Honoring Your Feelings Isn't Always Self Care

There’s a lot I don’t *always* feel like doing. Probably, you too.

I don’t feel like waking up early once the alarm goes off.

I don’t feel like getting to the grocery store.

I don’t feel like putting up my laundry.

I don’t feel like writing.

I don't feel like calling them back.

I don’t feel like booking those flights.

I don’t feel like sending that email declining their opportunity.

I don’t feel like doing the extra lap around the park.

And I definitely don’t feel like washing my hair.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really good at telling myself I don’t have to do things that I don’t want to do. I justify and rationalize my way toward not doing things prettyyyyyyy easily. I slept in because my body needed it! I didn’t write because my eyes needed a break! I’ll grocery shop on a less crazy day! My dirty ass hair could use a wash break! Read: I “honor how I’m feeling” in the name of “self care”.

But that’s not actually it. Sometimes the most caring thing I could do would be to push past my own immediate feelings and do the damn thing. I recently revisited The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins, which was a book my mom told me about (thanks Mom!). In it she drops a real truth bomb, which is that we simply cannot wait to "be in the mood" to do things. When your alarm goes off at 5:23am, you’re likely NOT going to want to get up. When you need to make sales calls, you probably don’t want to make those calls. When you need to get in some extra exercise, you may not want to. Basically, waiting "to feel like it" is going to cause a whole lot of...waiting. Sometimes you’ll feel like it. Sometimes you won’t. But the progress that’s made in the “times you don't feel like it” is the progress that sets you a part.

You’ve likely heard the old advice to ‘workout and the motivation will come’. Well the same is true of everything else that you need to do in your life. DO it, and the feelings of wanting to do it will arrive. Don’t wait for the feelings first. The 5-Second Rule recommends counting backwards from 5 to 1 to transition from not wanting to do the thing to just doing the thing. 5 seconds. That’s all you get. And then you GO.

Go. Going. Getting on with it. Facing it. Doing it. That’s some serious self care for your future self, and oftentimes much more caring than doing nothing at all.

Alright, I guess I’ll go wash my hair.

Woman on xx