Life has a way of getting away from you, doesn’t it? Last night I sent a message to a friend asking if she would like to meet for brunch. When she answered yes, I replied, “We’d better schedule it now or it will never happen”. She sent back a laughing emoji and wrote, “I agree”. Time keeps on ticking into the future. (Now you’ll have that song stuck in your head. You’re welcome.)
My point is we’d better start making time for all of the things we want to do now or we will wake up one day with no time left. Too much to do and too little time. You owe yourself some time. You’ve heard it said before: Put you on the calendar.
Who do we have to blame for the persistent message in our heads that carving out minutes of the day for ourselves made us bad moms and selfish human beings? It’s just not true.
Pouring into yourself benefits everyone around you. The truth is whatever fires are burning sadly will still be there after you take 15 minutes to breathe, or 30 minutes to walk at a local park, or 5 minutes to sit with your face turned towards the sun.
Think of it like this: The pressure drops on an airplane. You are riding with your elderly parent who is having difficulty breathing. You are also having difficulty breathing. A good human would put the oxygen mask on their elderly parent first, right? Wrong. That is what we have been taught and we have been taught wrong. By putting the mask on you first, you ensure that you can breathe and then you have the ability and the energy to put the mask on your parent. You both will be better off because you took care of what you needed first. Otherwise, while you struggled to put the mask on someone else you may have both passed out before you were able to make that happen.
Every day someone is asking us to put a mask on them first. People are calling, people are crying, they are texting, maybe even yelling and you know what- they will all wait on you if that is the choice they are left with. Boundaries are important and the more terrible people act when you put a boundary in place, the more you needed to do so. Boundaries are literal life savers. They will take some of the pressure you feel off of you so you can breathe. So you can spend time giving yourself oxygen. So you can spend 5 minutes with your face toward the sun. So you can dream.
I started this message by asking you to ask yourself, are you doing what you thought you would be? Are you spending some of your life on yourself? Can you breathe? This is what I help people with everyday. If you are having trouble carving out time for your dreams, I want to help you. Comment here or send a message to info@makeawaymedia.com and we will connect so this time next year you can ask yourself this question… and you can answer with a resounding YES!