I’ve been having a lot of conversations with women within my community lately.
The topic that keeps coming up is the fact that they feel guilty about taking time for themselves.
Self-care is still a relatively new concept.
Yes, it’s an essential area of health and wellness, but we’ve never been taught how important it is. Instead, we’ve been told to adopt a “hustle” mindset, which promotes productivity over rest.
It’s, therefore, natural to feel guilty about resting. Especially if we see others pushing through.
But the thing you need to keep remembering is — you can’t pour from an empty cup.
The more time you spend recharging, the more:
- Energised you will feel
- Productive you will be
- Balanced you will become
Here’s how you can ditch the guilt when it comes to self-care…
My self-care journey
Truth bomb: self-care wasn’t something that was on my radar pre-2020.
I know, right?! The self-care pro over here has only been practising for 3 years; I honestly feel like a fraud sometimes
But just because I didn’t necessarily use the term “self-care,” doesn’t mean I wasn’t actively pursuing it.
During my 9-to-5 days, if I wasn’t partying, I would head home after work to run around my local park and watch a movie.
These were the activities I turned to to help me decompress after a long day, but I never thought of them as self-care. They were just something I did.
You could also say that quitting my job to travel solo was self-care. I took myself out of an environment which was mentally affecting me and surrounded myself with things that would lift me up.
My awareness of self-care and my resistance to it didn’t come up until I started my own business.
This was during the infamous lockdown years when I had no one to turn to for advice but social media. A lot of the content I ended up consuming was very hustle-oriented. I thought that as a business owner, it was the norm to be constantly busy.
The message that was being portrayed was, “If you want it badly enough, you will work hard enough.”
I convinced myself that I needed to work long hours and through the weekends because that’s what everyone else was doing.
My needs soon became irrelevant, and I denied myself rest because:
- I didn’t realise how important it was
- I considered hobbies to be meaningless
- I thought it was lazy
Not to mention the amount of guilt I felt if I took any time off to socialise. It was a brutal cycle, and eventually, I burnt out (shock).
After weeks of burnout and feeling emotionally drained, my perception of self-care shifted.
I did the research. I dived into the below strategies, and I changed the content I was choosing to follow. In short, I broke up with the hustle culture and fell in love with rest.
I now realise how essential self-care is for our own personal development, productivity and well-being. And, of course, I haven’t looked back since.
The ultimate perks of self-care
I’ve been through the benefits of self-care a bunch of times, but I guess there’s no harm in repeating myself, right?!
Well, maybe Google won’t like it, but I’m not here for Google; I’m here for you.
So let me share all the ways self-care changed my life since I intentionally practiced it for the first.
Self-care has:
- Taught me to appreciate my own company — I now look forward to spending time on my own
- Strengthened my emotional resilience and mindset
- Made me more grounded, present and easier to be around
- Helped me to prioritise daily well-being without sacrificing productivity
- Encouraged me to build a healthy work-life balance
- Allowed me to feel more balanced and fulfilled in the process
- Deepened the relationship I have with myself, which has also positively impacted my relationships
- Made me funnier (I mean, I’ve always been funny, but self-care has boosted my comedic qualities for sure)
With the right self-care practice and commitment, there’s no doubt that you can also experience these benefits or even enjoy new ones.
How to stop feeling guilty about practising self-care
It’s easy to get sucked into the unrealistic ideals you see online and compare yourself to others.
Yes, you can unfollow unhelpful content or regularly detox from social media, but these are only quick-fix solutions. To change your long-term attitude towards rest and self-care, you need to focus on your mindset first.
It’s the foundation for optimising your life.
I encourage you to bookmark this page so you can refer back to it whenever you need to.
1 | Reframe your beliefs around self-care
Whether we realise it or not, we are heavily influenced by friends, family, the media, etc.
This can sometimes make it difficult for us to separate our own beliefs from what others believe. For example, from a young age, it has been rooted within us that we need to put others first.
But who’s belief is this? Where did it start? Why have we been taught that our well-being is less important than someone else’s?
The problem with these beliefs — let’s call them limiting beliefs — is that they hold us back from pursuing what is truly important to us.
So, if rest is something you need, you might find that your beliefs hinder you from taking proper care of yourself.
Instead of thinking, “Rest is essential for me to function,” the belief you hold tells you that “Self-care is lazy and selfish.”
Not only is this a misconception, but it is also a limiting belief.
You should never feel guilty about something that supports your well-being. To actively agree with this statement is to tell yourself you’re not important enough. This leads to self-sabotage, which limiting beliefs are known for.
So how can you stop sabotaging yourself and actually feel good about self-care?
Reframe your attitude around self-care and turn your limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs.
If your mind is telling you self-care is selfish, turn this into a well-being-first statement.
For example:
- The time I spend taking care of myself is time well spent
- I deserve to nourish my mind and body with rest and self-care
- Self-care helps recharge my battery so I can give more to others
Write out your own affirmations and repeat them until they start to sink in.
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”
Anne Lamott
2 | Learn how self-care can improve your life
The thing that changed the game for me when it came to self-care was research.
I dived head-first into self-care, learning about what it meant and how it could benefit me. It sparked my interest, and well, I dedicated an entire blog to it.
I am now a huge advocate for self-care as I believe it is the foundation of a healthy, balanced and fulfilling lifestyle.
What I’m trying to say is, along with reframing your limiting beliefs around self-care, you can also change your attitude towards it. All you need to do is familiarise yourself with the perks and reflect on how they can apply to your own life.
Here are a few resources to help you on your self-care journey:
- Read The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown (affiliate link)
- Listen to Rethinking Self-Care with Pooja Lakshmin on the Doing it Right podcast
- Follow Notes by Thalia for more self-care tips and tricks
3 | Break up with the hustle culture
The main reason why I resisted self-care for so long is that I believed it to be lazy.
I was following the online hustle culture, which promotes 18-hour days with zero rest as being the norm. Because of this, I felt guilty for shutting down in the evenings or at the weekend.
I forgot that being human means not always having high energy and motivation every single day. So whenever I woke up in a funk, I’d get so disappointed in myself and push myself even harder.
Turns out I was struggling with burnout, and I didn’t realise until it was too late.
To heal, I needed to completely reset my work ethic. I chose to break up with the hustle culture, which essentially meant unfollowing any content on social media that was glorifying this ideal.
I also made myself take a big step back from my business at the time (a digital agency that John continues to grow) to reflect.
Although this was a difficult decision to make, I’m so glad I did. This break turned into a huge growth opportunity for me, and Notes by Thalia was officially born. (Yup, that’s right… your fave self-care blog was born on the back of my burnout — maybe the hustle culture was good for something.)
So, if you find yourself feeling guilty for resting, I need you to remember that your worth is not determined by productivity.
- You are worthy despite what you manage to do each day.
- You are worthy of rest and self-care.
- You are worthy of prioritising yourself.
To truly embrace this ethos, you need to dismiss the hustle culture (or any unrealistic ideal you are following) in favour of a more balanced and sustainable work ethic.
Side note on toxic productivity:
I also want to draw your attention to the new trend that states that “Rest is productive.”
Although more positive than “Rest is lazy”, — I still have a BIG problem with this statement because rest is not productive.
Rest is essential.
It allows your mind and body the time it needs to heal, reset and nourish. Which in turn leads to greater productivity.
Stop trying to convince yourself to rest because you think it’s productive.
Rest because you NEED it to survive.
“If we want to live a wholehearted life, we have to become intentional about cultivating sleep and play, and about letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth.”
Brené Brown
4 | Practice, practice, practice
Like with any skill, the more you practice, the better you will become. And that is no different when it comes to self-care.
The more time you dedicate to taking care of yourself, the less guilt you’ll have.
Why? Because practising self-care will slowly become a habit. You’ll start to do it without even thinking. And once self-care becomes second nature, you won’t even question whether it’s selfish or not.
So practice, practice, practice and then practice some more.
To make this more manageable, I suggest starting small.
Self-care doesn’t need to be an all-day event to be effective. It can be as little as 10 minutes long.
Take the time to find those simple rituals that make you feel good and that can easily fit into your weekly schedule.
Put them in your calendar as you would any other work commitment, set a visual prompt or alarm to remind you and tell yourself that it’s time for a well-deserved self-care break.
Hot tip: If you’re struggling with self-care, let me introduce you to the below ritual that only takes a few minutes to complete. If you can get outside for this ritual, then bonus points!
- Stop whatever you’re doing and close your eyes
- Take a deep inhale, hold for 4 seconds, exhale, and hold for 4 seconds
- Roll out your shoulders, stretch out your neck and unclench your jaw
- Now check in with yourself — How are you feeling?
- Reflect on what currently feels good and what feels off
- Ask yourself this question: “How can I make the rest of my day 1% better?”
- Set your intention and continue with the rest of your day
It’s important to remember that even the simplest of rituals can have the biggest impact on your daily well-being. It can simply look like taking a 5-minute break during the day and getting outside in nature for some fresh air.
5 | Treat yourself like you would a friend
Imagine a friend comes to you and says, “I’m taking an hour out of my day to watch Gilmore Girls because I need to rest.”
Chances are you wouldn’t turn around and say, “That’s so lazy! You should feel guilty about that.”
You would probably say something along the lines of, “Sounds great. You deserve that break.”
So, why is it so hard for you to say those things to yourself?
To stop feeling guilty about practising self-care, you need to start treating yourself like you would a friend. You need to heal the relationship you have with yourself and start viewing yourself as your top priority.
Nothing else in your life (relationships, work, home life, etc) will function the way you want them to unless you are taking adequate care of yourself.
So always prioritise yourself and your needs first.
Here are a few simple tips to try today:
- Practice positive self-talk: Stand in front of the mirror and repeat this mantra out loud three times daily — “I am worthy of rest.”
- Build self-compassion: Treat yourself to random acts of kindness, such as leaving yourself love notes around the house
- Set language boundaries: Write a list of negative words that you want to stop saying to yourself. For example, worthless, useless, lazy, shitty, selfish, etc. When you find yourself using these words, learn to say “I’m sorry” to yourself
Save this bite-sized version on Pinterest:
Final thoughts
Self-care is essential.
Not just for your health and well-being but for your productivity as well.
How can you expect to show up every day as your best self if you’re denying your mind and body the self-care they need?
Lol that was a rhetorical question because you can’t. So, do not skip this blog post!
Follow these steps and overcome your self-care guilt for good:
- Reframe your beliefs around self-care
- Learn how self-care can improve your life
- Break up with the hustle culture
- Practice, practice, practice
- Treat yourself like you would a friend
You’ve got this,
Thalia xx
