The soft landings prompt for this week is Self Love.

Being an Aussie and growing up through the 70s & 80s, loving yourself was so not cool at all. If you were confident and “loved yourself” you were seen to be “up yourself”. Though the reality is that self love is so much more than loving yourself.

Self love or Self care is really the catch cry at the moment and is not something that I have ever been very good at. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind a good pamper now and then, and I certainly always feel so much better when my hair is done. But when it actually comes down to it I don’t look after myself very well at all.

I have a tendency to make sure that I look after everyone else around me, before I take care of myself. I would be that person on the plane passed out because I was too busy putting everyone else’s masks on and forgot to put my own on.

Something that I have learnt is that when you hit the bottom the only way out is to put yourself first. You need to take care of yourself to find yourself and it is only when you are your best self that you have anything to offer to others.

So at the moment some of the things that are part of my self care are:

• take medication daily – this helps me gets through, keeping things on an even keel, medication for me is not a magic bullet but it is important.
• rest – get lots of rest – this is something that I was far better at doing in the beginning, it is getting harder to keep up my rest, but I am struggling at the moment and I am noticing I need rest!
• reading – I am trying to get my mind working again and to do this I am trying to read actual books every day.
• exercise – this is really important on so many levels, not just the physical benefits of exercise but there are also important brain benefits from exercise.
• doing one thing every day just for me – I am not great at this but sometimes this is as simple as sitting down and drinking a cuppa in peace.

Remember self care or self love is so important and you are no use to anyone if you aren’t looking after yourself. Many years ago I wrote this article for the Australian Multiple Birth Association Magazine when I was the editor perhaps I should have followed some of the advice and perhaps I wouldn’t have ended up down the bottom of a very deep, dark hole.

Take care and look after yourself!

Cat xoxo 

I would love to hear what you do to look after yourself if you want to join up with my linkup here [inlinkz_linkup id=675077 mode=1]