Caring for yourself while caring about everything.
It doesn't have to be just you.
Why is it always the people who care the most are also the ones who worry the most about being selfish? I see you out there caring intensely about what is happening around you. I see you trying so hard to do good and right things in such a complicated world. And I see you not taking care of yourself because that feels wrong right now.
This messed up world we are inhabiting is intent on breaking you from the outside in; you don’t have to let it get you from the inside out too.
Exhausted, hungry, over-worked you are not the one who will change things. Repressing what is good in and for you right now isn’t in service to anyone. Neither is not paying any attention at all obviously. But you can only know what is true about you.
We live in a world powered by the exceptionalism that it will be one of us that makes the difference. And it is part of the problems we face. We’re great at grabbing frames of impactful moments. Isolating it down to the one brave human that captures our imagination and inspires us to want to do more, be better, be like them. But that’s never the whole story of change. It’s usually a story of loss.
1989 is a big deal right now, but I remember it for different reasons. I was still in high school in June 1989 when the unknown man in Tiananmen Square stood in front of a line of Chinese government tanks attempting to clear the student demonstrators calling for democratic reform. You can watch his moment here. It was an incredibly moving scene and he was later made one of Time Magazine’s 100 most important people of the century. But the full story was longer and more complex and involved months of student sit ins, hunger strikes and riots. An unknown number of people were killed that day in Beijing—they say between 200 and 2000. But the protests were not the story of one man. A whole community of thousands of people worked together to attempt to enact change in their world. Even for this unknown man several other people were the ones who moved him away to safety. It’s always been about our connection to each other not the hero narrative.
Be wary of anything that requires you to martyr yourself because it is your part of the group that will always make change. It’s ok to be really grateful for the suffering you are not experiencing in moments like these. And, also you won’t be able to achieve the things you dream on behalf of all of us if you are fully broken.
Eat. Sleep. Pause from the intake of information. Feel and share joy and lightness in a dark world. It isn’t selfish. It’s the world we want. It’s the fuel that enables you to come back for your next shift of making change.
I created the audio course How to Give Yourself Permission so you could have support to make and action the choices you long for. It will help with:
Understanding what’s holding you back with kindness and empathy.
Decluttering some of those reasons about why you shouldn’t.
Deciding which size steps suit you and your nervous system right now.
And I’ve priced it at just $25 because I want everyone to have access to this information. (If that is out of your reach please send me a note and we’ll get it to you regardless). The course is a short 20 minutes and you can listen to it over and over when you need to. Get it here.