You Are Important.
I will love me - by Lindsey Sawada. Water colour on handmade paper.
You are an incredibly important person, in fact you are the most important person in your own life. It seems like an obvious thing to say but observing the people around me I can see that many of us - myself included - put our own needs, wants and desires on the back burner while we attend to the needs of others. In the short term sometimes this is necessary but when it becomes an ingrained habit that goes on for a number of years it can be extremely detrimental to our own wellbeing.
I have in the past been a total people pleaser. I thought that if I do what others want me to do they will like me more and I will be accepted. It became more extreme when I moved to Japan as I was constantly viewed as an outsider and I felt that accutely. It’s painful to not be part of society or have a group to belong to. I would do almost anything to prove that I could do the same, be the same, act the same as Japanese people. I bet you can already guess how that went! Anytime that I am not geniunely myself people sniff out the over giving people pleaser in me and either take advantage of my need to please or be so turned off by it that they didn’t really want anything to do with me. Both outcomes are less than ideal..
It took until I was 39 in a coaching session when I became aware that I am an overgiver to everyone except myself. I was constantly exhausted and annoyed that people would come to me to solve their problems. There was also a flip side - the side that can be a little addictive - I had a great feeling of being needed by people and useful and maybe a little bit like a saviour. I thought it was nice to be nice……. and so i would constantly overstretch myself and go out of my way to help people. I’d like to tell you that even after my coaching sessions I went cold turkey and stopped but it has been a gradual process that I am still weaning myself off to this day.
So here the things that help me to treat myself like I am an important person and stop putting other people first.
The very first thing I did was stop ironing my husband’s shirts. I had always hated this job but felt oblidged to do it, to be nice…. I took stock and realized there were other options for this awful task, either my husband could iron them for himself or he could take them to the cleaners to be washed and pressed. What a difference that made to my Sunday evenings, I could now take a long bath. It was a small step but allowed me to test the waters of saying no in a safe space.
I stopped saying yes to everything. I say “let me check my schedule and I will get back to you by this evening.” This gives me the space to think about whether I really wanted to do something or not and a chance to say no via email rather than face to face which is a lot easier. I still find it hard to say no to people face to face.
I became hyper aware of the open ended question “what are you doing on “X” day?” I realized this is often a question asked by people to gauge whether you are free or not and then they ask you for a favour. I used to be optomistic and think this question would lead to an offer of doing something fun together - be aware - it rarely does. Now my answer to “ What are you doing on “X” day?” is “ I have tentative plans, why?” I then can refuse or accept depending on what the other person’s response is. Try to be as clear as possible because if you say yes and then change your mind and make up and excuse you will quickly get the reputation of being flakey. Be clear about what you are prepared to do and what you don’t want to do.
I realized that by always stepping in to help people that I was taking their own power away from them and they could not see how they could solve their own problems and that was why they kept coming back to me time and time again. Allow others to help themselves out of tricky situations sometimes, it’s better for them and better for you.
After I got better at keeping the takers, favour seekers and time suckers away I realized that it wasn’t only other people sucking the life out of me but I also had some fairly bad habits that were complete time wasters that I also needed to address.
The main time waster was social media and my phone. I had what I can see now as a complete addiction to checking my phone. It sucked so much of my time and my energy away from me and I am horrified looking back that believe I have missed out on years of productivity by having my nose stuck in my phone. If you take note of any part of this blog please let it be this part. Social media can be so addictive and it really doesn’t make you feel good about yourself. Ask yourself as you are scrolling “what it is that I am searching for?” More times than not you won’t really have an answer to this question. There are some wonderful informative things on SNS but most of the things are just time wasters. Please please stop wasting your time. If you find you can’t control your urge to pick up your phone you can set up a timer for yourself and allow yourself just a few minutes a day or remove the apps from your devices and see how often you go to your phone to check it, you might shock yourself and you will definitely be able to expand time and do more of the things that you enjoy doing. STOP SCROLLING!
Laying in bed until the last possible moment and then not having enough time for my morning routine and feeling stressed. Now I go to bed a little earlier and spring out of bed and get all my tasks completed in a non stressed easy going kind of way.
I used to skip my own yoga practice and just go ahead and teach but I realized that I really needed to serve myself as well as serving the SYS community. I now keep my practice consistantly even if it is just a few minutes of sun salutations or a little breathwork practice. I feel better and more prepared.
I have a really sweet tooth and forced myself to stop eating so much sugar. I have never been tested for insulin resistance but i suspect I may have been heading down that road. I would eat a lot of sweet things and then get very very sleepy and be unproductive. I now allow myself a little bit of chocolate with my afternoon tea but I won’t let myself go overboard on sweet things anymore. I am also more careful about eating a balanced diet which helps to control wanting to eat sweet things constantly too.
I take my bath and wash my face early in the evening so I am not too tired to do it all right before bed instead of battling with myself about whether to take my make up off before I go to sleep, and I use all my nice products frequently instead of saving them for best.
I found some things that I really like to do by myself that make me feel good and that I can do easily when I want to. I paint, I go to the gym and I love to walk in nature and have found a couple of friends who like to do this with me too.
I try to have as much fun as possible with all the people I like. I try to keep my friend group small but I always keep a little room free for new and interesting people to come into my life.
It definitely takes a little planning and practice to be able to hold yourself in your own hands, to have high regard for yourself and to believe yourself to be an important person worth spending time and energy on. It is so worth doing because who else knows your own hopes and desires like you do? Who else is going to treat you with the full love and care you so rightly deserve? Who else is going to love you in your own love language better than yourself?
Send me an email and let me know what you think. Does this resonate with you? How do you take care of yourself? Do you believe that you are an important person worthy of a beautiful life? Do you put yourself first? Do you treat yourself like the king or queen that you are? Is it hard to put yourself first? I’d love to know.
