The Spa life
Don’t close your eyes
The industry that advertises a myriad of services available to remedy the hardships of modern life includes lotions, potions, massages, rubs and all manner of physical treats. The dilemma comes in when there is no room left in life to use these services to escape the multitude of tasks that scroll through your brain all day waiting for you to accomplish them. You may pride yourself on not needing a check-off list because you think you are able to keep these demands front of mind, but they can seem to be like a record skipping back to the same spot over and over. It’s a lot. If you tend to keep a running tab of the errands assigned to you or that you end up responsible for, the constant checking of the list is a reminder of the extent the control of your life has flown away from you. The dog-eared pages of your planner resemble the edges of your sanity. At this point, self-care reminders may seem like an easy way to recoup and a chosen one or two are squeezed in with the thought that they will repair the damage. But when you take a mallet to pry apart 30 minutes of life to add a potentially good idea, the tasks on either side groan. The sweet effect of the self-care project is limited to the ten minutes that follow it. With this in mind, maybe self-care isn’t really limited to the definition of some physical service. Maybe it can be refined as looking longingly into your latte and saying a tiny prayer to those who selected the delicious beans ground just so for you, or maybe it can be playing your favorite music and singing while folding that load of laundry, or maybe it can be picking up that new mascara that promises the longest lashes, or maybe it can be anything you want it to be. Maybe self-care is really best when it is self-defined.
Pamper Me
Option #1: When did you last define your favorite form of self-care?
Option #2: What can you do right now to up your self-care choices?
Option #3: What can you add to help someone else show how much you care for them?
That’s it. After you choose the option that best describes care to you, take a few minutes to describe why you chose that option and what action, if any, may come next.
