5 Reasons You Should Take Care of Yourself First

Cheers, dear readers,

Sometimes we need to take a mental break and a breather for our own sanity and self-preservation. I always try to remember the concept of “If we don’t take care of ourselves, we won’t be able to take care of anyone else.” After our second failed IVF attempt that I described in “Taking Advice from Mr. Spock (https://www.conceiveivf.com/slow-swimmers-and-fried-eggs/taking-advice-from-mr-spock),”  Eric and I made the very difficult decision to discontinue infertility treatment after much mental anguish and deliberation. It just seemed like the next right logical decision on our life’s journey together.

We were still plagued with questions about our future. I wanted to know “Who am I?” “What do I want?” “How do I get what I want?” “What’s next for me/us?”

As a result of asking these questions, we realized that we needed to take even better care of ourselves, each other, our relationship and our future together in order to keep moving forward in a positive direction – which is so important!

When I focused on taking care of ME and us as a couple, things started to at least feel more normal, positive and happy again. We bought the house of our dreams and started renovating it to make it exactly the way we wanted. We started creating new friendships and opened the door to other possibilities of new people in our life. We began attending fun and interesting events and more importantly, we found a sense of fun and freedom in our lives again. We really needed that.

During this time, behind the scenes of all of that stress relief, I was reading about 5 five books on adoption – my new side pet project. Diving into that will be the subject of another post. As I was taking care of myself, my sanity and happiness, I was still educating myself on other family building options – which made me feel powerful again and like I had choices if I eventually wanted to make them. At the same time, Eric and I decided that we wanted a break from making any other major decisions besides working on our new dream house. We made a vow to each other that we would NOT talk in depth about family building for several months. Honestly, the mental break was very welcome and needed to give us emotional room to breath and find our “happy” again any way that we could.

With all of that said, allow me to help inspire you to take care of yourself and love yourself to the best of your ability with the below tips:

1) Put your own oxygen mask on first.

We are all familiar with this safety instruction that we are told before a plane takes off in case of an emergency. It’s the same in life — you have to put your own “oxygen mask” on first or you won’t be any good to anyone else. A great insight to keep handy in times of stress.

2) You can go into energy debt just like you can financial debt.

No one would possibly advise you to go into severe financial debt, right? (That’s one of the many reasons we decided to discontinue IVF treatment because of the financial cost). Well your physical energy is another one of your key resources. When you overextend yourself you build up an energy debt, and have none leftover for all the wonderful things in your life!

3) You can do it all, but you can’t do it all at once.

There’s a lot of modern superwomen and men out there who feel pressure to juggle it all — from marriage, to the kids, successful career, fit body, beautiful house, friends, etc. Remember that you can do it all, but if you try to do it all at once, you’ll burn out and get overwhelmed. Remember to take some time for you to rejuvenate your soul.

4) When you treat your body with love and respect, it will love and respect you back.

Why is that so many of us think if we beat up our bodies enough, deprive it or hate our bodies, it will magically change into exactly what we want? When we learn to treat our bodies with love and respect by feeding it nourishing foods, exercising and noticing all the things that make us beautiful, our body will help restore us to feeling like the god or goddesses we are.

5) When you allow your own light to shine, you unconsciously allow others to do the same.

In addition to the wonderful benefits that you will reap, think of how much positive energy and inspiration you will be putting out into the world. The above is one of my favorite quotes by Marianne Williamson. She reminds us that when we take care of ourselves and allow our own light to shine bright, we are giving others permission to do the same. You can literally become someone who inspires others with your love and energy. What a beautiful thing! Get to it!

The bottom line is when you take care of yourself you will have more time, energy and love to give to those around you – and they will thank you for it. The body you are living in is your “body for life” and you only get one. Treat it with respect and love, and it will serve you well. Do the same with your mind, your emotions and your spirit. They are a precious commodity too that need tending to, especially during times of great stress. I wish you the very best, lovely reader!

Please join me next week to hear more about my personal journey down the infertility path. I look forward to speaking with you. And I wish you the best on your journey.

Warm regards,

Cathy