When your child gets sick, what do you do? How about your pet? Or aging parents? My hope is that your answer is, ‘Whatever it takes to get them better and here is a million dollars Joe.”
We do a great job of taking care of others, especially if they are not doing so well. But what about when you are the person who is not doing so well?
What about when you don’t feel good? When you are not happy with how you look? Do you pull out all the stops to help yourself get better like you would for someone else?
Unfortunately, most of us do not.
I love this rule from Jordan B. Peterson’s new book 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos:
“Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping.”
We would all be doing so well if we did that! If we finally started making ourselves a priority and not just the “whatever energy I have left” option.
Start today! Make yourself the number one priority. How much more good could you do in the world if you had more energy, more confidence, more joy? When you have more good things going on in your life it makes it easier to give help to others.
Get stronger, improve your cardiovascular health, eat healthy foods, practice portion control, get enough rest, find healthy outlets for stress, take care of your spiritual health. Where on that list do you need to start? Pick out the one that is the easiest for you to start and get started!
Make it a goal to thrive in all areas of your life. This is what Precision Nutrition calls deep health. We will get into that more on Monday. But for now put the focus on you.
You are not being selfish and you are not abandoning others. This is you making a better you that can help others more and for a much longer time. It is a win win.