Episode 1254: Why We Often Struggle with Self-care

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,254 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:06] Joel Hawbaker: I'm Joel Hall Baker, teacher, speaker, and author of Inverted Leadership. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your.

[00:00:21] Having the ability to lead through confident humility is key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this the Inspired Stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader,

[00:00:32] Scott Maderer: and if all it takes to recharge my batteries during the day is to schedule a little bit of time after lunch to take a 20 minute. That's too simple to work that my, my life is complex. My problems are complex. That's too easy to help. And I'm not saying that taking a nap every afternoon solves every problem in your life.

[00:00:53] It certainly won't. But it can solve some of them. Welcome and thank you for [00:01:00] joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, who will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that.

[00:01:22] Can impact the work

[00:01:24] in today's episode about impacting the world through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about why you often struggle with self care. I also share why we often think self care, is it worth it or just won't work. And I also taught about why it's important to change your mindset on what self care really is.

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[00:02:20] Scott Maderer: trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. A lot of times we struggle with giving ourself time to take care of ourself, and there can be a lot of different reasons for that.

[00:02:35] I know there's times that I've been dealing with my own mindset, or maybe I'm tired or frustrated, and I think to myself I really should just grab a snack or go take a short nap or do something like that to take care of myself, to recharge my batteries and be able to keep going. My wife has even suggested it to me, and back when I was in therapy, my therapist would suggest it to me and I [00:03:00] would fight against it because it just seemed too easy, it seemed too simple, and yet it would work when I would do it.

[00:03:09] When I would take that time, even 10 or 15 minutes, sometimes it would help get me going. Often I'd feel guilty for doing it. I'd feel shame or self blame, but I would still be able to do it. And what's more, I had this mindset or this definition or the belief deep inside that somehow or another self care was.

[00:03:35] Selfish, that care of myself was something that meant that I wasn't going to take care of others, that I was selfish. I was focused only on myself. But if you think about it, self care, meaning care of self, is doing something. Make sure that you're okay if, for instance, [00:04:00] you need glasses, you wear glasses, if you have diabetes and are treating it with insulin, you take insulin shots.

[00:04:06] If you have another illness that requires regular medication like allergies and you take allergy medicine, that is self-care, and we don't feel triggered by that. We don't feel reluctant by that and yet that's just as much self care as taking a nap. Even going away for a little while, or taking a day off or any of these other things.

[00:04:30] We think of self care as putting others last. If we put ourselves first, then we put others last. And that's where sometimes that analogy of know, put your own mask on before you take care of others can get in the way. Because we start thinking of it, that means we're putting others behind ourselves.

[00:04:49] And yet that's not really. True either because in the long scale of things, when you think about your whole life, if you burden [00:05:00] yourself out, then you're not able to take care of others as well either. There's other reasons that we can fight back against self care, the time that it takes, the money that it takes, all of these sorts of things as well.

[00:05:13] We talked about time yesterday and we'll talk about money tomorrow, but regardless of what it is, we struggle a lot of times in this area of actually giving ourselves permission to take care of our. Then on top of that, we often just believe that it won't work after all. It's such a simple solution. Go take a nap, go get a snack, and yet it often works really well.

[00:05:44] We have to really think about putting our time and our energy into things. Actually work. And so a lot of times we're looking for the big magic button. We're looking for the thing that works forever or we're looking for [00:06:00] something that is complicated and something that actually seems like it would work in some sort of fancy way.

[00:06:08] We're looking not for simple. , but we're looking for complex. And the reason why is because we believe that the problem that we have has to be big enough to require a complex solution. If all it takes to recharge my batteries during the day is to schedule a little bit of time after lunch to take a 20 minute nap That's too simple to work that my, my life is complex.

[00:06:32] My problems are complex. That's too easy to. And I'm not saying that taking a nap every afternoon solves every problem in your life. It certainly won't, but it can solve some of them. It can actually make you feel better and that's a simple example. There's obviously much more complex things that you can do that fall into the self care category, but a lot of times we're looking for those [00:07:00] complex solutions.

[00:07:01] When something simple is right there in front of us, that would. Helping and this is often about having the mindset of momentum. You're having the mindset of slowly improving a little bit over time, making those 1% changes that end up making big changes in your life. You're not always looking for just the quick fix that fixes everything.

[00:07:25] You're looking sometimes for the simple thing that fixes the problem. That's right in front of. You know when you're suffering from low B blood sugar, are you able to go grab a snack whenever you're tired? Are you able to go grab a nap? And don't get me wrong, I understand we don't always have full control over our schedule.

[00:07:45] We don't always have full control over every area of our life 24 7. But you do have more control, I think, than a lot of times we believe we do. And because of that, you can. Take [00:08:00] control and communicate about what your needs are and actually work in that direction. And because of that, you can begin to take care of yourself first, which will give you more energy to then take care of your other's needs.

[00:08:15] Take care of the work that you need to do, take care of your family, and actually live your life in a more healthy way. Thanks for listen.

[00:08:23] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the Stewardship of Talent, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/.

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