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October 3 - October 29, 2024
Audre Lorde defined self-care as a powerful act to reclaim space within a society that demanded minorities and oppressed groups stay small or invisible.
Self-care was no longer relegated to the realm of health, nor was it about standing up against oppressive systems. Instead, it morphed into a release valve, designed to bring you a momentary sense that things are all right.
“A method may be useful once, to solve one specific type of problem. Principles, however, can be applied broadly and repeatedly.”
design a system of living that prevents the problems from coming up in the first place.
aspirational wellness culture sells self-care as an escape from yourself, the truth is that no matter how much faux self-care you do, you’re still you.
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Eudaimonic well-being, in contrast, focuses on deriving meaning and having our actions be congruent with our values; it is the feeling that our lives are imbued with purpose.[1] Instead of prioritizing pleasure or happiness, eudaimonic well-being emphasizes personal growth, acceptance of your authentic self, and connection to meaning.
each person is doing what matters to them and understands the meaning behind how they spend their time.
rid of” guilt or avoid feeling guilty—they see the guilt as a giant red flag that they need to drop everything and attend to so it will go away. But this doesn’t work. In trying to avoid guilt or fighting with your mind to stop feeling that way, you are still engaging with guilt and letting it (or the avoidance of it) control you. The goal is not to stop feeling guilty, but instead, to turn down the volume and not let guilt control your decisions. It means seeing the guilt not as a giant red flag but as a faulty “check engine” light—something that’s always there but operates primarily in the
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“your boundaries are a reflection of how willing you are to advocate for the life that you want.”
I am okay with making mistakes. (I don’t need to listen to the cruel voice in my head.) I am not defined by being selfish or selfless. (I am allowed to consider myself along with those who I care about when I make decisions.) I can extend the compassion I give to others to myself. (I believe that we all deserve compassion, myself included.)
All the doing feels productive because it moves us forward. When we are still and resting, we must sit with the anxiety of being with ourselves and pay attention to our feelings and senses. For many, this stillness provokes anxiety. We want to quickly discharge the anxiety by doing something, anything. There can even be a sort of “high” that comes with checking off all the items on our lists.
There can be an underlying worry that if you were to finally put your feet up for a few minutes, if you were to say yes to support from others, if you were to be kind to yourself, you might just fall apart. When you finally do give yourself the space to connect with your body, it’s likely that the first thing you will feel is how utterly exhausted you are. It can be easier to keep going, numb and empty, than to stop and feel fatigue when you rest.
There’s no such thing as balancing work and family. This language points us toward a problem to be solved, a destination at which we arrive. It is far more accurate to say that relationship with partner, relationship with children, and relationship with work exist as an ever-evolving, dynamic, and noisy conversation.
feel connected with your values and are engaged in activities that align with them. Identifying our values in an explicit way emboldens us to make clear choices. And those choices lead to purpose and a sense of fulfillment.
GOALS VERSUS VALUES: WHO YOU ARE WHEN YOU’RE TRAVELING IS WHO YOU ARE WHEN YOU GET THERE
Values, on the other hand, are desired qualities of action. You can embody your values while you are working toward your goals (and even if you fail at your goals).
if goals are the things that you do, values are the way that you do them.
Values are not only descriptors of how you want to live your life but also why you make the decisions that you do.
values as “our heart’s deepest desires for the way we want to interact with the world, other people, and ourselves.”
Values are most easy to discern when we consider them in the context of decisions.
clarity that comes from making a clear decision and from understanding why you are making this decision is energizing. When you make a proactive choice, instead of feeling like your life is being done to you, you’re practicing real self-care.
we are making an internal shift within ourselves to reject the toxic cultural messaging we have ingested for far too long.
who she was outside of these milestones or the fact that achieving these goals was not in itself guaranteed to bring her inner bliss.
Many of us spend our time thinking, “Once I land that promotion, then I’ll be a new and better version of myself,” or “Once I have X amount of money saved, my life will be a little bit easier, then I’ll be happy.” And, on one hand, economic security and relational stability are both real endeavors that do provide systemic advantages. But they are not cure-alls for what an adviser of mine called “the problems of living.”
It’s a risk to live life by your values because your decisions might put you at odds with those closest to you, or you might find yourself “falling behind” in culturally held metrics like money, status, or prestige (or, conversely, self-sacrifice and devotion to caretaking). The thing is, not only will culture (the expectations put on us from the outside) and your nature (your innate wants, needs, desires, preferences) sometimes clash, but perhaps even more important to understand is that the culture often gives women contradictory goals that are impossible to meet simultaneously.
When you are at a fork in the road, you must pick a path. If you try to pursue too much at the same time, you will burn out and neither road will fulfill you. Your guide in making these tough decisions must be internal—your values—not external.
a key differentiator between people who practice real self-care and those who do not is developing the ability to prioritize and make a meaningful choice about how they spend their time. When your anxiety is in the driver’s seat, everything feels very important and facing fork-in-the-road decisions can feel like failure.
part of removing addiction to goals and connecting with values is to feel and internalize your accomplishments.
gratitude not as counting your blessings but as a form of digestion,
we actively engage with what is real and true in our world.
The purpose of gratitude in this context doesn’t involve toxic positivity or self-delusion. Rather, gratitude is a practice to tune your attention to what you have, so that you can then go on to appreciate what future good stuff will come your way. When you’re lacking this skill, you’ll forever be focused on the bad stuff, and even when the next gift arrives at your front door, you’ll be worried that it’s in the wrong wrapping paper.
Only when you fully acknowledge the wealth you have in life can you be ready for more. And a funny thing happens when you start appreciating and digesting all the good: You stop caring as much about getting that next thing. You realize that what you have right now is just as good as what you may have in the future.
Our values are always shifting and seesawing. It’s not a contradiction—it’s human nature. It’s helpful to remember that in each season of your life, you will have different priorities. This does not discount any one set of values; it’s only a sign of change and growth.
I get that values are important, but it feels so good to me when I’m in productivity mode and checking goals off of my list. Is this bad? Productivity becomes toxic when you haven’t identified the values that are underneath your goals.
When you achieve a goal, you feel a sense of completion and resolution. It’s not a bad thing to want and need that stability. It only becomes problematic when you lose track of why you care about the goal in the first place.
