Why self-care is not selfish Part 2

.He has got the whole world in his hand:

This song went viral when Oprah, TD Jakes and others sang it during the Pandemic. A reminder that God was in control, and that we would not be overwhelmed. God has the whole world in His Hands! Not us. Is it not freeing to know that God is in Control? Revelation 4 draws the attention to the throne of God. The brilliance of the throne room is overwhelming with glimmer of crystals and fiery red colors on the throne.

From the throne comes flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder. 24 elders and 4 living creatures worship him who sits on the throne day and night. Revelation 5: 6 reveals that the lamb sits on the throne. I ought to be glad that someone is sitting on the throne and that someone is not me. What a relief! I’d make a poor, terrible God anyway, with my soul too weak to carry the universe, with impaired visions of the future, and limited strength to deal with what the future holds.

God Has the whole world in his hands, not me, not you. Children tend to believe that they are omnipotent. It means that they believe that they have the power to make anything come true. But that omnipotence also ends up harming them. A child will believe himself responsible for the fact that he is physically, verbally, or even sexually abused. “It is happening to me because I am a bad child”, or “if father and mother are divorcing it is because of me”.

We are not born with a natural ability to see things from another’s perspective. So, for a child everything that happens, depends on him, the good or the bad. But as we grow older our brain develops, and through education we learn that as much as we are interdependent, we do not have that much control over another person’s feelings, thoughts, and actions. It is imperative that we let go of that way of thinking.

We may have been created to inhabit our own inner world, but ultimately the world does not revolve around us. God is omnipotent, not us. God has the whole world in his Hands, not us. So, the world is not going to crumble if we take care of ourselves and if we rest. The house is not going to fall apart without us, the office will be just fine even if we do not overwork ourselves, the kids, our partners, friends, and family will not collapse because we took 2 hours of our days to invest in ourselves, to nurture our garden, to replenish.

Again, this does not imply that we should ignore our mandate and inner responsibility to be loving and caring. But Self-care isn’t taking from others. we cannot give to others from an empty cup. The cup must overflow, it must run over. It is from that overflow and abundance that we can give to others and not be depleted. And this process must take place daily.

Selfishness

"If a man will not work, he shall not eat."

Self-care is not selfish or self-indulgent. What is selfish and self-indulgent, self-centred is believing that the world revolves around us, that it rains or snows when we say so. We do not take from others when we take care ourselves, but we take from others we caretake. We take from them the chance to practice self-responsibility.

According to Nathaniel Branden pillars of low self-esteem, one has to practice self-responsibility to become and feel competent. This will make one grow in self-esteem, self-respect, self-love. If we are constantly taking care of others needs and wants, we never give them a chance to grow. In fact, we are robbing them. We have an inner responsibility to be loving and caring toward others; but we are not called to be them nor live their lives for them.

We cannot think for them. We cannot feel for them. We cannot hurt on their behalf. We cannot grow for them. Others are responsible for their own growth, just as we are responsible for ours. We are responsible for ourselves; we are responsible for maturing into the men and women we can be and were meant to be. We should give others the same opportunities. When we take care of ourselves, we do give permission to others to take care of themselves.

Also, we are empowered through life when we learn the law of sowing and reaping. A man will reap what he sows. If we study hard, we reap good results. If we work harder to please our spouse, we may have a happier marriage. When we do not set boundaries, we take from people the opportunity to deal with the consequences of their choices, they sow but do not reap. Or they reap without sowing. And that makes them feel powerless, like they have no sense of agency over their lives.

We feel like we have a sense of control over our lives when we retain a measure of control over our decisions and actions. Even in our mistakes, it is therapeutic to know that it is our choices that led us there, we could have chosen otherwise. Powerlessness can make life unbearable and lead to anxiety and depression. Also reaping without sowing hurts us in the long run. We believe that we can go through life with little to no effort, because someone else is sowing for us.

If we take away consequences from people, they may become irresponsible and happy while we are responsible and unhappy. The person doing the sowing needs to be doing the reaping. It teaches us cause and effects, and that actions have consequences.

A person who does not reap the consequences of their actions will feel a sense of powerlessness over their own lives because someone else is reaping for them.

However, reaping others’ consequences will enable them to repeat the same behaviors. All because they do not understand the cost associated with their choices and decisions. If I make bad financial decision every month, and every month I am being bailed out by my father, this will not encourage me to live responsibly.

I do not know what the consequences of those choices may be. I could be thrown out of my apartment, I could be running out of food to eat, I could be in debts. People who do not understand consequences may struggle with delayed gratification. The result of which may be harmful later in life. It may end up in pain, hurt divorces, hospital, or jail.

Feeling responsible for others happiness, wants, needs, thoughts, feeling, and action will inevitably lead to cycle of co-dependency. We become co-dependent when we unable to set boundaries. And we become so entwined in others’ lives and chaos, that we lose ourselves into it. We believe that the kids will not be OK, unless we do so and so. We may believe that our partners have a bad track, or an history of making unhealthy decisions. So, they cannot stand on their own two feet, make healthy decision and choices without us guiding and making these decisions for them.

Our co-dependency is just a reflection of our lack of trust in our colleagues, in our kids, partners ability to live their own lives, and make their own choices. Though, this co-dependency reflects the fact that we will not live our own lives. So, we keep a watchful eye on others, we control, we nag them, because where would be they without us? And besides, we just really care about them, who will love them like us? They are so….

No!! the world will be fine. The sun and the moon will continue to give their lights, and people will move on and be better. We take better care of ourselves when we believe that no one is coming to help us, to save or rescue us. That is when we pick ourselves up. And we must give others a chance to do that. We must have relationships where we are interdependent instead of co-dependent.

Giving the best hours of your day to yourself:

We must learn to take care of ourselves, say yes to ourselves, and no to other competing priorities. It is advised to give the best hours of the day to ourselves, by nurturing something that Is important to us. Giving time to ourselves allows us to:

• ·Know that we matter: if we assign time to ourselves, we consciously tell ourselves and the whole world that we are worthy of care, of the best things this world has to offer. People who take care of themselves teach us that we must raise our standards to be in relationships with them. But also, that they would be able to take care of us the same way, respecting our need to be loved and nurtured.

• Discover who we are: We can only discover who we are by doing intentional work on ourselves, to be committed to the quest of self-discovery and self-awareness. Only then can we bring out our authentic self to the world. We can discover our identity and determine values we want to live by.

• Build structure within chaos. Self-care allows us to cope with the chaos and mitigate stress in our own lives by setting strategies. These strategies will include steps that may not be empirically important to others, but steps that will matter to us. For example, I find that exercising and reading in the morning helps me cope better with my day. I am more likely to diffuse a situation if I have done that. And sometimes it even feels when I miss one of these steps, it becomes difficult to take another. They are important to me, they keep me sane.

• Practice mindfulness: Showing up to spend time with me, myself, means that I will not simply become just a cog in the wheel, trapped into the routine of our lives, merely existing. Being mindful will allow us to live instead of merely existing. It will allow us to carpe diem, and revel in the love and beauty that surrounds us.

• Discover our purpose and perhaps finding the meaning in our Lives. Like Viktor Frankl said he who has a why can live with any How. What will help us transcends out of our routine, our merely existing, is meaning. Meaning will help with finding motivation to carry on with our assignments and perhaps finding some joy in the process.

• To be healthy physically: sound mind in a sound body. I believe in a holistic approach of life, being healthy spiritually physically and mentally. Any of these areas end up affecting the others. For instance, when I am down emotionally, I tend to overeat, and have low inhibition levels. Which has tremendous impact on my physical Health. Or Sometimes anxiety and stress will make it so that my gut would be irritated, it would affect my digestive track and make it difficult for me to eat certain foods. Self-care allows to nurture our mental health, which provides benefit for our physical health too.

It is then important to be intentional with rest, to plan our rest, or anything that allows us to medicate, meditate, to be restored to be replenished. And these activities must be done regularly. Just as we do not eat just once or twice a week. We must nourish our bodies daily. So, we must nurture ourselves daily. This means setting boundaries. Boundaries means setting priorities so that we may not be overwhelmed by the competing priorities in our lives. We have to say Yes to some things. Which ultimately implies that we must learn to say no to others, ultimately realizing that saying no is not selfish, it is not taking from others. It is taking care of ourselves and allowing others to do the same.