Raise Your Hand

Raise your hand if you drank “enough” water yesterday.  Raise your hand if you’ve recently elected to opt out of a social engagement. “Recently” means in the last 6.57 days. Raise your hand if you took a shower long enough to wash your hair and/or shave your legs in the last three days (let’s be real, who really has the time or inclination to do both?!).

Okay, hands down everyone. Now, raise your hand if you were unable to raise your hand for any of the aforementioned statements.

Water. Saying no. Bathing.

Seems like some fairly simple self-care practices, no?  Yet, how many of us are unable to raise our hands?

Let’s play again. Consider your last week.  Raise your hand if you had to forego extra sleep because you have a babe that just won’t sleep through the night. Raise your hand if your dinner was cold because you were busy cutting up, dishing up, cleaning up, or bribing up.  Raise your hand if you keep dry shampoo in your bathroom, car console, or cubicle.  Raise your hand if you are emotionally drained from another negative pregnancy test. Raise your hand if you had to consider 4:06am “morning” just because your offspring did.

Did you run out of hands? I figured.

As parents and friends and coworkers, we are often so focused on serving others, helping others, supporting others.

Water. Saying no. Bathing.

My challenge to you is this: next week, you should drink water. You should eat dinner while it’s warm. You should linger in the hot shower, and maybe, just maybe, say no to something.

Raise your hand if you think this is all easier said than done. I hear you from the very depths of my tired, busy, worn-out soul, I really do.  Let me break this down for you. I’ve developed a simple guide to help you give your hand (and your heart) a well-deserved rest.

I’ve made a Mnemonic device for the word “self-care” to help you:

Say no. Or as I tell my toddlers, “No thank you.” Really, you can do it, I promise. The world will keep turning. You have a friend who uses you for your HBO password? Say no. Have an over-scheduled weekend and just feel like staying in to binge watch “Friday Night Lights”? Say no to the plans.

Enter at your own risk. This is just my cute reminder that I relax in a tidy home. It’s my reminder that I feel less anxious when there is less stuff so I encourage myself to clear counter spaces, put toys in bins, and actually put away the clothes that I folded *ahem* five days ago.

Leave judgment outside the bathroom mirror.  How about instead of nit-picking what our bodies can’t do or don’t look like, we instead celebrate the goodness that is there. Stretch marks, extra pounds, wrinkles. Blah, blah, blah. I say, babies, delicious food, laugh lines. Embrace all that your body has to offer and all that it’s done for you.

Fight for your time. Whatever this means for you. Fight for your date nights. Fight for your sleep time. Fight for your board room time.

Cuddle. Enough said. No seriously, cuddling improves a person’s mood by 74% if done for more than 3.5 minutes at a time. That’s not really a statistic. I just made it up. But it could be true! Cuddle your kid, your spouse, your dog, your blanket, or your book. Just get down with cuddling!

Accept where you are. Wherever you are, be there.

Reflect. Whatever this means for you. Crank up the tunes on your commute home. Zone out to a new podcast. Sit cross-legged in a dark room and meditate. Journal. Pray. Take time to reflect on where you are, where it is you want to go, and from where it is you’ve come.

Exercise. Sign up for a spin class. Take a walk. Dance in your kitchen. Move your body. Endorphins are real and they are really good for you.

Self-care.

Before you close out of this article, I encourage you to do yourself a favor. Copy and paste these letters below and create your own definition of self-care. Or heck, use mine! No matter how you’re doing it, please take care of yourself. Because you are SO worth it.

S_____.

E_____.

L_____.

F_____.

C_____.

A_____.

R_____.

E_____.