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“I do everything for everyone all the time I never get to do anything fun LIFE IS A BORING SLOG AND I HATE IT ALL!!!”

Good morning, hello, this ☝️ is a super fun peek inside my brain’s natural tendencies. Cool, right?

Can you relate? Working really hard to meet deadlines (or meet other people’s needs), burning yourself out, feeling resentful, and then self-soothing in a less-than-awesome way?

If you’re nodding along because you’ve struggled to make self-care a habit or you often find yourself feeling burnt out, resentful, or martyr-y I wrote this blog post for you. If you implement even one of the following tips you’ll be well on your way to better, more regular self-care so you can end that self-denial > resentment > numb out / lash out > regret cycle.

3 Ways To Make Self-Care A Habit Before Your Feel Empty & Resentful

1. Work backwards from the moment you realize you’re feeling “empty and resentful”

My personal moments of “empty and resentful” used to occur on Sunday afternoons, when I realized I’d spent most of the weekend running errands, doing home improvement projects, and generally completing Boring Adult Tasks. Have you done this?

Next time you encounter of these “empty and resentful” moments, work backwards and ask yourself: 

• When was the last time I did something just for fun or just for myself? 

• Did a specific incident trigger these feelings? 

• Am I low on sleep, food, water, touch, alone time? 

Answering these questions will give you super helpful insights into how, exactly, you can take better care of yourself and what form that self-care could take!

2. Literally plug self-care it into your calendar

Left to my own Virgo, eldest-child tendencies, I’d work myself into a sulky, quivering nub. Fun! Now I literally schedule my self-care and fun into my Google calendar like an absolute nerd. And guess what? IT WORKS.

There are two reasons why scheduling fun and self-care is important: 

1. For many of us, if it’s not on the calendar, it won’t happen. 
2. The part of your brain that makes “long-term” plans (read: 48 hours in the future) has your best interest at heart. It can make smart, healthy decisions.
   
   The part  of your brain that makes in-the-moment decisions, just wants to feel good now. (read: engage in low-quality numbing behaviors that masquerade as self-care.)
   
   So when we literally plug self-care + fun into our calendars for the coming week, we’re using the part of our brains that makes better decisions than if we wait to figure it out in the moment.

P.S. If you’re thinking “But I can’t really think of enough happy-making things to fill my time?” you’re not alone! I made you a 17-page free workbook called ‘How To Figure Out What Makes You Happy.” Click here to download it.

3. Create accountability about your self-care

So you’ve figured out what types of self-care + fun should be part of your days and weeks. But what if you get to the part of the day when you scheduled in that feel-good stuff and then you just … don’t do it? Because something “more important” comes up or you get busy?

Create accountability around your self-care!

This could look like:

• Asking your partner, roommate, or kid to hold you accountable 
• Joining a Facebook group, Meetup group, or online forum that relates to your personal versions of self-care. (My free Money & Happy Facebook group can help!) 
• Making a reservation or appointment so there’s someone waiting for you 
• Telling social media about it 
• Hiring a coach, consultant, trainer or therapist to hold you accountable

Does that feel doable? Choose just one of these tips to try today and I bet those feelings of rundown resentment will pop up a lot less. You’ll feel happier and better on a day-to-day basis.

And remember, if you need help figuring out the stuff that actually fills you up, this free workbook will help!

Photo by STIL on Unsplash