Self-care required to be your best under pressure

Self-care: what does it take in order to stay focused on achieving great results?

Start by focusing on these 4 basic things of self-care: start by getting a good night’s sleep, followed by drinking plenty of water, eating healthily, and exercising. You’ve probably read or heard this somewhere and are saying yes, yes, I know that, but I don’t have time.

But you need to start there, focusing on these 4 basic things. You can’t sort things out with people and challenges if you are exhausted. It’s hard to regulate your emotions when you aren’t taking care of your body. It just doesn’t enhance your performance to avoid these important items because your body is fighting to take care of its own needs.

We can be our own worst enemy in overextending ourselves, or we may have a very demanding boss that makes it easy to lose track of taking care of ourselves.

So, how can you be at your best at self-care when under pressure and very busy?

1. Don’t beat up on yourself. Instead, become curious. Experiment with new ways of doing things. Become a researcher on your own behavior by observing what works and what doesn’t work for you.
2. Find a few moments to deliberate on the one thing you’d like to get better in – but don’t do it while you’re feeling pressured. Stop, take pause, and see what little shift you can do to change your patterns. And when something works, take a few moments to reflect on that success, and what made it possible to do really well in self-care. Reward yourself for each success.
3. Get comfortable with the idea of making this change as a practice instead of seeing it as a failure while you struggle to overcome behavior patterns. You have competing demands and challenges. Try each day to practice changing your patterns related to self-care and know you are learning to change your pattern.

We need to have our mind, gut, and heart aligned in order to be our brilliant selves. So, we need to be well-fueled to get the energy we need, to make space for our gut sense to speak to our mind, to make good decisions and meet your challenges.  After all, it’s your body that is making it all happen.