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Do you take care of yourself as well as you care for others?

Think about the last time you were sick. Now think about a time when someone you loved was sick. Did you treat yourself with as much compassion, patience and gentleness as you did your loved one?

If you answered yes, congratulations! You have a loving relationship with yourself. 

If you answered no, let’s try to figure out why. If you’re like me you tell yourself you’re fine or you don’t have time to be sick. You push away your symptoms and go about your day. 

Why We Won’t Accept 
The first thing to address here is the WHY. Why aren’t we acknowledging our sickness? Why do we try to ignore it? If you’ve had a child, you know the first thing you did when your child was sick was take care of them. You let them rest and showed them love and tenderness. So why don’t we treat ourselves with as much tenderness?

If you refuse to slow down when you’re under the weather, ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish.  A common underlying reason could be our ego or fear. One way we show fear is by not acknowledging our health.

If we ignore the cold, it will just go away….that’s operating out of fear because we fear addressing reality so we pretend it isn’t happening. If we ignore it and power through….we don’t have to stop and feel fear.

Or we let our ego run wild by thinking sickness is a sign of weakness. It’s common for us humans to believe we are above average and getting sick makes us look average or weak. Can we all stop and see how ridiculous that is? We are ALL humans and part of the human experience is that we will ALL fall sick at some point.

We have too much on our plate to be sick…that’s our ego and fear working together. We all want to be seen as important and valued. In our culture we have this silly way of believing that busyness = importance. I guarantee the things on your to-do list aren’t all that critical. You don’t need a long to-do list to be seen or valued. You being you is enough.

Moving forward
A difficult lesson for me to accept is that despite how hard I work to keep myself healthy, I am not immune from illness. The next time your body sends you a signal that it needs rest show yourself the same love and kindness you would show your child. Our bodies are amazing vessels that we sometimes take for granted. Rather than ignore it’s signs, we need to take care of it.