Did you know that how well you care for yourself sets the standard for how well you care for others? Most people spend a lot of time catering to others and very little time trying to understand what they want for themselves. It is your responsibility to honor your emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical well-being by focusing on your self-care. The more you understand who you are and how to meet your needs, the more aware you become of how to be there for the people that depend on you. If you ever find yourself ignoring yourself for others, you might need to rethink how well you honor your needs and desires.
Here are three ways you can improve how you honor your well-being.
Be more Self-first.
To best care for others, you need to look after yourself first. Being self-first is not selfish. It is about spending more time nurturing your desires by finding what you need to fulfill your obligations. Your needs, emotional well-being, and desires are essential to your ability to succeed at anything. Self-care is not self-indulgent; it is the act of managing your emotional, mental, and spiritual requirements. To live a more self-first life, schedule time to refuel and recharge you. If you are not finding what you need to thrive in your inner world, you cannot succeed in your outer world. Before you take on your day or a task, take a moment to find yourself. Focus on what fulfills or excites you, not what drains and discourages you. Create a clear vision for your life by focusing on what feels good. Get to know your 'why,' and you will never have to convince yourself to put in the work necessary to create what you want. Make finding what makes your heart full a daily goal.
Prioritize your emotional well-being.
Spend time with your thoughts and emotions by sitting with yourself long enough to feel them. Most people are afraid to feel their feelings because they dread re-living pain, feeling like a failure, or fear losing control. Ignoring these feelings with unhealthy distractions only band-aid your emotions. Numbing feelings because they are uncomfortable only adds to the discomfort over time. Negative feelings don't just go away; they will always keep resurfacing until resolved and addressed. Accepting your good, bad, and ugly is essential if you want to find emotional freedom. Developing emotional self-awareness will empower you to take stock of your feelings in a non-judgmental way. This is simply acknowledging how you feel, accepting it, and allowing yourself to improve your emotions over time. Negative feelings are not always a bad thing; they can help fuel your desire until you find a way to move past them. Only you can figure out this step; be confident that you can. When you learn to understand how you feel, you get closer to creating what you want. It is how you respond and create the life you desire versus reacting to the life you are living.
Be more creative.
When you focus on your well-being, your creativity will blossom. You were born to create, open yourself up to new possibilities and experiences by caring more about what you want for yourself over what others may want for you or have taught you to envision for yourself. When you constantly check in with what you desire, you will find solutions to create more. Make the time to explore what you like doing. Also, keep in mind creativity is not just about fun events; it's also about the dreams you have for your life, the career path you would most want to take, or the person you want to be. Creation is about anything you want to be, do or have.
The more you spend time creating the life you want, the better you will begin to feel.
Until next time.
The more you practice happiness, the better you become, and the more joyous your days. If you practice living life, you enjoy and understand it a little bit better. To make your happiness a priority, grab one of our journals today!
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