You Can’t Pour From an Empty Cup (Or Drink Directly From a Fire Hydrant)
Why You Should Practice Self-Care Every Day
You ever get to the end of the day and just feel… drained? We all know the popular adage - you can’t pour from an empty cup. And it’s true. We can’t show up for those around us very well when we haven’t shown up for ourselves well first. It’s a hard lesson for a lot of us to learn; that putting ourselves first isn’t actually selfish. That if we want to love our people well, we actually have to figure out how to love ourselves well, too.
But you know what else is just as impractical as pouring from an empty cup? Drinking directly from a fire hydrant. Full disclosure: I have never actually tried to do that. But I can imagine it would do more harm than good (and I’ll let you create your own visuals).
But that’s exactly what we do when we wait until we’re totally burned out and then start running full speed ahead into every self-care activity we can think of. We end up just swinging from one extreme to the other and back again. Because adding 103 different self-care activities to your day is wildly impractical when you have actual shit to get done - when your boss is calling, your kids are whining, the gas light is on in the car, again.
So what do we do? Dial it down. Scale back. Find small ways to show up for yourself each day - ways that feel practical, doable, realistic within the structure of your life. And then actually do them, every day.
Regular Self-Care Creates Muscle Memory
When I was in my late 20’s, I started having panic attacks. I remember sitting at the front desk of the office where I worked at the time, wondering what was happening to me. My hands were shaky. I started to sweat. I couldn’t focus. My heart was racing. I rushed to the bathroom and sat on the floor, trying to calm myself down.
It happened a few more times before I finally realized what was happening. I was experiencing anxiety that quickly turned into panic attacks when I didn’t pay attention to it. I talked to a few people and read some books that all pointed me in the direction of yoga, meditation, and breath work.
A big ah-ha moment came for me one day as I was learning a breath technique to calm my nervous system and slow everything down. The instructor said that we learn these techniques and practice them regularly, when we are not in an anxious state, so that when we do find ourselves in the middle of a full fledged panic attack, we aren’t trying to frantically remember how to breathe.
We will have cultivated a habit that won’t take any thought to use when things get hard; our muscle memory will kick in and we’ll already know what to do.
We All Know Life is Stressful
And so it came to be that meditation and breathwork are a part of my daily self-care rituals (and on my sacred six list). I like to call them rituals because it’s something I do every day no matter how I feel. It’s not something I just conjure up when life gets stressful.
And life will get stressful. I think we all know that. So why do we wait until things are overwhelming and we’re drowning before we start taking care of ourselves? Before we ask for help or take a break or nurture our bodies, minds, souls…?
If you know you’re going to run a marathon in six months, you don’t just wait for race day to lace up your sneakers. You get up every day and you run. You stretch, drink water, eat well, and whatever other running things those psychos do.
It might sound kind of bleak to say, “Hey, we know hard times will come, so let’s prep for them.” I mean, the very anticipation of that would give me anxiety. But the reality is, if you’ve been alive for literally any amount of time, you already know that life can be really fucking hard sometimes. A Lot of times, actually.
And while we might not want to dwell on that (nor should you because - depressing), it’s okay and even necessary to at least acknowledge it. Admit that a lot of things in life are out of our control and we might not always have it all together or handle it well or that sometimes we don’t know how to handle it in the first place.
…then…
Create a plan, a few self-care rituals that work for you, and practice them every day. On good days, when life feels full - practice them. On hard days when you don’t even want to get out of bed - let them support you. And you just keep doing that. Over and over again. And then you look back one day and realize you’ve stepped off that puke inducing roller coaster and are so much better at just riding the waves as they come, maybe even enjoying yourself. Look at you, surfing like a pro.
Your Turn!
What keeps you from practicing self-care every day? What’s your biggest struggle when it comes to practicing self-care? Drop it in the comments or just hit reply and let me know!