If you are a flower person, you know how is it to not only keep your plants alive but make them florish and bloom in your living room as the morning sun shines on them: you need to water them regularly, remove the old and dry leaves and time to time they need some fertilizer. They like stability but whenever they look sad, it means they might need some change and it worth moving them to another place in the flat with less breeze or sun.
We are not that different. We can survive a lot as we are resilient, but to exceed in life we need a good care. And who else would be responsible for taking care of yourself if not you?
Now what does it mean taking care of ourselves? We might be all different in terms of goals in life and what success means for us, but how to make the basics to be able to get there is kind of the same.
Just try to think on an occasion when you were stressed, nervous and tired as you couldn't sleep as you had that big thing at work, but of course (Murphy!) you almost overslept at the end and on top of it you had a fight with your partner or kid in the morning and it seems like that the whole word just conspired against you.
Now can you imagine that the same situation could have been handled better if you manage your thoughts about the work thing and you have a good night sleep, you wake up and have a nice and nutritious breakfast and you won't let your partner or kid upset you in the morning rush and you kiss them goodbye and go to work with a positive and confident mood, excited of the challenge waiting for you.
Life is not perfect and we all have challenges and difficulties, but with taking care of yourself you will see how much easier is it to manage the daily hiccups. And as you take ownership on more and more areas that influence your wellbeing, it will be easier and easier to fine-tune it. For example if your main problem is stress at work, with fixing the area you will be much more relaxed in your relationship and so on... all the main areas influence how well we are performing on the others: work, relationship, health and social life should be all on a satisfactory level. Now what is satisfactory level? This depends on the person as all of us have different needs and we are all socialised differently depending on our character, culture, past, family and life events.
But to give a good idea how you can take care of yourself I suggest thinking over the following areas:
Do I eat nutrisious and good quality food regularly and do I drink enough water or other quality beverages?
Do I sleep enough, approximately 7-8 hours at least? Do I wake up tired?
Do I take care of my body with exercising regularly and with taking care of any health problems?
Do I take care of the happiness of my mind, do I give myself what makes me satisfied, let it be some meditation, some quality time with good friends, some alone me-time or an inspirational activity?
This is not a rocket science and I am sure that this is not the first time that you hear that you need to take care of yourself, sleep enough, eat well and exercise. However if you think now that this is impossible to cover or would require too much of you as you have kids or you have a job that needs you full time or you have other responsibilities or you don't have the resources for all these, it worth to think over again if indeed it is impossible and have a look at this post. Don't forget, you are the only one who can take care of yourself but you will gain much more back than you put in: a healthy and balanced version of you who will have the capability to work on his/her goals!