EXTREME SELF-CARE…leads to extreme relationship care

Cheryl Richardson talks about the importance of extreme self-care in her book, Take Time For Your Life. Extreme self-care is about putting yourself first, getting off the treadmill of life, and putting the oxygen mask on you before placing it on your partner or children.

This concept is frequently foreign to many people. Women often put their relationships with others before their relationship with themselves. Men often put their work and finances before themselves or their relationships. The result is a lot of people running on an unfulfilling treadmill of obligation, stress and fear.

It’s very difficult to have a healthy relationship with others if we don’t have a healthy relationship with ourselves. This is true on so many levels. If I stay in a relationship that is hurtful to me, that is poor self-care. If I do everything in my family, am resentful about it yet set no limits around it– that is not good self-care…or family care. If I’m trying to do everything for everyone, chances are I will eventually grow tired, snap at the kids, be cold to my husband and be unfulfilled. This again is poor self-care that results in poor relationship care.

The bottom line is: If I don’t take care of me, or treat myself well, then I cannot expect others to…and neither can you. Good relationships start with you and branch out from there. If your relationships are toxic then perhaps it’s time to look at your self-care muscles and begin to strengthen them.

Challenge: Take time to look at how you’re doing with self-care. Are you taking care of all your needs including: health, emotional, spiritual, relationships, fun/leisure. Choose one area to start with and make a commitment to extreme self-care.

Self-esteem comes from honoring your healing journey

My life is not perfect. I make a lot of mistakes. Sometimes, I stumble
and fall. I am a work in progress. And when I remember that simple fact, I
am better for the experience.

It’s easy to start on a path of change and get so busy doing what we
need to do that we forget to stop, breathe, and acknowledge the effort we’ve
already made. We forget to honor our own healing journey.

There are times when I have to be reminded to do for myself what I do
for others. The other day, a friend caught me denigrating the work I put
into a project because it wasn’t done perfectly. When she asked how it was
coming along, I said, “I can’t seem to get it down perfectly. It’s horrible.”

I then spent ten minutes – which was as long as she could tolerate my
ranting- downplaying the work I had put into the project so far. She couldn’t
believe she was listening to me. “You could be one of your own clients,” she
said. And how right she was. I needed to be coached at the moment in time.
And after our conversation, I called my coach.

Healing is hard work. It takes great effort to stay on a path that
leads to purposeful self-discovery. It takes energy – persistent energy – to be
an active participant in the creation of our lives. A healing path
requires having the courage to shine a light or allow a light to shine on parts
of ourselves that we’d rather keep private. It means having the courage to
see the work that still needs to be done. Honoring our healing journey
invites us to appreciate the effort that has been made.
It’s important to heal and to honor the work done.