If you don’t have time for your well-being, take time for it!
“Time” isn’t usually sitting around waiting for you to pick it up. Does it seem like right at the very moment you might have free time, suddenly it’s already filled?
I don’t have time is a generic phrase. And it’s often hiding deeper meanings. What does it mean to you? Perhaps it means:
I’m afraid of devoting time to this because it might upset my normal routine.or
If I devote time to myself I won’t have time to do these other things (that are important to me).
How important is your well-being? Honestly, where does it fall on your list of priorities? If your well-being is important to you but you’re not connecting to it, it’s not too likely it’ll automatically become a priority. That’s like waiting for “extra” time to appear. How often does that happen? Instead you can choose to take time and make your well-being a priority.
What happens when you say, “I don’t have time”? If that’s coming from a place of fear your body will tell you. Your body is a good barometer for your internal state. You might feel a heaviness or a tightening sensation; the feelings will be unique to you but I guarantee it’ll be a little yucky. That’s your body warning you that you’re on the wrong path. You want to get friendly with these feelings, get to know them. When you can connect with them and verbalize the unspoken fear, the weight of that fear will change. Then it will be easier to choose your priorities instead of following what life seems to thrust on you.
For example:
—Should I make an appointment to help myself?—I don’t have time now! I need to do this and this and this, etc.
Have you ever had a similar thought? How’s that feel in your body? If you feel that tightening or heaviness or yuckiness that’s your body wagging it’s finger at you saying, Uh uh. I see you through that. You’re saying you don’t have time but that’s not the whole truth. Your body is very good at perceiving internal truth. I wrote a related article also dealing with your body’s truth-telling you can read here.
So if your body is warning you, what can you do? First, be honest with yourself. Is it that you don’t have the time or is it that you’re not sure how to make the time, right now? It’s ok not to have an immediate answer. When you see your body’s warning you now get to make a conscious choice, whereas before you had an unconscious reaction. Perhaps you’ll decide, yes, my well-being is important to me and I’ll shift things around to make time, which will include saying “no” to other things I was going to do. Taking care of yourself is worth spending time on.
Stress and anxiety are particularly insidious eaters of your time. How often have you experienced a lot of anxiety or stress and thought “I don’t have time to take care of myself.”? When you say that you might really be saying if I take the time to take care of myself, the other pressures I’m feeling and the other tasks I have in my life won’t get done. That belief can sneakily slip into an even greater statement: if I take the time to take care of myself then all of the other tasks in my life won’t get done. Those other tasks added together get very big. That’s a big statement to make and comes with big feelings of stress or anxiety. Your body expresses those feelings physically as uncomfortable sensations, perhaps even pain. Your body is warning you that your priorities are out of whack.
Taking care of myself is important. That statement is highly undervalued in our culture. Taking care of myself is important. Where can you make the time to take care of yourself? If your day is already full then something else will need to go, not necessarily forever, not permanently, but something’s gotta get bumped off the list to make room for your well-being. It’s a case-by-case basis. Maybe instead of cleaning the bathroom you need to take a nap. Maybe instead of responding to emails you need to make an appointment for help. And that’s important. Or maybe you just need a few minutes to stop, to be quiet.
When you’re the most stressed, the most anxious, when you’re telling yourself how much you have to do and you have to do it NOW, and you’re feeling your body getting tighter and jittery, the solution isn’t to go faster and do more. This is the time when you need care. Stop and give yourself the time for care. There might be the fear that if you stop you’ll never start again, that stopping and breathing will be a waste of time. But that’s not true; that’s fear talking. Your well-being is not a waste of time.
Most advertisements you see say the opposite. They imply that to attain some peace and happiness you need to buy this product, you need to buy that product, you need to join this, you need to look a certain way, you need to act a certain way. If you get trapped into believing all that it doesn’t bring peace at all, it brings stress. I’m not saying those products and advertisements are bad, just that they’re so general and incomplete, they might not apply to you in the moment. Only you know that. There aren’t many commercials that show someone stopping and saying, you know what? I’d like to go for a walk. I’d like to take a nap. I’d like to go move. I’d like to read a book. I’d like to just be quiet and take care of myself. I’m going to stop and listen to myself and find out what I truly need right now. Have you seen that advertisement? I haven’t.
Ok, well this one comes sort of close:
It’s easy to fall into this trap of I don’t have the time to take care of myself. That’s a stuck feeling because you know, and your body knows, it is important to take care of yourself. If there is a lot happening and you decide you don’t want to take that time right now, that’s ok. Right now I’m going to push through to get these things done and that’s ok. At least then you’re making a conscious choice instead of an unconscious one based on fear. So the next time you find yourself saying I don’t have the time ask yourself what you mean. What don’t you have the time for? If you’re saying I don’t have the time to take care of myself, how’s your body responding to that? What’s important in that moment? What’s more important than your well-being right now? What are you doing it all for? What can bring you a little bit of peace and joy?