Do you have a “Helping Hangover”?

What is a Helping Hangover, you ask?

Oh, I bet it’s something you’ve experienced at least once.

You know, it’s that feeling you get when you’ve had a super busy week… or month… or DECADE… of helping, helping, helping, and more helping.

You’ve been helping your friends, your family, your clients, your community. You’ve been coaching. You’ve been listening. You’ve been volunteering. You’ve been a thoughtful mom, wife, sister, auntie, friend. You’ve gone ABOVE AND BEYOND the call of duty for your clients. You’ve given away tons of your ideas and resources—for FREE. You’ve given away countless hours of your time. You’re chugging along, going going going, helping helping helping, day after day after day… and then one morning… you wake up… and you are fucking EXHAUSTED.

It’s like you’ve got a throbbing hangover from a bottle of cheap vodka!

You feel tired, lethargic, foggy, unmotivated, anxious, stressed, stretched way too thin. You might feel hopeless, depressed. You might even feel angry and resentful.

You feel like, “Ugh, what have I done? This isn’t the life I wanted. This isn’t how I wanted my career to feel when I decided to become a coach. Where did things go wrong? How come I feel so freaking tired? And how come I feel so BROKE? Where’s all that money I was supposed to be earning for all of this hard work I’ve been doing?”

Yup.

That’s a Helping Hangover.

Fortunately, there’s a cure, and it’s called… SELF CARE.

Oh yassssss. Self Care. I’m sure you’ve heard of it? [LOL]

I’m sure you encourage your kids, friends and clients to practice self care. But what about YOU?

What’s up with YOUR self care lately? Are you taking excellent care of yourself? Are you making your health a top priority? Maybe sometimes… but not very consistently? Maybe not much at all?

OK, let’s discuss.

I want to share a question with you. This is a question that I ask myself regularly, a question that I ask my clients, too.

“Imagine that you are a woman who takes EXCELLENT care of herself. Imagine you ARE that woman. How would that woman plan her day?”

I will say that again:

“Imagine that you are a woman who takes excellent care of herself. Imagine you ARE that woman. You ARE that woman right now. A woman who takes excellent care of herself. How would that woman plan her day?”

Let that question sink in.

Take a moment and think about it.

How would that woman go about her day?

What kinds of things would she do to take care of herself?

What kinds of morning rituals would she do? What kinds of bedtime rituals?

What would she eat and more importantly, HOW would she eat? Would she chomp down her lunch in a big rush while sitting in front of a computer screen? Or would she take a relaxed lunch break outside on the porch?

What kinds of boundaries would she set?

What kinds of things would she NOT do?

Imagine that YOU ARE that woman. YOU ARE that strong, powerful woman. You ARE that woman who takes excellent care of herself every day. How would that woman live?

It’s time for YOU to live like that… so… I want you to come up with at least ONE SELF CARE IDEA that you can incorporate into your day… TODAY.

The beauty of self care is that is feels great… AND… it also makes you RICH.

I am not kidding about this. If you take excellent care of yourself—mentally, physically, emotionally—then you literally feel like a different person and you start earning money in a whole new way.

You become more alert, more clear, more focused, more creative, more confident. You’re able to take your business ideas and implement them. You have more ENERGY for everything you want to accomplish. Your power goes UP and your income goes UP.

 

 

Sometimes, the hardest part about self care is simply REMEMBERING TO DO IT! Like, you KNOW you need to do it, you KNOW it’s important, but you wake up… and you check your email… and you have your first client meeting of the morning… and the day rushes by… and before you know it, it’s 9pm and you’ve forgotten allllll about self care. Oops.

So to help you REMEMBER to take excellent care of yourself, here’s something fun for you to try…

My friend Alex bought herself a big bulletin board from Target and a bunch of big sheets of paper.

Every week, usually on Sunday morning, she makes a Self Care Checklist and she pins it to her bulletin board.

She takes a big thick Sharpie marker and a big sheet of paper and in BIG LETTERS she writes down ten, twelve, maybe fifteen self care ideas that she wants to complete in the next week.

Everything on her checklist is really small and really simple. Just little small things that make her feel strong and energized. For instance, her checklist might go…

[    ] Pet a dog

[    ] Call your mom

[    ] Take a gentle yoga class

[    ] Do a face mask

[    ] Take hot shower with lavender essential oil

[    ] Masturbate!

[    ] Lie outside in the sunshine for five minutes

[    ] Stretch before bedtime

And so on.

Each time she completes one item, she checks it off the list. By the end of the week, her checklist is all checked off! Done!

Alex told me that she used to write her self care ideas inside a notebook—or she’d put little reminders on her Google Calendar—but this just didn’t work out so great. But ever since she started making this BIG weekly bulletin board, it has really helped her to be more consistent.

It makes sense, right? If you write your self care plan inside a notebook and then toss that notebook in your purse, it’s easy to forget about it. If you put a little reminder on your phone, meh, it’s easy to ignore that. But if you write your plan on a BIG BULLETIN BOARD that’s THREE FEET WIDE with BIG letters… then it’s pretty hard to forget your self care plan!

Alex keeps her board right in her kitchen area so it’s the first thing she sees every morning when she makes her coffee. It makes it practically IMPOSSIBLE to forget about self care. Plus, she gets a little thrill of satisfaction every time she checks something off the list!

I am totally a checklist person too—there’s something that just feels so good about doing that checkmark! Yesssss. It’s orgasmic!

So, if you struggle to make time for self care—or if you struggle to remember self care—try this out. Go BIG, BIG, BIG. Get yourself a BIG bulletin board, a BIG chalk board, a BIG dry erase board, a BIG sheet of paper, some type of BIG visual reminder, and make yourself a weekly checklist.

If you try this out, please let me know! Send me a photo of your big bulletin board checklist! Email it to my team or post it on Facebook or Instagram and tag me. I want to see your self care plan for the week. Make it BIIIIG.

Self Care equals MONEY IN YOUR POCKET.

Always remember that.

Self Care is never frivolous.

Self care equals MONEY.

Self care is a terrific business plan.

 

 

 

 

PS. Are you ready to take some simple steps to up your self care game with me this upcoming week? I would LURVE to see you in the BARE Book Club, happening 8/12-8/16. Get the deets and sign up here and I’ll see you there!