Too BUSY for self-care? That's on you
For this article taking care of yourself means proactively addressing the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of your life in ways that help you achieve your long-term goals and/or improve short-term performance.
It’s essential to call out proactive because addressing an aspect of your life after it becomes an issue isn’t taking care of yourself; that is triaging a problem.
An example of the difference. Getting oil changes regularly is taking care of your car. Never getting an oil change but replacing the engine every time it ceases up is triaging the problem. It seems silly, but many folks wait for a knee replacement before building the habit of walking.
My confession
I have done a terrible job of taking care of myself during the second half of the year.
My justification
Personal and professional stress are my excuses for my lousy self-care behavior. The more stressed, the less my desire to work on myself. Regardless of my justifications or excuses, the lack of self-care had many negative consequences. I was more stressed, less effective, and delivered fewer essential results.
I created an acronym BUSY, to explain why I became neglectful. It might apply to you as well.
Bought the lie that self-care isn’t “that” important
I had a friend tell me that every year he has a wellness exam. Some years his health is a priority, so he exercises and eats ”healthy,” and some years, it isn’t, so he eats what he wants and barely moves off the coach. But every year at his wellness visit, his “health” is consistent and not that bad. He jokingly said the conclusion he has made is it must not matter what he does because his actions don’t impact his results.
It was a joke because it simply isn’t true and healthy people don’t actually believe their actions don’t matter even when they act like they don’t.
It may not always show up in significant ways or immediately but taking care of yourself is crucial in the daily flow of life. The better you care for yourself, the better you feel, and the better you perform.
Healthy habits lead to more energy. More energy leads to improved mental abilities, better physical performance, and more effective management of your emotions. All of these typically lead to better outcomes at work, at play, and in your relationships.
Aren’t better outcomes what you want for your life?
Urgent items got on my schedule too frequently
I allowed too many urgent requests/tasks to eat up my time. I became overscheduled with things that called for my attention and required action but added minimal value. I forgot to focus on doing the wisest things and respectfully declining other things even when they were good opportunities.
Not only did I focus too much on the urgent instead of the important, but I got a little lazy around asking for help. I was trying to do too much by myself. The result was I was consistently overcommitted and doing a lot, but I was rarely doing things well or moving forward on the results that mattered most.
Small daily decisions resulted in a slow fade with more significant long-term consequences
I didn’t make a conscious decision to stop taking care of myself. That would be silly. I know self-care is important. It was a slow fade into neglect.
I would make small concessions that didn’t seem significant on their own. I would justify not reading for a day because I was too tired. I would watch Netflix instead to rest my mind. I would then get hooked on a show. This turned into multiple days of being too tired (distracted) to read because I needed to see what happened in the next episode.
What happened, instead of becoming rested and ready, I got accustomed to the ease of inactivity and shied away from the effort required to grow. A new, less helpful habit was established.
Yesterday not tomorrow, became my measuring stick
Instead of looking to the future to remind me of the goals I was working towards and the need to keep working to achieve them. I looked to the past to justify my (in)actions.
My self-talk around physical health was more about how I am “healthier” than I used to be. I play volleyball every Sunday. Years ago, I wasn’t playing volleyball every Sunday. So I am much more active than I was a few years ago.
Just because my observation was accurate didn’t make it helpful. I was not moving closer to my current goal by acknowledging previous progress. I was simply using it as a justification for my inaction. I was better than yesterday but not closer to tomorrow.
Progress is a journey requiring consistent effort with a focus on the future vision.
Conclusion
Anyone can claim to be too busy to take care of themselves. But who wants to be just anyone?
To get beyond BUSY, you need to do three things
Focus on your future and the goal(s) you have for yourself. To help the goal stick make sure it has a meaningful why—a why that matters to you so it will carry you past the ease of comfort.
Be intentional about building healthy habits. Habits don’t know if they are helpful or not. Dopamine isn’t more potent when the habit is helpful. To the mind, the reward doesn’t feel different when it is helping you achieve the future versus staying stagnant in the present. So you must be intentional about what habits you build. Tie a habit to your future goals and remind yourself often of the future goal and how the habit supports achieving that goal.
Find an accountability person. It can be someone you are on the journey with or someone you know will help you stay the course. But it needs to be someone who cares enough about you to not let you justify or excuse away neglecting yourself.
Your goals are worth the effort required to achieve them and you are worth the effort to live your best life.