Do you take care of yourself?
Do you ever stop for five minutes and check in with yourself?
It's really easy to go through your whole day and never once take a second to check in and see how you're doing.
Where are your energy levels at? How are you emotionally? Are you tired, hungry, angry? Do you need a break?
These simple questions can be asked everyday to ourselves in order to get a gauge on where we are at. I am a big believer that we are able to best serve others and the world only when we are first taking care of ourselves.
One of the easiest times to check in with yourself is during a lunch break, coffee break or even a bathroom break. Our society has trained us to stare at our phones whenever we have free time. When we fill all of our time with something, our minds get exhausted. I have taken back those times by putting all screens away and asking myself simple questions.
How am I feeling?
Something almost always come ups. In this moment it's crucial that you know what to do with that feeling. The good part is the answer is to observe it, don't judge it, be gracious with it and ask yourself, what is there to learn here? How interesting that, that came up. Then you continue along, asking a few more questions.
The goal here is not to solve any issues, as often we don't have issues to be solved, but what I have observed is just like our friends and family want to be heard, our own-selves need to be heard as well. Do not deny yourself.
Before that feels too introspective and I lose you, I want you to just try and check in with yourself. See what is being stirred up.
See what is floating around once you stop doing everything for five minutes.
By checking in with yourself you will quickly figure out what you need on a tangible level as well as a mental level. One of my big things that normally comes up late in the day is hunger. When I get hungry I get short with people and things. The hard worker in me wants to power through and knock things out, but in reality if I take a break, refuel with some brain food, I am more effective and then become a nice human again.
If you catch me at a time when I just get done with a mentoring session, I won't have much in my tank mentally. If you asked me questions or wanted to talk about something "important", everything in me would be screaming..."I don't care, I don't care, I am tired". This is just my human reaction, I do care, but at the current moment, I need at least twenty minutes to just be silent and reset. This took me years to learn. I learned how to do this by the simple check in.
The cool thing about this concept is that as you begin to do it more and more, it can become addicting, because you begin to listen to yourself more.
Once you start to listen to yourself more, then you start to trust yourself more.
So many of us do not trust ourselves. We have been conditioned from very early on that we don't know answers, that we need to always seek others, and while there is some wisdom in that, with the majority of people I mentor, they already know the answer. They already know what they want to do, they just need someone like me to remind them of who they are and that they are free to do it.
We all have permission already. We can trust ourselves.
When we implement these two ideas during check in time, then there is no shame when we need to say "no" to things, or pass on events we don't like. We don't have to defend ourselves when we can't make every party or show, because we know that we only have so much of ourselves to spread around and we know that we are only the best version of ourself when we have taken care of ourself.
So this week do a check in. Take five minutes - ask some questions to yourself and see what comes up. Are you sleepy? Are you happy with where you are at? Are you excited for the weekend? Do you dread something coming up? Our bodies and minds are amazing and anything that manifests itself in physical, mental, and emotional form, is a built in alarm, trying get our attention. So check in with yourself and become a better whole human.
peace
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