On the importance of putting yourself first.

If you don’t prioritise you – as a parent, teacher, person with any type of responsibility – you won’t get much time to yourself. Fact. Because to be able to carve out the space in your life to give you that time, you have to give yourself permission you are worth it. There’s always another chore, money to earn, a task to complete… Until you collapse on the sofa at 9pm and half-heartedly flick something on Netflix.

Underneath all those jobs is a human. One with complex emotional needs, made mainly of water, who needs nourishing and nurturing, and ebbs and flows like the sea. It’s not only toddlers who need to process their emotional responses to an-ever-changing world or teenagers who can feel powerless, angry and frustrated, unable to see a way to deal with the situation in front of them. We ALL experience those feelings at moments in our weeks or days. Some of us, many times in the course of one day. Our emotional selves need the space to be okay before the physical time can even be a possibility. It’s no wonder so many people feel stressed out, unable to cope or relax when much of our culture – work, media, family – seems to prioritise doing more, doing it faster and better (not to mention for cheaper).

You need to know something: making time for yourself needs to be non-negotiable. In all our lives. Whatever is happening for us. You have to make a decision that to best support your kids/partner/colleagues/students and to contribute the most to your role/family/society, you’re actually going to feed yourself first. Your mental and physical body needs support and you are the best person to do it. Because that list of tasks to complete, financial pressures and social commitments never go away. Self-care doesn’t work when it’s the last thing on your to-do-list. It works when you step away from your responsibilities to everyone else for an hour or a day, even a minute, and are responsible for yourself first. That’s the importance of mindset. If it’s tricky for you, affirmations are a great way to support this kind of change. You can write them down or say them in your head or repeat them in the mirror: I deserve time for me, I give myself permission to care for myself, I best support others when I am feeling good, and so on…

You might be worried about how others are going to react to putting yourself first. They might imply you are a princess or being selfish. They might mutter under their breath. Have you considered they might do none of these things and say, ‘Wow, how refreshing to see someone putting themselves first’? However they react, it’s not about you. Remember, the only person’s experience you have any control over is your own. Don’t worry about what anyone else is doing, is an easy thing to say. For many of us, worry can consume our thinking and effectively steal time from us. Journaling – taking time to write down your thoughts – can have massive benefits in ridding yourself from worry and helping you formulate a better understanding of what it is you actually need in your life.

At different stages of your life, putting non-negotiable time in place for you is going to look different: working on a project that demands 80+ hour weeks, having a new-born or the term-time life of a teacher are all intensely busy periods. It’s going to be difficult to spend half an hour meditating, followed by an hour’s yoga. Accept that. Acknowledge it. BUT don’t let that mean there’s no time for you, don’t buy in to the story that you have to wait until some point in the future. Because in those exceptionally busy and stressful times it’s actually most vital you can prioritise yourself, even if it’s only snatched moments. So yeah, it is a lot easier when you’re younger/more free/working less to make time for yourself. It’s never impossible, sometimes you just need to get a bit creative.

The easiest, simplest, cheapest, most transportable and convenient way of putting yourself first is breathing. Yeah, I know, you’re breathing all the time. You’d be dead otherwise. But how many conscious breaths do you take in a day? In the middle of a stressful situation, do you pause to breathe and allow yourself a moment to figure out how to respond? When faced with a screaming, shouting child/teenager/colleague/customer can you create a space around you to buffer the intensity of their reaction and self-regulate your response. Breathing can do that. It costs nothing, can take as little as a few seconds and helps you prioritise your emotions and genuine response rather than bouncing around in a reactive way. Accepting you need to put yourself first isn’t about waving a magic wand, it’s about tiny little steps towards putting you at the forefront of who’s important. The best thing is, that often leads to you being able to be more supportive to those around you (with the plus of knowing when to walk away from people or situations that aren’t serving you).

Breathing is one example of moment-to-moment mindfulness you can build in to each and every day. There are loads of other ways. Walking, eating, washing up, having a shower, commuting, tidying up. There are countless tasks throughout the day that require little or no thought and we can use them as windows of mindful opportunity. Focusing on how you’re feeling emotionally, how your body and mind are responding in the moment to the sensations involved in what you’re doing, can give you pockets of ‘you time’ each and every day. Once you start doing this on a regular basis, it can lead you to be more conscious of what you need more of and shining a little bit of light on that can facilitate the changes you want to make to feel less stressed and happier.

There’s no denying I’m a card-carrying yoga and mindfulness freak but that doesn’t mean – in their traditional sense – they’re going to work for everyone. In my interpretation yoga and mindfulness are both about the higher expression of connecting with yourself and who you truly are. If that looks like karaoke on a Saturday night or high intensity exercising or looking around the shops on a Saturday, then do that. Your time doesn’t have to look a certain way – ditch the narrative around should, would, could – there’s only one you and you know what you need.

Two important caveats to that:

1) Try and have some of your time stimulant-free, so you can be truly present, because you will get more benefit from it (I am not saying not to drink ever, if you want to- I certainly want to sometimes)

2) Try to be using your body or doing something physical or motorising during your time so there is some movement involved. Physically go to the shops rather than internet shopping (the supermarket doesn’t usually count, unless you live by yourself). Read a book, magazine or newspaper in a purposeful way for a designated length of time, so you physically turn the page.

Finally, the best way to get support on this from family and friends is to support them in having their own time too. Make sure you build that reciprocity – it’s working for everyone’s benefit – in to the structure of your lives. You get your few hours on a Saturday and your partner has theirs on a Sunday. You team up with a colleague to share photocopying across the week so you both get a little extra time (and make sure you use it to have a five-minute sit down, not mark some extra books). You spend an extra hour doing chores one evening so you do an exercise class during the day. Ultimately, you’re working towards a situation where you get time, those around you get time and through that, everyone’s happier and healthier and live more balanced lives.