"Self-care is how you take back your strength." ~ Lalah Delia
Self-care is not a bubble bath.
I mean, you might be the kind of person who feels like committing a mortal sin by allowing yourself to stand alone with a candle or book in hot water for twenty minutes wade. If you are, then yes. Please treat yourself to a bubble bath. Regularly!
The same applies to a massage. Or schedule time for training. Or buy yourself new underwear. Or take a nap.
If the idea of doing these things makes you fickle and selfish and, no, I just can't! then this is probably your brand of self-care.
However, it is not mine.
You see, I've never had a problem giving myself more goodies. More time for me! Even more pleasure! More, however I feel right now! Treating yo-self wasn't something I needed to talk about – it was just public permission to do more of what I had always done.
With this kind of definition of self-care, I won the Self-Care Olympic Games. Why was it so difficult for everyone else? I wondered how I could take another bath after my midday nap after my weekly massage, while my taxes from three years ago remained untouched for another day. The organic groceries in my fridge decayed out of respect for another Treat Yo-Self take-away night, and I canceled a therapy appointment because I just didn't feel like going (again).
I waded the longest in an ocean of cognitive dissonance. I didn't feel like a lazy person who had an alcohol problem or lied or who didn't get through or was flaky or God forbid. I mean, I had so much evidence to the contrary! I was done, I did a lot of things, I presented myself well, people still loved me and I had such good intentions!
Except my behavior pointed exactly to these things.
The separation ate me up. I knew I did a lot of tap dancing. I knew that my good intentions were an excuse for shitty behavior. I knew that I came across many scenarios at work, with friends, in my financial life, at home. I knew that most of what I did was done fifty percent or less. I made a lot of cuts.
I knew even though I didn't know that much of my life was a house of cards.
When I practiced the #selfcare Instagram brand by pampering myself, I had the uncomfortable feeling that maybe more pampering was not what I actually needed.
That brings me to discipline.
Discipline has reluctantly become my brand of self-care. Discipline is what has actually created freedom in my life, as opposed to what I have believed in for a long time. I thought my free-spirited ways were an act of rebellion against the monotony of life. That I showed a kind of crunchy contradiction against the banality of adulthood, Carpe diem and all that!
In the meantime, in my twenties and thirties, I was trembling inside and wasn't sure why everyone else seemed to be doing adult things so easily and automatically. I thought maturity was an automatic function of time, a passive effect of aging. It would just magically happen somehow!
Unfortunately No.
This one concept has made a huge difference in my life: For me, self-care looks like discipline.
It looks like I'm going to finish things that I'm starting and pause a minute before doing another thing to take into account the impact of starting those things: financially, in time, energetically, and who i could influence negatively if i don't follow through.
It means limits on screen time. Limiting the amount of sugar I put in my body.
It means teaching my daughter to do things for themselves instead of doing them for them because the latter is easier and less frictional at the moment. It also means tracking the ramifications I have made for them, although it will temporarily make my life more difficult.
It means waking up at the same time each morning, so I go into the practices that keep me calm before the rest of the world wakes up: morning pages, meditation, coffee, rest.
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It means keeping commitments and keeping very close to the commitments I have made.
It means sticking to my word as much as possible, even if I don't want to.
It means saying more no to me than yes.
It means asking if my future self will thank me for what I am going to do compared to myself at this moment, and actually listening if the answer is no, your future self will not appreciate Laura.
It often means doing what is necessary to have fun.
Self-care means discipline for me because it makes me uncomfortable. I have trouble doing that. It contradicts my standard pattern and we change against our pattern.
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