Catching Mo with Self Care

I think many of us pretty well understand at this point that the outside world will take from you as much as you allow it to do so. It simply taxes your energy as a matter of doing business, and the busier we are, the more responsibility we take on, the more we risk this drain. Unfortunately these tasks and duties can take on an overwhelming momentum, and it's easy to create an equally overwhelming deficit.

However we can't be effective people if we cease to take care of ourselves. I'm glad this simple truth is catching on, but it still bares repeating here. I fall prey to this as much as the next person. The good news is that if I don't take time to take care of myself, my body ends up doing it for me. I get sick, I lose time from my work and my community, and I have to seriously ramp up the self care to get out of energy deficit. Of course I am ineffective in my tasks at this point, but I was losing efficacy along the way.

A useful analogy to cary in your breast pocket is that of simple momentum. I think most of us probably intuit this as mass in motion, which is true. More accurately, momentum provides a known quantity of a mass, in motion, in a specific direction. The direction is important.

I have a friend who's fond of telling me that it's important to see the train coming down the track. The train represents a momentum I can't affect. It's bearing down, it needs miles to stop, it's not going to veer from it's track, and I'm silly if I want to depend on the engineer to intervene on my impending doom. Fair enough. Some things are like that, and we need to get out of the way or get squashed.

Sometimes we ourselves are the conductor though, we're managing the train. The smart conductor makes stops along the way. These stops are crucial for reestablishing energy, direction, and purpose, and they make them regardless of whether the passengers like it. Unlike a train, we enjoy a freedom beyond the singularity of the track. We can contribute motion in any direction we want.

Doing anything for self care provides momentum toward refueling, and usually toward being more effective in our family and work and purpose. If you don't see results from self care it means your in too deep in the other direction. That's ok, it can take time.

Of course I see this all the time with massage. People come in once or twice a year, often at the end of their rope, hoping to contribute some momentum in the opposite direction. I'm actually fine with that. I think anything that helps, helps, but even self care has it's own momentum.

The massage I give may feel good, and will work out knots, but I simply cannot work everything that's accumulated theretofore. The effects will last a week at the most, but more likely only half a week. It's not that my massage was ineffective, it's just not enough momentum in self care.

Self care is like that. The massage I give seems to have the greatest, longest lasting effect, on those clients that see me regularly, every 3 to 4 weeks. My esthetician friends require about the same regularity for facials, and a little more regularity for their waxings. I'm not saying that these are the only avenues of self care either, or that you cannot mix many different methodologies if you want. The take away here is simple. You invest in the momentum of self care so that you avoid being swept away by another momentum all together. And wash your hands often. Getting sick is no fun!