Is your self-care all or nothing?
I asked myself this question this morning when nothing went according to plan and found myself frustrated by all of the things I couldn’t control.
The first thing I couldn’t control was that my baby woke up 3 times during the night.
When my alarm went off at 5:40am, I didn’t want to get out of bed and I accidentally fell back asleep because my baby was still asleep on my chest.
When I finally dragged myself out of bed, I was 10 minutes behind my usual schedule.
That 10 minutes was a snowball that became an avalanche of destruction in my morning routine.
I was super frustrated.
While I managed to get my body moving in a 20 minute workout, I had to skip my meditation.
I found myself in a situation I often teach my students through.
So often I hear from moms, I don’t have time for movement/meditation/self-care and I say to them, “it doesn’t have to be huge. Keep it small. Make it as small as possible. If you have a minute, you can do a yoga pose, sit in meditation, or write out an intention.”
I also felt the pushback I usually get: “If I can’t do a 30-minute yoga practice or a 15-minute meditation or my 3 morning pages, it’s not worth it.”
Instead of listening to that big, angry voice in my head, I sat down in my laundry room with my baby, closed my eyes, and sat for 10 breaths.
It’s wasn’t much.
And it was also enough.
Too often we get caught in the all or nothing trap when it comes to self-care.
It’s a basic if/then statement.
“If I can’t do a 30-minute yoga practice without my kids climbing all over me, then why bother?”
Another might be, “if I only have time for 5 minutes of yoga, then I don’t want to do it because I’d rather do 30 and 5 won’t feel like enough.”
All these if/then statements do is create an all or nothing equation for your self-care.
Either you can do self-care under perfect and ideal circumstances or you can’t do it at all.
That kind of self-care absolutism doesn’t get you perfect self-care.
All it does is prevent you from taking care of yourself in the way you need.
And who does that help?
(Spoiler alert: not you)
If you want to take back your time and commit to taking better care of yourself, the all or nothing approach to self-care has to stop.
Self-care is not an all or nothing endeavor.
Some days you will have more time and you can do more yoga or spend more time gardening or deep clean your laundry room (like I did today).
Other days you will have less time, so you’ll have to make choices regarding your self-care, maybe cutting a meditation short or choosing to shower later.
If you force yourself into a rigid idea of self-care, you make it impossible to take good care of yourself.
So is your self-care all or nothing? Or can you create practices that are flexible and durable, no matter how you shift or adjust them based on your needs?
If you are looking to lay a better foundation for simpler, smaller, smarter self-care join me for my POWER of ONE challenge, beginning March 15th.
In 7 days i’ll teach you how to reclaim your time one pose, one minute, one intention, and one day at a time. Save your spot here.
