Learning to Take My Own Advice

Image from Antique Images

A few years ago I gave a piece of advice to a pair of friends who run their own business. I told them it is important to take time off. Life gets busy and our schedules fill up fast. So you need to schedule your time off ahead of time. I told them they should schedule at least one day a month for time off. To block the day out and to not schedule any work that day. Maybe plan what they wanted to do. One of them loves the beach. Going to see the beach and the ocean is like going home for her. So I suggested they schedule those kinds of times well in advance. 

A few months later one of them came to me and told me what great advice it was and I told him, “Now if only I could take my own advice.” 

Image from The Graphics Fairy

As a spoonie and a disabled person I often feel like I have to do more to be as worthy as other people. I will have pain flares that leave me unable to work and then as soon as I can work again I am not always good about taking the time to recover. I just go go go. And this is not good for me. 

These pain flares also do not count as time off. Though I often feel like I can’t take time off because I have already not been working. I am trying to unlearn this. I am trying to make a habit of taking care of myself. 

Because of this bad habit of working when I should be resting I end up overworking myself or just not attending to all of my needs. Social needs, sleep, food, even playtime is important to my mental well being. And I will run myself until I hit a point where I can not work, because one of my needs is so out of balance that I can not focus. 

I have been working to get better at taking time off recently. I try to take a day or two off every week. I try to schedule it when I schedule the rest of my week, but I somehow keep having to convince my mind it is important. Society can be very good at teaching us not to tend to our own needs. Yet I have found some overwhelming proof that time off is important. I am so much more creative the day after I take a day off and just enjoy myself. I am creative and productive and I feel on top of the world. Now if I can just remember that each week as I plan out my schedule, I’ll be set. 

This week not only did I schedule days off, I set activities for those days. Not a whole itinerary. But one thing each. One movie or show I wanted to watch. Tuesday I finally got around to watching Abominable. It was adorable and heart warming. I want to see it again. And I probably never would have gotten around to seeing it if I didn’t take my own advice and schedule time off. 

So yeah I am learning to take my own good advice. One try at a time. I may not always succeed. But I can always try again.