Sunday, March 3, 2013

Self Care

I recently came to the conclusion that "self care" has not been a big enough focus in my life. As a wife, cat lady and assistant to three lovely executives, a huge percentage of my day is spent supporting the efforts/health of others. The more I focused on them, the less I focused on myself and the more run down I began to feel.

Insert lots of deep sighs, whining and slices of cheese pizza. That had become my go-to method of self care and are you wondering if any of that made me feel any better?

Nope.

So, the past three weeks I have decided that I HAVE to put more focus and care into myself because without that I become worthless to the people I care about. Oh and I become kind of bummered out in general.

Falon's Self Care Strategy:
  1. MUSIC! Music at my desk, music in my ears making me fist pump and kick my to-do list's ass. BOOM
  2. Take quick 5 minute breaks at work to stretch and do a couple restorative yoga poses.
  3. Bring shoes to change into for lunch break walks. I eat over my keyboard, true story, so I might as well take my lunch time to enjoy some sun (vitamin d!) and escape the office.
  4. Working out most days of the week. Working out to feel my blood pump, not to count calories or miles. If I'm honest, I LOVE having NO races on my calendar. Today I did 30 minutes of run/walking at a good incline on the treaddie while watching The Mindy Project on Hulu. (OMG I love her. Mindy Kaling and Jennifer Lawrence please be my bffs!) Then I came upstairs and did some flow yoga. I've been focusing on working in more yoga in the last couple weeks and I can already see improvements in some of my poses. Woot!
My favorite beginner yoga dvd.
That's it. Food isn't in my self-care plan because abiding by the above strategies have made me happy to prepare good eats and snacks for myself. Seriously, I went to Sam's Club (home of the greasy cheese pizza slice) and I had no desire to partake in the pizza or the samples because I noshed some broccoli and baby tomatoes on the drive over.
Heyyy breakfast. Broccoli is the new bacon.

How do you take care of yourself?
xo,
falon
Posted by at 6:09 PM

12 comments:

  1. You are too cute. But I definitely know what you mean. I haven't been doing a great job of self-care either - what with 115 students, a husband, and a marathon to train for. I've finally realized (after 10 weeks of training), that I have to make training fit into my life, not my life fit into training. Duh, right?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. It is a super tough balance to strike. We are all soooo busy and the hardest part of running a marathon is the training. Believe me when I say that your race will be a breeze compared to all your long runs. Oy

      Delete

  2. Getting regular exercise and enough sleep are very important to my well being. So is laughter. I swear to god, I need to laugh out loud at least once a day. Thank god there are so many good sitcoms to stream on netflix and that I am blessed with so many hilarious friends.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. I LOVE LAUGHING! You make me laugh often emilz.

      Delete

  3. Love this. You deserve to take care of yourself and be the absolute best version of yourself, my dear! :)

    ReplyDelete

  4. I went through this not that long ago myself. I wasn't happy and for the longest time couldn't figure it out!! It finally hit me that if I make me happy, not everyone else that I would be...duh right?!

    ReplyDelete

  5. I second the music thing - I feel like if I graphed my music listening and moods, there would be such a direct correlation I could probably get a prescription for Mumford.

    ReplyDelete

  6. Ha! I had to laugh about the music because the tempo (or amount of cursing in the lyrics) directly correlates to my mood. I was really bad about taking care of myself, because I was always taking care of others. The biggest things was learning not to feel guilty about self-care. Now, I realize like you that if I dont take care, I am no good to those I love.

    ReplyDelete

  7. Oh man, do I take care of myself? Wow. I guess I don't. I do love your ideas - I'm going to pump up the tunes at my desk and listen to music while I'm getting paper work done and grading papers. I'm sure it will be much more focused!!! And I love the idea of stretching. Love your post, girl!

    ReplyDelete

  8. grrl- so glad to hear you are taking care of you. and your hair. cause you know i want to cut that shit off and wear it on my head.

    taking care of myself? ugh. right now it is all about relearning who the eff i actually am. which is interesting.

    ReplyDelete

  9. I finally discovered that working out to just exercise instead of trying to hit a certain calorie burn is freaking amazing. I've also realized that the more I take care of my body and exercise, the less it craves the shit it used to crave. Genius, I suppose!

    Jen@HealthyFoodandFamily

    ReplyDelete

  10. I'm so glad you're taking care of yourself and doing things for you. Enjoy your walks at lunch. I wish I had taken time to do more of that when I worked in an office. I probably would have been a much happier employee when the crazies got under my skin!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for reading and commenting and making my day infinitely more awesome!

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)