Shower Thoughts with Shelly

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FIND YOUR PEACE 

“But there’s just no way I’ll have time for that. I’ll do it another time.”

“No, I’ll get to me one day, but right now I need to focus on x, y, and z…”

Self-care is one of the buzziest buzzwords out there right now. It pains me to really consider that we have to come up with a buzzword to refer to taking care of ourselves. Taking care of ourselves should really just be a part of our day, but so many times everyone and everything else comes before our own mind and body.

Then, once you get the consumerist culture behind it, it’s all bath bombs, massages, and day spas. “Me time” is somehow a shameful, selfish act while also being the quickest and easiest way for someone to lecture you about what you’re doing.

Self-care went from being something we should do to being something we NEED to do, all while being something that’s selfish to do, but still a necessity. It’ll make your head spin. Feel free to try reading that sentence a few more times to try to make sense of it.

Self-care does not have to be some grand gesture, some wild and lengthy process. Self-care can be as simple as taking three minutes in the driveway to do some deep breathing. It can be reading. Self-care is exactly that: care for yourself. Doing something that reduces stress on you, even a tiny bit, is self-care. Doing something that makes you happy, even if it is incredibly simple. Every little bit counts.

So, it’s a double edge sword, really. You can’t deny yourself by making excuses that it would take too long to do any kind of self-care. But you also can’t beat yourself up about not having a whole lot of time to devote to self-care, because that defeats the purpose. Don’t be hard on yourself because you’re busy and start thinking you’re failing yourself because you just can’t dedicate much of your day to self-care!

It truly doesn’t matter what I say, only you can figure out what self-care really is for you, and YOU must allow yourself to have it. You know… self. It’s a pretty important part of self-care.

Give yourself those three minutes. Give yourself one day a week that you hit the drive-thru and buy an overpriced coffee drink, just because it makes you smile. Or give yourself a spa day once a month because you can and that’s just how you roll. Whatever works for you, try that. Because we care about each other, and therefore should care for ourselves.