A few weeks ago, my husband came home from work and asked me what I did for the day.
Unfortunately I was having one of those days where my chronic pain was not giving me a break so I said that I had spent most of the day resting.
I was like, “I had to rest all day today, but I hope that tomorrow I can be more responsible.”
My husband gave me a strange look.
“What do you mean by ‘being responsible’?”
“I mean, getting stuff done and being productive.”
Then he smiled at me kindly and said, “Resting is being responsible.”
I was completely stunned.
Yes. Resting is being responsible.
By listening to my body, I’m taking responsibility for my health and well-being. By stepping away from busyness, I was showing a high level of concern and care.
Why did I think that resting was a sign of irresponsibility?
In our modern culture, being responsible is often inseparable from taking action. However this short conversation reminded me that stillness is its own form of care and work.
I find the unique kind of productivity that blossoms from stillness and rest fascinating and even mysterious on some levels. It’s a way of honoring my mind, body, and even emotions by doing less.
I’m currently wrapping up a Self-healing Life Coach Certification course on Udemy. However, my reason for buying and taking this course was to mainly improve in how I’m healing myself.
In the email I sent January 1st, I shared that my intention for the year was to focus on healing my mind and my body.
Then a little over one week later, almost magically, this course fell into my lap. I had no clue going into it, but it turned out that the instructor for this course also suffers from chronic pain. Even more interesting is that her pain areas are very similar to my own. This virtual path crossing felt almost cosmic.
As a plus, she also has ADHD, so I immediately recognized that what she had to share would also be suitable for calming overstimulation and would work with my scattered mind.
This definitely shows the impact of setting an intention, instead of obsessing over a goal!🙌🏿
As a highly sensitive person with chronic pain, my self-care list has been a long one. Before taking this course, my self-care practice was prone to becoming this long, arduous routine. It would take hours to adequately take care of the complexities of my emotional landscape along with all the workouts, stretches, and pain relief products that I needed to address the physical side of things too.
My self-care routine was becoming work, and it needed a serious injection of stillness. This course hit what I needed perfectly, basically turning rest and small movements into powerful moments of healing. For better self-care, I needed to do less.
As a result, I’ve become more proficient at sprinkling profound moments of self-care into the pockets of time I find throughout my day.
Self-care is becoming more intertwined with my life, instead of BEING my life. I love this shift because having such an involved self-care routine was a burden. Now what I do is not only simple and light, but also effective.
From this experience, I’ve come to see that taking tiny actions of self-care that compound daily can be way more effective than carving out a random self-care day here and there. I need to pay myself back for the hard work of my body and mind every day.
The self-healing course also reminded me to give special attention to self-care practices that I’ve found to be the most effective for me over the long term. When it comes to self-care, it’s easy to fall into shiny object syndrome, but keeping in mind what has always worked well is key to keeping things simple, easy, and impactful.
No matter what, I know that journaling, tea drinking, music, foam-rolling, and reading will be mainstays of my self-care practice because they are all things that have consistently brought me healing throughout my life.
What practices have consistently brought healing to you?
Take some time to enjoy one of those activities today, even if it’s just for five minutes. In doing so, you’re honoring your needs, paying yourself, and being totally responsible.