“I can’t afford self-care. I have no time for myself and I’m on a budget.“
I hear the misconception all around me. That self-care necessarily entails “expensive” or “lots of time” – like a holiday in the Bahamas.
It can be those things, yes. And, that’s nowhere near what the daily implementation of self-care means.
What is self-care really?
Self-care involves filling up our 4 energy tanks, so we don’t run our lives on “empty”. We’d never expect our car to keep running if we don’t fill up with gas/petrol, or take it in for it’s annual service. Yet, we expect ourselves to keep going (running!) while hardly ever “putting back into the tank.”
Our 4 energy tanks are: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
Sometimes they overlap. Each of those 4 tanks needs to be kept at a reasonable level. Once they run dry, it takes a long time to fill up again. Each one has a knock-on effect on the others, and they all affect our health, energy and wellbeing.
Self-care can be any activity to take care of the NEEDS of those tanks. For each of us, it will be unique, and partly depends on our strengths and values. Our strengths (unique for each individual) each has a NEED that must be fulfilled, before that strength can fully show up in the world in a healthy way.
