Me Time

“Put your own oxygen mask on before helping others.”  It’s a phrase we’ll all have heard when listening to the safety briefing on a plane.  But for some it can also describe their mantra for life.  And it’s not without merit.  Another way to put it might be “first get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye”.  That’s Matthew 7:5, and although I don’t think it is necessarily quite the point Jesus was getting at, the principle does sort of stand – it’s only when we are OK ourselves that we are in a position to help others.  As Ed Sheeran put it, “So before I save someone else, I’ve got to save myself”.  We have to get our own houses in order first; you can’t pour from an empty cup; etc, etc.

Another popular mantra for life is “if you’re happy, I’m happy.”  As a mum, I can definitely identify with that one.  When my little one is happy, my world is just right.  And when he isn’t happy, I need to work much harder to find my own calm and happiness.  It’s true in my marriage too (and probably in a lot of marriages) – if my husband is happy, then I’m probably happy.  But if one of us is grumpy, the other soon follows.

Today I’m pondering these.  I know I lean towards the latter, and have a tendency to think that what I need most is for those I love to be happy, healthy and safe.  But I think that by acting in that way, I jeopardise the happiness (hopefully not the health and safety!) of those I love.  When my baby was born, my husband told me that the only things he needed to come home to were happy mummy and safe baby (he came home at around 6pm – happy baby was a bit too much to ask back then).  He wanted me to take care of our son’s needs and my own happiness, and not worry about the housework or making dinner.  It was a good way to help me focus on what was important.  Possibly 9 months on I should probably be giving a little more time to the housework, but my son is only going to be this small once…

I think one big problem, when it comes to putting the happiness of others first, is that we forget that there are some needs that come before happiness.  Thinking back to my school days and studying Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the areas that we might traditionally link to happiness (love and belonging, esteem and self-actualisation) are secondary to the more basic physiological and safety needs.  At a very fundamental level, if I don’t take care of my own physiological and safety needs, I am in no position to take care of my son’s need for love and belonging, for example.  Or to give a practical example, if I haven’t rested, I’m not going to be all that much fun to play with.

So to be the best I can be for him, I’m having to learn to prioritise.  His trip to the swings might need to be delayed for a little bit while I sit down and have a glass of water.  He might need to play with one of his toys for 20 minutes rather than with his mummy, so that I can have a shower.  And once we get beyond these very basic needs of food, water, hygiene (please excuse the baby sick on my top…), we owe it to our little families as well as to ourselves to indulge in the occasional bit of self-care.  Sometimes I want to bake cookies rather than baby–appropriate muffins.  Sometimes I want to get to the hairdressers, or go for a run.  Sometimes I want a long hot bath, or to read my bible rather than an article on why my baby won’t sleep.  Sometimes I want to chat to a friend over a glass of wine about something other than poo.

What we need to realise is that by doing these things, we are not putting our little ones second.  Instead we are equipping ourselves to handle the next day, or the next week.  My favourite activity is playing with my son.  There is nothing I love more than that.  But that doesn’t mean I can do it 24/7 on 6 hours’ sleep a night.

And this doesn’t just apply to my fellow mummies.  I think most people can slip into bad habits around emotional self-care, putting others so far up the priority list that they forget to look after themselves.  So, to everyone reading this today, can you do something for me?  Can you pick just one thing that makes you happy purely because you love it rather than because it benefits somebody else, and then do that?  Have that bath, linger over that G&T, book a massage, or simply read something you’ll enjoy.  Whatever it is, put a little effort into finding time to doing something for you.  It might not come naturally, but you can find the time.  This morning, I decided the chores could wait (I can do them while my son is awake and actually, when he’s old enough to notice these things, it’s probably a good thing that he sees how they get done rather than thinking they just magically happen) and so I wrote while he had his nap.  And since he woke up early from it, I’m still finishing this blog post while he tries to climb up my desk and removes each DVD from the bookcase…

But I’m digressing – today, find time for yourselves, and if you feel like telling me what you’ve done that’s just for you, I’d love to hear it.

And as usual, I’ll leave you with a bible verse – have a read of 1 Kings 19:1-8.  Here is verse 7:

Then the angel of the Lord came again and touched him and said, “Get up and eat some more, or the journey ahead will be too much for you.”

Sometimes God’s advice for us is to take a little time to look after ourselves!