What’s the first thing to go when things get tough or you run out of time or energy?
Eating well?
Socialising (on screen or in person)?
Giving your dreams and goals the time and energy they deserve?
Exercise?
Meditation?
Falling back into old bad habits?
Something else?
What would it be like to BE CURIOUS about any lapses rather than shame spiralling?
To ask yourself WHY you ate ____ instead of _____?
To get curious about why you went to bed so late and didn’t make time to wind down?
To wonder why you haven’t prioritise the people closest to your heart and perhaps haven’t set limits with people you would benefit from better boundaries with?
To give yourself permission to fear the potential failure and, to paraphrase Susan Jeffers, do it anyway?
To notice what kind of movement and exercise your body craves in your current mood instead of trying to force something that doesn’t feel right?
To sit with the fact that meditation potentially feels impossible but you’re still making time for whatever practice feels most gentle and appropriate in this moment? (Maybe a simple Mindful Minute?)
To avoid beating yourself up and instead ask what need that ‘bad’ habit was trying to meet? How you might meet that need in a healthier way moving forward?
How can you support yourself more when self care feels especially challenging?
What routines can you put in place to make things easier for yourself?
Give yourself a few minutes to journal around what – if time, money and energy were no obstacles, you’d do to ensure you gave yourself a better chance of keeping your self care practices a priority?
If weekly group calls, emails and access to an online library of resources might help, the Feel Better Every Day online membership programme might be for you.
But you don’t need me – or anyone else – to help you connect, right now, with the MESSAGE from your self care Achilles heel and to learn from any lapses and – with continual kindness, compassion and curiosity, remind yourself that you’re worth healthy, healing, loving choices.
With love,
