How Do You Self Care? My Self Care Plan
How Do You Self-Care? Well…
here’s what I do…
Watch the Intro Video below ↓ and See if it Resonates.
The truth is, I love to plan. I love the big ‘OL dopamine rush that hits my brain when I make a list, talk about my ideas and how I’m gonna do it all out loud and then sometimes I actually follow thru. Well, it turns out these list makers and checker-off-ERS actually do have more dopamine in their brains. The problem is I’m also a multi-tasking, list-making machine, and somewhere along the line I convinced myself that this is a GAWD-like quality - turns out …it is not..it is actually self-delusion. It also turns out that a dopamine addiction loop is very similar to how your brain feels when it’s on cocaine. Yeah, you read that right.
I think sometimes the hardest part is knowing where and & how to start.
So… I have spent over a year working on this in therapy and workshops and reading articles with science and also Reddit boards. I tried to figure out the best balance for my dopamine-loving, checking-off, and list-making self, and I came up with Self Care Hard. During the time I was figuring out how to get my shit together again, I sat next to my co-worker and said I out loud “I just wish I had a mom who would like tell me what to do and plan it all out” and she said, “I just wish there was this guide on how to do it..” - I cut her off cause I tend to that when I’m excited and I get a “hit” for an idea (I’m working on trying not to do this it comes off rude, but it really is excitement + terrible short term memory) and responded “Like on how to take care of yourself?” and she replied with a very I can’t believe I just shared that “YES”.
How could two nurses be sitting there wanting someone to guide them and hold their hands in taking care of themselves? How could we not know how?? We ARE NURSES, it is in fact what we do. Though some may think we just make very good Halloween costumes, I digress. Well one… we are/ were burned out, I mean we take care of and anticipate for everyone else all day long, and that part of your personality doesn’t end or shut off when you leave the hospital. And like a lot of people sometimes we take something as simple as just taking care of ourselves and making it this grand mountain in our heads, that we don’t know how or where to start and we get analysis paralysis and overwhelmed so we take a bubble bath or drink a glass of wine cause it’s easy and we can pretend that’s doing something. It’s not, the wine will probably cause hangover anxiety tbh.
So being the little “life experimenter” and lover of solving other people’s problems while not tending to myself that I am, I set out to hack self-care. Turns out I actually ended up doing something for myself - I created a system (with a lot of lil boxes to check off) that would help me get back into a routine, a system, and that I could always have each time I stopped doing it. Cause let’s face it…I’m probably gonna stop doing it and have to start again. This system works very well for me, so I shared it with some friends, and it worked for them. Now I’m sharing it here with you. And it’s FREE cause why, not.
Watch the Intro Video below ↓ and See if it Resonates. If so you can start the challenge here