Radical Self-Care

Massages, facials, hair touch-ups. You'll find these in my self-care toolkit along with yoga and drinks with friends.

All of these are restorative, but is there more to self-care than feeling good? And is self-care a luxury? 

On a recent episode of Nada Jones' "Meet Me in the Middle", life and career coach Emma Whittard described self care as an active, mandatory, contemplative practice.

Whoa! 

Whittard believes that we need space in our life to dream. But first, we have to know what we care about.

In her Family Love Letter to her adult children, eighty-three year old Emma, emphasized the importance of reflection: 

"We get on a fast track and need to get off to reassess and re-set our priorities. Set a time interval to reflect and evaluate. Weigh what is important at this point in your life. I'm doing this in bite sizes every day and I go in deeper at the start of each year."

Whittard  claims we only need five minutes a day and offers a 
simple 3 step fill-in-the-blank exercise to take stock now of what you want and/or need. 

1. "I am a person who_______ (skills, characteristics, values, etc.. NOT a role). 
2. My wish for ___________ (person you love most in the world) is ________________________________________.
3. Replace the name in #2 with 'myself' and see if it matches up for what you want.

Seeing self-care as a way of tapping new desires and potential moves it from being a nice-to-have to a must-have. 

Definitely adding this to my toolkit!