Healthy selfishness: how to start taking care of yourself

In today’s fast-paced life, people barely have time for work, family and friends. What to say about resting alone with oneself. Many people do not even think about the fact that sometimes it is necessary to give time and attention to their loved ones. Why it is important and how to stop berating yourself for unproductivity, we examine together with psychologist Nadezhda Pozharova.

Why is it important to allocate time for yourself?

First of all, it is a question of self worth. Many people do not have a sense of value of their body, their safety, needs, desires. Often people don’t know what they want or limit themselves. It often happens that in fact a person does not deny himself anything: he has money, opportunities, but at the same time he clutches himself inside, scolds himself and restrains himself. This does not help him feel better. It is important to learn to support yourself, to take care of yourself, your feelings, your physical and mental state.

This approach develops emotional intelligence which helps in dealing with people. It protects a person from emotional burnout in work or any other activity, helps to regulate one’s resources and deficits and not to go into a minus.

Where can one start taking care of oneself?

If a person initially finds it difficult to allocate at least some time for himself, small rituals, such as sports, can help. When you decide to exercise regularly, you say, “Yes, I will definitely give myself one hour a day, two hours a week, or one hour a week for sports.” Most importantly, you have to start with a nice thing.

If you’ve never paid attention to yourself, if your whole life has been just a change of activity and you haven’t really thought about what you want to do, it’s important to find something that you enjoy doing.

Hope: There are a lot of lists on the internet about what to do alone, how to take care of yourself. But people offer them based on their preferences, and everyone has different preferences. So, someone, having read the article, tries to apply the advice to his own situation, nothing works out, and the person gets angry at himself, thinks that he is some kind of wrong. For example, everyone likes bath bombs, and he does not. But that’s normal. You should do what you like, not what someone else likes.

It’s important to learn to generally notice how you want to do things and how you like them. For one person, personal time is five minutes a day, for another person it’s already 15 minutes, for someone else it’s an hour, and some people can afford a whole weekend. The main thing is to realize the value of rest and time for yourself. It doesn’t matter if you want to lie in the bathtub with your favorite book, go to fitness or lie in bed all day.

And about seven useful habits for a better life see in the video “Championship”.

How to stop berating yourself for “slacking”?

More often than not, people think, “Why am I just lying around right now? There is no sense in it”. Perfectionists and workaholics are especially prone to such thoughts. For them, it’s even more stressful and stressful. That’s why it’s important to find a balance. If you absolutely want to spend time with benefit, you need to realize that rest is beneficial to mental health. Whether it’s going to karaoke, taking a walk in the park, or riding a bike.

In addition, the cause of self-censure for “idleness” can be a cause of societal guilt. Modern society is pretty success and achievement oriented. And when you decide to take a break and be unproductive for a while, a system of self-inhibitions is triggered. And if a person’s values are formed in such a way that he considers himself loved and important only when he works, you can’t take it away from him. It is important to gradually add other attitudes and expand the perception of oneself: “What if I can also have a rest?”

Nadezhda: It is also important to remove the negative evaluation. People evaluate activities: this activity is good, and this one is bad. So when a person decides to move away from this evaluation, there is a feeling of guilt: “How can I be good if I am lazy?”. It is also worth moving away from evaluating oneself. In this way you can stop dividing your life and behavior into black and white, bad and good, and start looking at the world more broadly, filling it with different feelings: joy, pleasure.