Boundaries are kind, loving and important for self-care

Some of us are people pleasers. We want to make others happy, allow them to do their thing, but sometimes that’s at our own expense. We put ourselves out for the sake of others, and that feels the right thing to do, after all, we don’t want to be selfish. We are pleased we’ve made them happy and we can live vicariously through their pleasure.

But what if that person is doing something that is clearly not doing them any good (an addiction of some sort etc), or they’re regularly impacting on our family time, or our own sense of self. Do we still want to facilitate them doing that? Just because it makes them ‘happy’ does that make it okay? Or is it more loving and kind to draw a line, to say, “That’s not okay”; to be clear about what is and isn’t acceptable to us.

Sometimes the loving thing to do is say ‘no’. It might not feel it, but it’s loving towards both them and ourselves. It is kinder to be clear, to say where the line is and when they’ve crossed it. Unpopular, perhaps. But kinder and more loving, definitely. It means that everyone knows where they stand. Wouldn’t you want someone to do that for you?

There’s hope if that sounds like a good idea but feels hard. As a reformed people pleaser I’m proof that you can change and be more boundaried. And I can help you do the same if that’s what you’d like.

Perhaps someone is requiring more of your time than you really want to give, and it’s impacting other relationships. It’s about being clearer about what’s okay and not okay for you, knowing where your line is. If you’d like me to help and support you in gaining clarity and creating boundaries you can check out my Coaching page and email me at immakingtimeforme@gmail.com

Listening to Your Body: Why Rest Matters

Yesterday I rested. I’ve had a very busy month and I felt that all of it had just caught up with me – I was tired. My body was up for very little. In fact, aside from my usual short strolls throughout the day, I really just slept, read, and emptied the dishwasher!

I had a big, long to-do list. Not just yesterday’s, but the things I didn’t get to the day before because I was tired. And the list accumulates.

You see, it’s not just my body that’s tired, but my mind also. I know I’ve been thinking less clearly than I’d like, less coherently. I’m less good at making the decisions and choices that are right for me. And experience tells me that all of those things become better, easier, more effective, if I take time out and rest.

And yet.

There’s a part of my mind that was very active. It’s the part that told me that I was being a slacker. That I should just knuckle down and get on with stuff – it needs doing!

We’re so conditioned to ignore what our body tells us, to override it (if we’re even aware of what it’s saying in the first place!) Society, our friends and family – people expect us to just get on and do things. And yesterday, that part of me was very talkative!

It was hard to ignore, even though I knew it wasn’t helpful and that, in fact, it was wrong. It creates negative self-talk, and that in turn can make me feel even worse when I’m already tired – what kind of decent person am I if I can’t even get these things done, if I have to rest for a day??! Maybe more than one day…

The challenge is to ignore the voice. It’s less perilous than ignoring my body.

The voice in my head can learn a new narrative, even if it takes a while to remember it.

My body? I’ve only got one of those. And if I need rest then I need rest. Our bodies have a way of getting what they want, eventually, even if by force!

Ever pushed yourself hard to do all the things – work, life, home, kids etc, desperately waiting for your holiday, and then frustration and annoyance as you get ill just as you have time off? That’s your body saying, “Finally! Great, now I can recharge and reset – you’ve put me through so much!”

Our world gets faster and faster, and to deal with that most effectively I think conversely we need to slow down a little. Maybe a lot. We ignore our bodies at our peril. What’s yours telling you right now? Need a drink or some food? The loo? Some fresh air? Or maybe just to rest a bit with a cuppa before moving on to the next thing…

The importance of ‘transition’ time

In a conversation recently the subject of ‘transition’ time came up. What do I mean by that? It’s the time between one activity and another, when you transition from one thing to something else.

These transitions happen all the time – between being in bed and getting on with your day, and the reverse at the end of the day etc. And most of the time we pay no attention to them. Possibly to our detriment.

One of the most significant of these transitions can be between work and home. The time between finishing work and starting your ‘evening’. (Whatever ‘evening’ means for you based on your working hours.)

Pre-pandemic we would generally have a commute between home and workplace, and back again. Now, with increased working from home, that commute may only be a few steps, blurring the boundary between work time and home time. And this as the importance of a good work/life balance becomes more prevalent, and we talk more about our mental and emotional well-being.

Does this change and lack of transition time matter? Maybe it does. Without a commute we have lost time to process the day’s events. To go over things in our mind and reflect on the day. We might not even have been aware this is what we were doing. And we might not realise we’re not doing it now. We might just have a sense that we’re bringing work with us into our evening, that we can’t fully relax or rest.

In the conversation I was having we agreed that transition time is important. Particularly so between work and home, and sometimes between activities too. And that implementing transition time had given us benefits in our lives – better quality time with loved ones, increased focus, a feeling of increased wellbeing.

So how can you create this if it’s lacking in your life? Some suggestions to get you thinking: take a walk and get some fresh air; get out in nature; have a shower; do some exercise; spend time on a hobby; read; listen to music; journal; meditate.

Doing something to create a gap between one activity and another can really make a difference. Try it – what can you do?

The challenge of prioritisation

This week I’ve been re-learning what, for me, is a long-standing lesson – putting ‘me’ before my tasks. I’m not talking about doing things for others, which I covered in the post ‘I don’t have time to (not) look after myself‘. I’m talking about my own stuff – my shopping, my laundry, my housework. The things I need, and want, to do for myself.

You see, when I have a week off work I tend to load the beginning of my week with all the things I need and want to do now I’m at home. And I leave rest and chill out time until the end of the week. I decide that I’ll get all the ‘stuff’ done at home, then I can relax. And what happens is I experience a mini burnout as I put pressure on myself to do things, when what I really need is to rest.

And the ridiculous thing is, I know this! I know I need to rest. I feel it in my body. I get a ‘tired but wired’ feeling, an exhausted restlessness. But rather than finding ways to relax, I figure I’ll capitalise on the wired bit and just get on with stuff. Which exacerbates the whole situation! On top of which, I’m not even necessarily doing the things I need to as well as I’d like, because I’m too tired to concentrate properly.

It’s a lesson I’ve been learning on and off for years. You’d think I’d have it nailed by now! And this time I topped it off by trying to relax.

I don’t know about you, but when I try to relax I find it anything but relaxing. I think the key is in that word ‘trying’. If I’m ‘trying’ to do something then I’m working at it, and relaxing is less of a ‘working at’, and more of a ‘letting go’ and a release.

So eventually, after a good friend helped me realise what I was doing, I swapped my to-do list around, and put rest at the top of it. I stopped ‘trying’ to relax, and listened to my body – do I need a walk, a snooze, to read my book. And in listening to my body, I then relaxed.

Of course, once I feel more rested, then I have the energy to get on with my tasks and do them to the best of my ability.

Not everyone works like me. Some people need to get stuff done in order to rest, otherwise it plays on their mind, making relaxation impossible. The key is to understand how you yourself function. And if you’re someone who needs to clear the decks in order to relax, then make sure you put time in your schedule to rest – it’s so easy to keep the list topped up so you never get down time.

It’s all a matter of prioritisation. If we’re not rested we won’t be able to function and do our tasks as well as we would wish. So prioritising ourselves above our tasks is important, regardless of which way round we do it. (And yes, there are certain situations in which rest is hard, and that’s for another post…)

So which type of person are you – rest first, do later, or do first then rest? And how can you prioritise rest and relaxation in your life?

I don’t have time to (not) look after myself

Time. It’s a precious commodity. The one we often spend without really thinking about it, and then realise we didn’t actually do what we wanted to with it.

We spend our time at work, asleep, looking after other people (children/grandchildren/parents/others). We spend time on household chores, ‘life admin’. We crash out at the end of the day, watch tv/Netflix/Prime, scroll through our social media platform of choice. And then we get to bed feeling exhausted and like everyone else has a part of us but that there’s nothing left for ourselves. And then we might not sleep well, only to wake up and do it all again, just a little bit more tired than the day before.

We are socialised and conditioned, particularly those of us raised as female, to put other people before ourselves, that others’ needs are more important than our own. We leave our needs until the end of the day, only to discover we lack the time and/or energy to meet them. Or we feel guilty, selfish if we ‘indulge’ ourselves, like looking after ourselves requires some special justification. Like somehow we are less important than the other people in our lives.

But this thinking is somewhat back to front. There’s a reason we’re told to ‘put on your own oxygen mask before helping others with theirs’. This is because you can’t support other people if your own needs are not being met.

The whole point of looking after yourself (selfcare) is not to be selfish or self-centred, it’s to empower you to serve others in the best way possible. Once my needs are met I have greater capacity to support others.

So perhaps we need to rethink the way we live our lives. Given how full our lives and days are, we need as much inner strength and capacity as possible! Far from not having time to look after myself, I don’t have time not to look after myself. So I need to create time in my day to make sure my needs are met, so I can best support others, be that at home or at work.

So let’s let that idea sink in for a bit, and then we can think about how we can create that time and make some changes…

Making Time for Me

Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com

Making time for ourselves is often underrated, but is increasingly seen as being important. The thing is, there’s a whole load of societal and cultural conditioning to overcome around that, where making time for ourselves is seen as being indulgent and selfish.

What if that thinking is misplaced? What if those old ways may be holding us back, individually and as a society?

Journey with me to a new way of thinking and being, where life is more in balance.