I was speaking on the phone recently about making time for yourself, when I said that all the smartest choices I had ever made in life had come as a result of taking time for myself.
I was a little surprised to hear myself say this. So, I had to kind of pause and check myself and make sure what I was saying was really true.
Turns out, it is. All of the best decisions I have ever made in my life have come from listening to an inner calling, not an outer one. And that inner calling comes through when I spend time with myself doing the things that I love to do, no matter how simple.
Here come a couple of radical ideas.
Number one, we are living in times of absurd social pressure. And social pressure, or the idea that we need to behave like and in a pleasing manner towards others, is not a good thing. It’s closely linked to people-pleasing and people-pleasing is part of a disease, if you consider co-dependency a disease, which I do.
So, whenever you take time for yourself, you are bucking social pressure that is often telling you that your time would be better spent doing something else for somebody else. In other words, that you should be focused on the happiness of others, not on your own happiness.
Another radical idea that is part of making time for yourself, is the idea that each person has an inner authority and can follow it. I think we have seen some glimpses of this with all of the “find your passion” and “live the life you’ve always dreamed of” type of messages that are coming at us through media messages. But I am not sure that any of this type of rah-rah thinking is really going deep enough.
What’s radical about taking time for yourself is that you make space to connect with your inner authority, which means you are temporarily unplugging from the mania of the masses, whatever that means today, and giving yourself permission to relax.
What’s challenging, at least for me, is that there is a lot of pain, crisis and suffering in the world. And thanks to International media we all know all about it, all the time.
Makes it kinda hard to knock off for the day. Right?
And yet if we don’t take time for ourselves, to rest, relax, and regroup, we often can’t hear what our inner voice is saying. We miss out on the subtle, yet important marching orders that are trying to be heard.
If we don’t take time for ourselves because we can’t risk disappointing others, then we will never take time for ourselves. And then our whole life will become based on “have to” and “should.”
And this is why I write about this topic. I write about it because unplugging from the frantic pace of the human race is necessary for me to know what I really, truly, deeply think and feel.
And knowing how I think and feel and listening to what I need and want is a crucial part of making happy and healthy decisions for myself and my family. For me, making time for myself is an important aspect of being a healthy adult in a world that says that playtime is over once you hit adulthood. Unless you choose to relax in adult-approved, typically expensive, and often not very fun ways.
I do not know an adult who could not benefit from some down time–from spending a little time just the way she wants to spend it.
So, if you haven’t had any time for yourself lately, I encourage you to take some. It is a radical act. And maybe in knowing that, you will be better able to surmount the internal and external challenges that prevent you from taking a little time do whatever it is you really want to do.
