The Importance Of Self Care For Health And Stress Management … is very important!!!!

Today I want to share 2 of the most helpful mindsets I use to help clients prioritize their self care.

These mindsets are:

1) Self care saves time – your brain will catch up on lost time if you don’t take care of yourself
2) There’s a difference between being busy and actually getting things done

By self care I mean getting more sleep, meditating, drawing boundaries at work, and even feeding themselves regularly. Regularity is important to build habits. Even doing small things regularly can help.

One of the benefits of taking an Ashwagandha supplement for stress relief each day is the stress relief, yes, but simply the act of regularly doing something for your mental. health can start a positive upward cycle.

And the thing about self-care, is that often times the people I work with know full well they need to take care of themselves better.

But a few obstacles get in their way, like stress.

The two most common obstacles I see are:

1) not enough time
2) Thinking they aren’t working hard enough if they stop to pause and catch their breath

Fortunately the two mindsets above can help overcome these two mental obstacles so that you take better care of yourself.

The Importance Of Self Care For Health And Stress Management Commentary:

The two helpful mindsets I share with people relate to these two problems. So let’s dive in.

The first problem that I see people have looks like where extremely busy day, running around, and usually this type of person is a people pleaser.

I don’t mean to say people pleaser in a bad way.

It’s just this person is great at making other people happy. But often times this person doesn’t draw boundaries for themselves.

So they let a lot of time go by and they get run down, and then they binge eat. They know they need to pause and slow down, but they are people pleasers.

So they don’t take time for themselves and…

The key mindset is realizing that often times binge eating, is their brain’s way of forcing the person to take care of themselves.

I used to work with a guy in college who whenever he had a test would study all day and night, with no brakes. And then he would binge eat.

His total time from going to the restaurants and going to different restaurants and eating and coming back and laying down feeling bloated and sick, was about 3 hours.

That’s 3 hours where his brain essentially was shut down.

So you do the math… What if he spent an hour or two before the binge, maybe going on a walk eating some food relaxing? What would have happened?

Now don’t get me wrong, this type of mindset can be really hard to internalize.

We grow up in a culture where work is prioritized over everything. We are expected to work like machines, without pause or getting tired.

But you also know that this type of lifestyle simply is too harmful.

So I know that you feel you don’t have time, but it’s crucial that you also see that your lack of time to care for yourself, is directly impacting the binge eating.

Binge eating is forcing you to slow down. If you want to stop binge eating, you’ll have to slow down beforehand and take care of yourself.

But … slowing down during the middle of a workday is hard.

And this brings me to the second most common problem.

The next problem is thinking you aren’t working hard enough if you stop and take a break to care for yourself.

This type of thinking often gets confused with busyness and actual productivity.

I just want to share one quick example of this, when I started working with a woman who is self-described as a perfectionist, an achiever type A personality.

And we were talking at self-care, and so I asked if she had been able to take care of herself today.

She replied that ‘no’ she had been running around all day and hadn’t had time.

She had meetings back to back all day and haven’t had a chance to eat much, let alone go for a walk.

And so I asked her where are you going to be and 30 years from now after you’ve been working for so long and so hard without any breaks?

How’s your health going to be?

The importance of self care for health and stress management revolving around reflecting upon these types of questions!

And I continued on… And what do you think would happen if you drew boundaries?

Like let’s say you gave yourself 30 minutes for lunch and saw this time as a way to refuel, and refocus.

And then you also drew a boundary for dinner time that you wouldn’t check emails for a few hours when you got home.

Would that really affect your life your work life in a negative way? The answer is no.

And in addition, can you really afford a breakdown? Self care is preventative. It prevents breakdowns. It keeps you at your best and stops you from being at your worst.

And let’s be honest… You’re procrastinating, or not focusing on entirely, the most important thing at work.

If you focus and take care of yourself I guarantee you will have the courage to really zone in and focus on what the most important thing at work is.