Self-care: Vital to your Business and your Life

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I said, “I don’t have time to meditate for 20 minutes. I don’t even have 5 minutes!” And he said, “Then you should sit and meditate for an hour.”

My mentor told me about this conversation she had with her therapist a few months ago when I broke down on the phone with her. I was blurry-eyed and feeling like I was drowning. She asked me if I was taking at least an hour for myself a day. An hour a day? How could I devote an hour to myself when every minute of my life was accounted for? I have so many things piling up on my must-get-done list, I have stress up to my eyeballs. The “hustle,” as they call it, was grinding me to dust. So when my mentor asked me if I was taking care of myself, she already knew the answer. Of course I wasn’t. She could hear it in my voice; I was coming apart at the seams. I didn’t have 5 minutes to spare for myself - which meant that I needed way more than that in self-care.

The hustle is hustling us.

Can you relate? If you took a look at your schedule right now, how many things on your list pertain to taking care of you? Maybe you’re not at the point of ugly-crying over the phone to your mentor, but every person I know gets overwhelmed with the demands of modern life. Everyone I know has some form of anxiety. Every human I’ve ever talked to has moments where they honestly forget the last time they sat and simply took a moment to breathe. Every single business-owner, or employee of a business, puts work before themselves at times. For some of us, ‘sometimes’ putting work first quickly turns into ‘all the time,’ which leaves zero time at the end of the day for us. When we continue to push and grind and hustle without picking our head up, our work and our lives begin to suffer. Self-care is not just a buzz-word. Self-care is essential to being successful in business, and essential to living a good life.

Are you working yourself dry?

My mentor’s therapist told her to find an hour to meditate when she couldn’t find 20 minutes because it was more important than ever that she make the time. The more we have on our plates, the more important and vital self-care becomes. Even more crucial is prioritizing it within our schedules, because it can easily slip to the bottom of the pile in the midst of day-to-day life. One of my favorite teachers in the self-development space, Rachel Hollis, has a great anecdote to depict what it looks like when we aren’t prioritizing self-care.

Imagine yourself as a beautiful vase; while standing upright, the universe/God/whatever you believe in pours into you everything you need to thrive in life and in your work - energy, love, grace, patience. When you go out into your life, you begin leaning over to take care of your business, your kids, your job, your home, your bills, your pets, your friends, your family, your ever-growing to-do list - you pour a little of yourself this way and that way. You keep pouring and pouring, allotting every drop to everything else in your life until you’re empty. That’s the moment I called my mentor with tears streaming down my face. I had poured myself dry.

You can’t pour from an empty cup - or vase.

The key is the ability to take moments to pull back and be refilled before we get to empty. My mom has always told me, “You can’t pour from an empty cup.” We can’t keep up with all the things if we have nothing left. When we continue to lean over into every facet of our life and deplete ourselves, all of those pieces begin to suffer. Things are forgotten; appointments get missed. We snap at someone for no reason. Our bodies begin to break down; our muscles get tight, and sometimes we actually get sick. We fail to acknowledge these initial signs of being depleted so we can simply keep up. We usually don’t see that we’re running low until we have absolutely nothing left.

You need self-care to thrive.

Here’s the thing about a vase that is continually filling up - eventually, it overflows. All the goodness you’re naturally filled with while practicing self-care seeps out into every area of your life - if you continuously take care of yourself and allow yourself to be constantly filled. Taking care of yourself doesn’t have to take away from everything else; it only means that you get filled up first. And when you’re filled up, you’re better able to handle all the things in your life. You’re better able to show up and grind. You’re a better boss, a better spouse, a better employee, a better parent, a better you. The best version of you is thriving, and self-care is vital to your life and everything in it. Make the time. You don’t need to keep pouring to crush it in your life; allow yourself to simply overflow. When the tide rises, all the ships in the harbor rise with it.

Here are 6 low-cost or free things to try at home and around town; put some in your calendar today!

Alli is a local storyteller, creative professional, and book-nerd who grew up loving Berks County. She is a communications professor at Alvernia University, and the Director of Marketing for a national project management firm. When she isn't reading, writing or teaching, you can find her practicing yoga with her husband, hiking Nolde Forest with her pup, or hanging out with family in a local brewery.