I had a sort of epiphany today. I had a tense moment the other night. I was washing dishes and everywhere I turned there was mess. The counters. The food scrap bin. Cheerios on the floor. And I had just cleaned the entire kitchen a couple days earlier.
As I scrubbed the dishes I could feel my movements becoming more aggressive. Banging dishes around. Slamming the dishwasher door. And then I turned to the dirty counters and loudly and abruptly expressed my frustration to my unsuspecting family. It was a bad moment for all of us.
Unfortunately this isn’t an uncommon occurrence. Especially when I’m stressed about work or other things. I’m working on interrupting these patterns. After reflecting I realized that I was really tired. I kept telling myself “I need to do this so I can sit down” when what I really needed was to tell myself “you need to sit down so you can do this.” I needed a moment to collect myself but I was forcing myself to push through. It’s a subtle shift with profound implications.
I was trying to push through my pain in order to give myself a break. When what I should have done was just give myself the break. Just a couple minutes to sit down and give myself the space to disrupt my spiral. And once I recovered then I could tackle the tasks at hand.
How often do we do this? Delay what we need in order to finish some task? Putting chores and checklists and things ahead of self-nourishment. Probably, if you’re like me, fairly often.
But the good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s not like the dishes had some magical fantasia-like power over me preventing me from sitting down until they were done. I had control. And I know now that I can stop things before I don’t have control.
It takes practice, and self-reflection, and strategies. But it’s possible to put yourself first before all the things. It’s not selfish. It’s self-preservation but also giving yourself what you need to be your best. Like putting on your oxygen mask in the plane. You can’t help others unless you can breathe. And you certainly can’t help yourself if you don’t allow yourself to breathe either.
Maybe instead of “I need to do this so I can finally give myself what I need” try “what do I need to give myself so that I can give these other things what they need.”
Hugs.
