If you are running after everyone’s else expectations, stated or presumed, you find yourself always busy, often exhausted and mainly satisfying everybody else but yourself. You rarely or never find time for yourself. That time is always left behind for when there will be time.
And there will never be time unless you will start making time.
If you don’t make time for yourself you’ll be often tired, sometime overwhelmed and in the long run disconnected from your needs and feelings. Which in turn will bring confusion and more disconnection. This is why it’s important that you unlearn to put other people’s needs first and start putting yours.
IMPORTANT IS WHAT WE MAKE IMPORTANT
Putting others’ needs first means you put your needs after. As if you would value yourself less than other people. As if you would be ok with giving up your satisfaction for the satisfaction of others.
You have a choice. I want to share with you an exercise that I use with my clients and works really well on focusing back on oneself. For this exercise you will need some coloured tabs, like the post-it ones.
Now take your coloured tabs and track each activity you do during the day. For every activity DONE, you stick a coloured tab on the top of your computer (or anything else that makes sense to you). For every activity DONE FOR YOURSELF, you add a little star on your tab. You’ll see that at the end of the day, your laptop will be full of coloured tabs. You’ll be amazed about how many things you’ve achieved.
Count the amount of starred tabs and calculate your personal time, dividing the starred tabs by the total number of tabs. Here you have the percentage of energy you dedicated to yourself today. How much is it? Is it enough?
When we make something important, we start dedicating time, attention and care to it. We make time for what matters. This is an invitation to make yourself important for you. As a responsible adult, you should take care of yourself and make sure you can function properly before you can take care of others. You can make a decision about satisfying your needs because when you’ll be in balance, you’ll be able to help others find their balance too.
