Self-Care, People! or The Art of Being
I’m flat out in a lounge chair. Big booty smashed into a swimsuit and completely relaxed. Enjoying the feel of the sun, hearing the waves crash into the coastline, and doing fuck-all!
It was three hours ago but damn! It felt amazing. We’ve been in Roatan, Honduras, for five days. It took two days for me to decompress enough to ‘be’ here.
Days one and two, I felt like I had to be doing something … anything productive. What I needed more than ‘being productive’ was to allow myself to rest. It’s been a fascinating few months. We’ve had an election, my parents chose a long-term care community to move to, we’ve had hurricanes devastate parts of North Carolina, and snow TWICE! And then there was all of the rhetoric around the inauguration.
And just so it doesn’t get too boring here in paradise, there was a 7.2 earthquake just north of Honduras that “may or may not trigger a tsunami.” I found this out as I sat by the pool, staring at the ocean 50 meters away. Luckily, the tsunami did not materialize.
We’re staying in West End at a family-run resort. Everyone knows everyone. People have been coming here for 5, 10, 15 years. It’s incredible. It’s laid back. No one is in a hurry. Unless they are running late for their scuba time or to catch the snorkel boat, and even then … it’s a casual kind of hurried.
We’re on island time.
Self-care is vital for your decision-making and critical thinking. Over time, the stress of decisions that impact your business as an entity, your staff, and clients as individuals become ‘heavy.’ It takes a toll on our physical and mental health.
A physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy you is a better person. Yep, I said it. Think about it: when you’re managing pain, even if it’s just a headache, it is more difficult to care for others. It’s difficult to do your best when you are not sleeping well because of stress, health or worry.
I get migraines. When I’m over-tired or stressed, I get more migraines than when I am taking care of myself. When I try to work through a migraine, ARGH! No fun, and I am not functioning at my best. If I give myself two hours to be still, I feel better and function at a significantly higher level.
That’s self-care. And I still need to address the cause of the migraine.
Being takes patience. Most people can’t just turn it on. Self-care requires discipline. Going from doing to stillness and a quiet mind is a discipline. Like meditation, being requires practice. You must be willing to walk away from work, hold your boundaries, and allow the Universe space to share with you.
Being is an art form. I have friends who throw off the mantel of ‘doing’ in just a few hours. They are the Michelangelo’s of being, and it still doesn’t happen at the snap of your fingers. It takes me longer to feel into the art of it. I’m so glad I’ve learned to find that place. For years, I was stuck in doing.
What do I do to allow myself to slide into a being place? In Roatan, I’m feeling the wind, I’m tasting the sun, I’m reminding every muscle that it is time to allow the Universe to move without me and through me. It works. I haven’t left the lounge chair for hours.
I’ll return to the real world in a few days, functionally stronger and mentally healthier, with a tan to remind me of the island.