Is self-care at the steering wheel or is it your spare tire?
Sounds a bit like a new-age country song, doesn’t it.
I think most people see self-care as a spare tire.
You always have it but you’re not entirely sure how to put it on, so you only use it in total emergencies. And when you’re not using it, your self-care stays safely tucked away in the trunk of your car.
We’re conditioned to think of self-care in this way.
When the shit hits the fan and you’re totally depleted, you can unlock the trunk and grab that spare tire self-care.
This often assumes the form of a 60-minute massage or a fancy facial or a spa day. Or maybe you get a babysitter just so you can take a long, uninterrupted nap.
Then, once you’ve had your official self-care moment, you put the self-care spare tire back in the trunk.
The thing is, you really need your self-care at the wheel.
The type of self-care is simpler and smaller.
Self-care like this also isn’t easy to categorize. It’s going to be different for everyone, but the common denominator is that it’s easy, it feels good, and you can do it daily without a lot of effort.
This self-care is in the driver’s seat, so it can see the entire road. It can see what’s coming ahead, as well as look in the rearview to see what’s behind you.
Instead of waiting for a complete crisis (aka once your tire blows out), you use it to help avert the crisis. You see the nails in the road and use self-care to drive around them.
And the benefit of self-care at the wheel is that even if you can’t avoid the nails in the road, you can recover from the stress of the crisis more easily because you have your self-care in place, supporting you through it.
You don’t have to figure out what to use in the moment.
You can do the simple, daily self-care you have in place to help you stay steady in the crisis and not use too much extra energy to figure out what else you need.
This is huge.
When self-care is your spare tire, you don’t have access to it unless it’s an emergency. You actually don’t even need it or want it until it’s absolutely necessary.
But when self-care is at the wheel, you are taking good care of yourself all of the time. You have a baseline of solid self-care to sustain you through the good days and the rough days, too.
This is the type of self-care I want to have. It’s the self-care I want you to have, too.
I don’t want you to only have self-care in emergencies.
I want you to have self-care that you can count on all the time because your self-care is in the driver’s seat, helping you get everywhere you need to go.
So is self-care at the steering wheel for you or is it your spare tire?
If you have spare tire self-care and you want to upgrade to a more sustainable, ongoing self-care join me for my FREE 5-DAY SELF-CARE RESET, which begins Friday February 14th. You’ll reconnect to your needs and rebuild your self-care, one simple action at a time.
