Make Yourself A Priority So You Don’t Burn Out with Life Coaching
Prioritising ourselves is vital in life skill development and boosting energy. But people don’t usually make themselves a priority – which is why it’s a life skill we all need to learn. The best way to do this is with life coaching. Because as Deepak Chopra said:
“We must value ourselves enough to take care of ourselves and make self-care a priority.”
Deepak chopra
In essence, making yourself a priority is about valuing yourself.
It’s about appreciating yourself.
It’s about validating yourself.
And it’s recognising that you are important.
It’s also about incorporating self-management skills and taking care of yourself.
Making yourself a priority allows you to fill your energy tank.
I often make a comparison to a car’s petrol tank. And as we know, if the petrol tank is empty, the car isn’t going anywhere.
There are many steps we can take, and the first thing is we should recognise this is a life skill. The next thing we should do is to put together a self-care plan.
Putting A Self Care Plan In Place With Life Coaching
Your self-care plan can be as simple as making a list of things that make us feel good and boost energy naturally. I also encourage people not to just make a list, but to schedule it. After all, a to-do list is just a wish list. So, we must schedule it into our calendar. And we must go and do it. When you schedule it into your calendar, you are taking it to the next level. It becomes a work in progress and something that can be moved and added to at any particular time.
By doing this you will have a self-care plan that will serve you for the rest of your life.
What Stops People From Practising Self Care
There are common problems people experience that prevent them or delay them from taking care of themselves. We live in this fast-paced, hectic world, and sometimes people – particularly parents – feel guilty and don’t value themselves enough to make themselves a priority. But regardless, we need to make this important enough and ensure that it becomes part of our life. I suggest that people not only take these tasks and activities that make them feel good, but I encourage them to actually turn it into habitual behaviour so it becomes a pattern.
When I run life skills coaching and self-care workshops, people walk away with a self-care plan. At the start of the workshops, I will ask for a show of hands to see how many people have a self-care plan. And I can tell you, not many people do. Hence the reason why I share these concepts is to teach them how to do it for themselves. It’s life skills education. And by teaching you, hopefully, this skill will echo right through your family and on to future generations.
Indicators You Are Not Taking Care Of Yourself
Burnout, feeling lethargic, feeling depressed, feeling like… “I don’t have the energy to do anything,” are often significant indicators that we need to do something different to increase energy levels. A health check-up is a great place to start. But we want to be on the lookout for those signs – particularly if we are asking ourselves questions such as, “Why am I so moody?” Or we find we’re not connecting as well as we usually do with our family, our friends, and our loved ones. Those are all indicators that we may be on the verge of burnout. Feeling stressed and fatigued are other big clues.
Energy is so important in everyday life. Because if you don’t have the energy, then it’s going to affect your mental capacity as well – to be able to think clearly and follow through and do things.
Effective Self Care Is A Learned Skill You Can Develop With Life Coaching
It’s vital that we maintain our energy. And there are simple yet effective ways to increase energy. Because the fact is, it’s not IF life is going to throw obstacles and hurdles at us. It is WHEN life will throw obstacles at us. And this is where our learned personal development skills and resilience skills come into play. If we’re trying to manage those obstacles and hurdles with an empty energy tank… just like the petrol tank, we just aren’t going to go anywhere.
When it comes to managing our overall wellbeing, I like to break it up into a few different categories. But, when it comes to self-care, we should at least have a bare minimum of a mental, emotional and physical self-care plan in place. And we should be doing things to boost energy naturally in those different areas.
There’s one question that you could ask yourself to ensure you are taking care of yourself. It’s a big question.
“What have I done for me lately?”
Don’t just ask that question. Answer it. And answer it honestly.
It’s about valuing yourself.
And if you feel you haven’t really done much for yourself, then you need to address that.
But you also need to recognise it is a priority and not feel guilty about it. Because to be able to help others, you do need to be able to help yourself first. That’s fundamentally important. You’ve probably heard this concept before if you’ve ever been on an aircraft,
“In case of an emergency, put your oxygen mask on first before you can help others.”
Well, that analogy is very apt when we talk about making ourselves a priority.
The fact is… we can’t delegate self-care. We need to be able to keep ourselves energised and boost our own energy naturally. And then that will allow us to be able to support others, including our family, friends, and loved ones.
You don’t have to feel guilty about doing something for yourself, doing something you like, and giving yourself a pat on the back when you do achieve something. Flip your thinking around it and tell yourself, “it’s not just okay that I give myself some time out – it’s essential for me to be able to keep going.”
These self-management skills tie in with many of those positive ‘self’ words such as self-worth, self-respect, self-esteem, and self-confidence. So a lot of those positive ‘self’ words will kick in as a result of keeping our energy tank topped up.
That’s one of the awesome things about self-care – it can significantly improve every other area of your life too. There’s lots of research that outlines the benefits. But the key thing is…
You can’t just know you have to practise self-care and not do it.
And I think that’s why people who have done our Wellbeing Mastery course have found it so beneficial – because it takes what you know and guides you through all the steps to create a self-care plan for life and then how to implement it. Find out more here: www.mywellbeingmatters.com. If you would like to speak to us in person, you can call us directly at our psychology clinic on 0458 360 666.
May you have an on track day!