, this is taking care. When we listen to our intuition, embrace all of our imperfections, and stay authentic to who we are, this is taking care. When we ground ourselves in the present and make mental space to find clarity, this is taking care. When we discover our interior barriers and find courage to dissolve them, this is taking care. When we learn to be gentle with ourselves, this is truly taking care.
When was the last time you acknowledged the feelings that are asking for your attention? How do you take care of yourself from the inside out so that you can fully experience life?
by Hannah Braime
Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything
.
—J
ACK
K
ORNFIELD
I find it hard to do things I know are good for me, harder than anything else in my day-to-day life. Yoga, meditation, and journaling: these have all been invaluable tools during my personal journey; yet I have to will, and sometimes fight, myself in order to do them.
It's not that the activities themselves are hard (although yoga can be intense). It's the motivation, the internal debate that starts up every day that I struggle with. Afterward, I feel great, more in touch with myself and far more at peace. But to get there, it's a psychological mission.
I used to think it was just me—that everyone else sat down to these activities with an eager mind and an open heart—especially people who write about these things, like I do, and practice them daily, like I want to. The fact that I was less skipping joyfully to and from these activities and more dragging myself with gritted teeth left me feeling like a fraud, which meant I wanted to do these things even less.
Over time, I learned more about self-acceptance. I learned to accept that this was the way I am, and perhaps I will always find it difficult to sit down and do these things. Yet I still felt alone with my struggles, and therefore afraid to really talk about them with anyone else.
Last week, I was talking to a friend about challenges he was having with a course I run. He was saying he felt resistance, he didn't know why, and it seemed like everyone else found sitting down and doing the work a walk in the park. They could just do it, whereas for him it was a daily battle. That sounded familiar.
As soon as I wasn't trying to hide the resistance, as soon as I let myself talk about it openly, I could think more clearly about why I felt that way and what was behind that resistance. And out of all those reasons came the realization: the resistance is on my side, and sometimes it's just misguided. Here are the different types of resistance we may encounter and why:
First form: resistance to changing
. When we engage in practices like journaling, meditation, or even exercising, we might feel a resistance to change. This resistance might conflict with a desire for healthy change—the desire that prompted us to start up that activity in the first place—but it has a very healthy grounding behind it: change can be scary. Change is about going into the unknown, while what we have right now is familiar and comfortable, even if we're not 100 percent happy with it.
Second form: resistance to what we might find
. Sometimes self-knowledge can be like charting new, undiscovered land. You think you've explored it all, then you turn a corner and there are miles and miles of untouched terrain still to go. You have no idea what might be lurking under the rocks out there, and sometimes it feels safer to just leave it untouched.
When we engage in activities that are good for our well-being, self-acceptance, and self-knowledge, we risk relaxing our defenses and potentially finding out things about ourselves that we might not like. The most important part of self-growth, though, is learning to acknowledge and accept those things for what they are—and even feel compassion for them.
Third form: resistance to being nice to ourselves
. It's often an unconscious core belief that we don't deserve to spend time on and be nice to ourselves. As an abstract concept, it's a no-brainer: of course people deserve to be nice to themselves. But when was the last time you consciously did this? Taking time to nourish our emotional and spiritual well-being, taking time to get to know ourselves better can be a real challenge even if we think other people deserve it.
If we were brought up in particularly critical households, if a lot of value was placed on our achievements over our happiness when we were younger, or if we grew up in environments where self-care practices were frowned upon or ridiculed, we might
feel a lot of resistance to being nice to ourselves. It might conflict with the messages we received as children, which we felt we needed to obey to be loved. As adults, these messages are translated into core beliefs about ourselves, even if we don't apply them to other people. But, again, they are there to protect us, and although they might now be obsolete, they are still working to make us loveable to the people we used to depend on.
Fourth form: resistance to trusting a process
. I have a mini-cynic who lives in my head and scoffs at my yoga, scorns my journaling practice, and says, “Really, aren't you above this hippy nonsense?” I keep telling that voice that “no, I'm not above this hippy nonsense,” but it still pipes up to have its say.
Trusting a process—especially a slow process that might not contain any obvious lightbulb moments and requires time and patience—is difficult. We might not feel like we are in control; it could seem like we're giving our all and getting very little in return. I don't think I've ever had any major epiphanies in my personal development; instead of a cascade, I've experienced steady, slow drips. I can't think of any major changes that happened day-to-day, but when I look back on a few years ago, the difference is enormous.
Last form: resistance to our own humanity
. I recently started a regular “morning pages” style of journaling (writing three pages stream-of-consciousness every morning) after a few
months off. I was shocked to find that, although I started off my journaling session feeling very virtuous for having overcome my resistance, I became increasingly anxious while writing. I couldn't understand how, after years of practice, I could still be feeling anxious about journaling. “I should be past this,” and “I should be self-accepting enough to not feel anxious when I journal,” were the dominant thoughts that fed my anxiety further and created resistance to opening up my laptop the next day.