“If you don’t give to yourself, you will suffer damage.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 16)
Beyond the Quote (230/365)
More specifically, if you don’t give to yourself some of your own time, energy, and effort—you will suffer damage. And we’re not talking about presents. You can live just fine without ever buying yourself superfluous gifts. What you can’t live “just fine” without, however, are the gifts of “you” time, the self-directed energy required for self-discovery and healing, and the personal effort it takes to overcome challenges and become your best you. If you only ever direct your time, energy, and effort towards others—where are you supposed to get the time, energy, and effort required to maintain, upgrade, and improve yourself?
We are not the energizer bunny—forever going, going, going without any sign of stopping in sight. We are exhaustible. We are the batteries that the bunny is supposed to represent. We are not a lamp plugged into a wall outlet with a constant source of incoming energy. We live off of a charge. While, yes, the charge may be long lasting, it eventually runs out, just like those energizer batteries. And when that happens, there is nothing left to do except recharge or replace the energy source.
So, what constitutes “recharging,” what causes a drain on our battery, and what might cause damage to our battery? If you think about how a smartphone works, the answer to these questions might become a little more clear. Recharging happens on different scales—all in pretty intuitive ways. Our biggest recharge comes from sleep, just like for a smartphone the biggest recharge comes from being plugged in overnight. We also recharge in smaller segments with “power naps,” meditation, time in nature, or time with compassionate people—and the same is true when we plug our phone in for small amounts of time.
On the other end, our battery is drained as we invest our time, energy, and effort into the tasks of our day. Just like when we use the various apps on our smartphone, the battery is drained. Now, if we’re always using and abusing our phone to do tasks, but we never restart, update, or upgrade our smartphone it will eventually start underperforming. The same is true for us. If we never invest time, energy, or effort back into our own personal “restarts,” “self-updates,” or personal “upgrades” then we, too, will start underperforming and will eventually suffer as a result.
Underperforming isn’t the only consequence of poor or unbalanced use of time, energy, or effort. Think about what happens to the battery when you use your smartphone while it’s plugged in? It messes up the calibration of the battery and damages it’s ability to hold it’s charge for as long. Think about what happens to you when you keep giving time, energy, and effort when you’re supposed to be sleeping or investing in yourself? It messes up your ability to get a full sleep, hold your focus, and recover properly. It’s one and the same.
And, of course, the same is true if you just use and abuse your phone with no care for its wellbeing. If you’ve ever seen someone who had little regard for their phone and used it while it had a cracked screen, a broken case, and malfunctioning buttons—then you know what I’m talking about. Well guess what? That’s what you look like when you don’t take care of yourself. Maybe not as visibly noticeable, but on the inside? Yup.
This is why you have to treat yourself like someone you were responsible for taking care of. Or, if you’re the careful type, how you would treat your brand new smartphone. And don’t you ever take better care of your phone than you do yourself! Direct some of your time, energy, and effort back to yourself every day and reap the benefits of upgrades, full recoveries, and performance with no damage! It’s a pretty great way to live and an even better way to give.
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Written by Matt Hogan
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