Prescribing Self Care
Recently I had this realization about balance…
It came to me as I was prescribing self care as a solution to my overwhelm. The amount of self care I needed to counter my work stress was actually stressing me more. Here I was yet again lying to myself that the answer to my woes would be scheduling in the gym and a massage or facial. What the hell is wrong with us that our lifestyles require so much self care that we never have any space or time to relax?
Often when I feel like shit I blame not working out. But not working out isn’t the real reason I feel like shit. It’s a symptom of already feeling like shit. And what usually makes me feel like shit is STRESS.
Stress makes it hard to know what’s actually a priority and it often fuels my belief that there isn’t enough time in a day. That there are always more important things to do then to take time for myself. Often I rationalize not working out as a means to get more done. Telling myself that should I take the time to workout, I will be more likely to fall behind on something else. But as most of us would know, to do lists almost never get fully done & a workout rarely hinders productivity.
The fact that I don’t feel safe enough to take just 1 hour of my day to do whatever I want with it is SO FUCKING SAD. So damn depressing, so obviously ingrained in hustle culture that we think it is a luxury to be able to take time for ourselves. Stress and capitalism cause us to prioritize hard work over easy fun. Labour over freedom and mental struggle over physical fun.
Our unsustainable lifestyles are the problem.
Visualize our lifestyles as a balance scale. Self care & fun are on one side while work & stress are on the other. The more stress we add, the more fun and self care we prescribe. But there is a limit to how much fun and how must stress we can add before it over flows and life just feels too heavy. No wonder self care & fun have also become an overwhelming to do list.
The benefit of realizing this is that now when I chose not to workout, I see it as a byproduct of my stress or false belief there is not enough time. So I can either counter my belief by saying there is always enough time or I can trim the fat off my to do list to feel less stress. It doesn’t mean I will always work out, it just means the cycle of shame doesn’t repeat and instead I acknowledge my stress and doing so gives me some credit. If my stress has be believing I can’t find an hour in the day for myself…then my stress is the problem not my will power.
Because when I have nothing to do and a wide open day, it’s easy to do things for me, it’s fun even. I’ll dance while I clean, chat with family while I put away laundry, run errands with a killer outfit. Space and time are true luxury and most of us could take way more of it for free. Which is also the ultimate resistance to this bullshit system.
