As much as taking care of yourself gets talked about nowadays, it might seem like a broken record. And I’m here to play it again, but with a particular slant. We get told to rest, relax, be good to yourself, eat the chocolate, play the game, it’s okay. And it is okay, we need rest. I talk about this extensively in a Masterclass I run on dealing with the winter blues. All the same, while rest is important, so is getting something off your mental plate.
Our minds today hold a lot. I mean a lot of information, duties, ideas, opinions, etc. Our brains are wonderful organs, they can store a lot of data and memories and more. But they also have an upper limit of what can be held in there and for how long. You know like when you get up and go in one room and forget why you did it? Or when you learned something really interesting and meaningful to you, like a quote from a great author. But when you go to say it to someone you can’t remember it at all? Those are just small examples, but bigger things happen too.
All the same, while rest is important, so is getting something off your mental plate.
One of those bigger things are the effects of unrelenting stress from life obligations left undealt with. An important conversation with a partner, friend, co-worker, or family member. A house or apartment project like cleaning out a closet you’ve been meaning to do since forever. Your car needing maintenance and care. The list goes on. The point is that even if you’re not thinking about these things 24/7, they still matter to your cognitive load. Your brain doesn’t want them there and will try to distract you from it. You’ll be pulled to an escapist activity to run from the fact these important, but not necessarily direly important things haven’t been done yet.
A consequence emerges, you’re booked full. Mind-wise. It’s hard to retain new information. It’s hard finding the motivation to tackle everyday tasks, let alone big projects. At its worse; mild to moderate symptoms of depression can form. And all because we didn’t put away the Christmas lights in a timely fashion (have you started that yet? It’s time.)
But timeeeeee! When am I supposed to find the time? Where in my schedule with the kids, work, household duties, working out, taking care of parents, loads of things, and other special projects am I supposed to find the time? Even in covid with a lockdown in place, we still find ourselves pressed for time despite having less activities we’re obligated to attend to outside our homes. You would think it would make it easier, and for some it has, but for many it has had the opposite effect. It has made it even harder to find time to take those stressors off your mental plate.
The point is that even if you’re not thinking about these things 24/7, they still matter to your cognitive load.
The advice is not going to be 3 Tips to Getting Things Off Your Plate or anything like that. Life hacks are wonderful. I’ve used some myself. But sometimes the best thing we can do to make it in this life is to have a change in our state of mind. This is the change in state of mind I suggest:
You make time for the things that are important to you.
If you can make it to the BBQ’s (pre-covid), the shopping, the house hold chores to tame the mess and chaos, your job and more, then you know what is important to you. You actively choose it. The biggest barrier we have to self care; from rest & relaxation, to removing energy drainers, to healthy coping activities and more is that we do not believe them to be as important as the activity we chose over them.
And I get it. You need a job; roof, family, food, security is paramount. That towering laundry load (or loads) will not clean itself. Ailing parents or partners or other family members need our assistance, otherwise they are left to their own devices.
And yet, you need still need to clean that mental plate.
Our schedules and handling them is can be akin to doing delicate science in a chemistry lab or like a tottering drunk giant, moving in a very disorganized, clumsy fashion from one thing to the next. It ain’t easy to keep the schedule up. Something could explode or be destroyed.
And the tip: get clear about what you value and why. One of two things happen: (1) that thing that needs tending gets put on the back burner indefinitely because you recognize your life can go on without it or (2) you carve that narrow window out of your week to attend to your life because not getting this thing done is in direct conflict with what you actually value.
What you value is as variable as snowflakes in us. For some, it is tidiness. For others it’s your transportation. For others still it’s making sure the doctors appointments get taken care. While for some it’s that 15 minutes of walking around the block to quickly clear your mind, move your body and re-group that counts the most.
The questions to ask are: what do I really value in my life? What actually makes it just even a little bit easier to live? You’ll find the time or you let it go, without adding the pressure of a should behind it. You know when it becomes a value to your life, you’ll take care of it then.
Santee Blakey is a Life Coach and Licensed Massage Therapist at Soul Growth Wellness. When she's not biking, reading, or biking, or reading (she needs new hobbies, suggest her some:-), she'll be writing and enjoying a caramel frappacino in her favorite Starbucks (this is obviously pre-Covid) *sigh*. Follow her on Youtube for her series --> Self Acceptance: What It's Really Like (A Journey).
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