As I work with my clients, I hear more and more about challenges with self care. So many of us are beginning to understand how important self care is, but we don’t fully understand what it means. Self care can take many different forms. There isn’t a right or wrong, it is essentially taking the time to listen to your body and give it what it needs.

I also think of self care as allowing space for what I need. The experiences from 2020 onward have brought us to our knees. Until 2020, the majority of us were overworked and stressed out, but still within capacity. Maybe we were living a numb life on autopilot, but it was manageable day to day.

2020 interrupted our patterns, routines, and belief systems and forced us out of our numb automated lives. This has us questioning everything from our marriages to our soul’s greatest purpose. So many reckonings happening all at once have made it essentially impossible to numb out and return to just existing and accepting status quo.

We are wrestling with big emotions and big changes as we formulate new visions and find the authentic life we have always wanted, but had no idea how to pursue. 

This is where self care comes in. When the addiction of numbing out is no longer an option, we are forced to rumble with our emotions and feelings. We need spaces to disconnect and reset so we can be “on” and fully ourselves when needed. Brené Brown recently announced that she is taking the entire summer off to do just this. She is allowing her staff to take every Friday off along with a two week vacation. The fact that she is able to do this for herself and staff is fantastic and something I wish we all had the luxury to experience. 

This just isn’t the case for most of us, so my plan is to be intentional in curating self care moments throughout the life I am currently living. For right now, there just isn’t anything I can take off my plate, so I have decided to rearrange the plate a bit to create the shifts I need to recharge and recenter. When we are charged and centered, we are able to perform at our best. We can be the loving attentive moms our kids need us to be. We can be creative and innovating in our careers, and we can engage in the light and playful energy that keeps our relationships magnetic. 

I partnered with a couple of my internet business besties to create the most potent 5-Day Self Care Challenge. These ladies are the real deal. We are each approaching the same goal from a different perspective and I am so excited to see how integrating these challenges into our daily routine makes big impacts long term.

Take the 5 day challenge with us and then decide which of these ideas you want to create some routines around. We may not be able to take a three month sabbatical from life, but we can double down on loving ourselves and keeping our minds and hearts in harmony while chasing kids, chasing dreams, and cleaning toilets. To join me, let me know via email to janice.hollandlpc@gmail.com!