Day 69- Self Care
📖Daily Reading
2 Chronicles 1-15
🎥 Video
Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.
📝 Reflection
2 Chronicles 14: 5-6
Asa also removed the pagan shrines, as well as the incense altars from every one of Judah’s towns. So Asa’s Kingdom enjoyed a period of peace. During those peaceful years, he was able to build up the fortified towns throughout Judah. No one tired to make war against him at this time, for the Lord was giving him rest from his enemies.
As I was reading and meditating on the word this morning I noticed the repeated theme of fortifying the walls of the cities and towns and building up the surrounding towns as fortification and also taking down pagan shrines and reinstalling worship to the Lord. From King David, to Solomon to his son Rehoboam, and then his son Abidjan and then his son Asa. This was a consistent theme and the Levitical priests were also brought back and restored to their proper roles as another layer of fortification. I think this is analogous to the role of self care in our lives. It is not just manicures and spa days, it is the everyday practices that often also require self discipline and are always fun. This allows you to withstand the times of higher stress or attack, just like these cities could better defend themselves if their walls were fortified. It doesn’t stop attacks but it helps you in how you respond and hold up during them.
At the time of writing this I was woken up at 3:30 am this morning by my dogs and after trying to get them to stop barking I gave up at 4:30 am and just got up. Because I have gotten much better at self care, this lack of sleep for one night will not derail my whole day like it would have a few years ago and I will easily recover and bounce back. I get lots of good quality sleep almost every night. It is important to me and I might miss out on an occasional night out that seems fun, but now I have JOMO (joy of missing out) because having good energy that lots of good quality sleep provides is so critical to how I can show up in life for myself and serve others. Now don’t misunderstand, I still have work to do in this area but I have really worked hard to ‘fortify my walls’. I went from almost zero self care and what little I was doing, I was undoing everyday with my daily glass or three of wine.
This is also known as the being caught in the detox to retox loop. Now I understand the importance of self care and I also understand now that self care is not selfish! Maybe you were like me and thought that self care was too selfish to do. You need to serve others first and then maybe if there was any time, energy or money left over then maybe we could treat ourselves. This is backwards. You can’t be selfless without first taking care of the self and acknowledging the self. If you are worn out, using unhealthy coping strategy’s to deal with life, exhausted all the things, what good is your ‘help’ anyway? Maybe you are helping others, but then come home and take your exhaustion and/or bad mood out on your family, ‘treat’ yourself to a drink or unhealthy food or too much food or … or ….. or …. because you deserve it etc..
The saying ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’ exists for a reason. Sometimes phrases get so over used and popular that we have to remind ourselves of the wisdom they contain. Another paradox that is true is: ‘If you take more time you have more’. This includes time for self care; good nutrition, good sleep, enough sleep, movement, prayer/meditation, margin in between activities and meetings in our day, time to eat, time to have fun, time to be creative, adventure, play, connection. When your cup is full and you are taking care of yourself then your desire to help or serve is more authentic because you have more energy, capacity, time and gratitude.
The truth is that many of us use our ‘over’ giving, helping and serving to distract us from the need to care for ourselves or deal with what needs to be dealt with in our own lives. The ‘over’ ing of anything, including those things deemed as ‘good’ is not good and will not lead to over all health, balance, maturity and integrity in your life. It will leave your defenses week and then when the ‘attacks’ do come, you can be easily be taken down or even out. If you are reading this and feeling overwhelmed, take a deep breath. You didn’t get here over night and you won’t get out over night even if you ‘understand’ the concept. You start by taking one step and with patience and persistence and building in new practices of self care over time you will be transformed.
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
What can you do today to practice more self care and self appreciation? You are worth it, and you help me by being you! You are pretty amazing, special and one of a kind and you deserve kindness from yourself! Know how I know? I know because God made you and he doesn’t make mistakes! 💖
📖Tomorrows Reading
2 Chronicles 16-19
Coaching Opportunity
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