WHO ARE YOU BECOMING?
The little things matter.
"It's not how hard we work or our titles that make us great, it's our humanity that makes us great."
Today I celebrate the wedding day of my parents, without it I would not be here.
When I look back I see myself as a young girl with an entire life in front of her. I see her training to be a gymnast and compete with the hopes of achieving success and respect. I see a toddler and a baby learning how to navigate the world, guided by elders. And I see my parents when they first met and decided to create a life and a future together. Thankfully I was a part of that future.
GETTING IN TUNE WITH YOURSELF
It took me two burnouts and losing both of my parents within a year to cancer before I realized that self-care is a daily mindset, not something we do only on weekends to recover from a stressful week. Socrates introduced us to self-care in ancient Greece as knowing ourselves, so that caring for ourselves is how we can care for loved ones. The sense that self-care is not just about us has been part of the human condition since we appeared on earth. Buddhism speaks about compassion for ourselves so that we can have compassion for others. We are all interconnected. Self-care is not just about self. It’s about care.
What we need to recognize is that no matter how hard we try to separate ourselves from our tasks and relationships, we are not separate. We—as individuals—are at the core of all our relationships, and this affects all aspects of our interactions in work and life.
For several years, I had utterly abandoned myself and self-care in pursuit of a career. So I set out to learn what my body needed so I could challenge the verdict and change my prognosis. I returned to school, learned integrative nutrition therapy, studied different healing modalities, went back to my mindfulness practice, and continued my Buddhist studies. More than anything, I wanted to understand not just what makes us sick, but also how we can reclaim agency over our health.
I need my body to take care of me as much as my body needs me to take care of it. We have an interactive relationship. We need to be a team. You and your body do too.
Looking back, I could see how my lack of self-care not only wore me out, it also affected the people around me, my family and friends, my team, and even my quality of work. I saw how I cut corners to save time, how I had been short-tempered and irritable, impatient, and unkind. This was more evident when I was tired, thirsty, and hangry (hungry and angry), and working on survival mode.
Back then, I had self-care all wrong, and most of us still do because as a society we still have the mindset that to be of service, we must sacrifice ourselves. We must rethink self-care in relation to work so that we no longer have to choose between being busy and healthy or having a career and a life. Fortunately, companies and other workplaces are now realizing they must also take responsibility for their part in changing the narrative so we can survive the future of work and build a better culture together.
DEMYSTIFYING SELF-CARE
By now, it’s clear that we have to have our basic needs met. Let’s stop debating in society whether or not we need fuel and support for our minds and bodies—we do. As we move along in this book, you’ll also discover why even our most basic needs are essential to help us manage stress. The important point to remember is that we need to stop thinking of self-care as something we have to do, but rather embrace self-care as who we are and how we care better about ourselves, each other, and our work. After all, a healthy relationship with ourselves affects and cultivates meaningful relationships with others and establishes how we show up for work. The cause and effect of self-care isn’t just about looking or feeling better, either. It affects how we think, engage with ourselves and each other, and the decisions we make—and with that— how we live and work as whole human beings.
Left unchecked, we’ll continue to take our bodies for granted and ignore the nudges and prompts it gives us throughout the day until something horrific happens, which isn’t surprising. We don’t grow up learning how amazing our bodies are and we don’t comprehend their self- healing power or that they run entirely in the background all day long to help us function.
Our bodies want us to succeed and are a system that’s more complex, intelligent, and faster than any computer. And they don’t ask for much. As long as we feed it, give it water, take it for walks, perhaps a run, and make sure it gets some breaks, rest and sleep, it shows up day after day for us, over and over again. When you give it some love and care, it works like a loyal companion.
For this to happen, we need to recognize that self-care is both the most intimate and personal relationship we have with ourselves and also the most interesting and amazing possibility we have to harness change and growth and build a better culture together.
SMALL CHOICES ADD UP
People, experiences, and beliefs about who we are and can be is all part of who we are becoming every single day. As we go through life our hopes and possibilities face our fears and losses. We build resilience as we grow through adversity and let ourselves be driven by what we care about.
Sometimes it’s not easy to remember that small choices along the way add up to the life we have to look back on. Some are mistakes, sure, but all in all, being able to look back is a very special treat.
We all have these stories. Some of them are lovely, some of them difficult and some are even traumatic, but people, experiences and what we believe is possible is what makes us human. Every day, that human is inside every single one of us. Also at work.
Let’s embrace our humanity and our stories of how we have become who we are and keep growing into becoming more and more ourselves with curiosity and care for what’s ahead.
