Do you spend your days taking care of everyone else’s needs? Your boss? Your customers? Your spouse, life partner, boyfriend or girlfriend? Your kids? Other family members? Friends? Then at the end of the day, you’re so exhausted, you literally fall into bed – just to wake up and start it all over again the next day?
I know it’s easy to fall into this pattern – especially for women, the usual caregivers in the family. But men aren’t immune to this pattern of behavior either – that’s one of the reasons why they die younger than women.
You may feel like everyone else’s needs are more important than your own. Part of the reason for this is, we often feel guilty if we spend time on ourselves. You may feel like if you don’t take care of other people’s needs:
- You may lose your job or customers;
- Your family will feel like you don’t love or care about them;
- Your family and friends will be mad at you.
Or perhaps, you feel like you need to always be productive and accomplishing something with your time.
Whatever the reason, it’s really important that you take care of yourself first. Because if you don’t, sooner or later you’re going to become fatigued, stressed and possibly even make yourself sick. Then you won’t be much help to anyone else at all.
Remember, when you’re on an airplane, the flight attendant always tells you to put your oxygen mask on first in an emergency before you help your child or someone else with theirs. There’s a reason for that. You can’t help someone else if you can’t breathe yourself. Therefore, take care of your needs before you take care of someone else.
Here are some things you can do to recharge and regain your focus:
Learn to say “no.” You don’t have to do everything.- Keep yourself in good physical condition. Eat healthy. Get enough sleep. Get at least 30 minutes of physical activity every day (even if it’s in three 10-minute intervals) – go for a walk, work in the garden, take a yoga class.
- Engage your mind. Read a book. Take a class to learn a new skill. Spend time on a hobby.
- Feed your soul. Go to a religious service regularly. Write in a journal. Practice meditation.
- Spend time alone. Go hang out at a coffee shop and people watch. Take a walk in the park. Go to an art exhibit.
- Schedule fun activities on a regular basis. Go to the zoo. Eat at a new restaurant. Catch the latest movie.
- Spend quality time building your relationships. Go on a weekend retreat with your spouse or significant other. Have a girls’ night out or go to a sporting event with the guys. Develop a daily ritual with the kids like reading before bed.
Above all, remember you are important, too.
Good Physical Health Includes Foot Health, too!
If you suffer from painful foot conditions, like bunions, plantar fasciitis, Morton’s neuroma, it may be difficult to take care of anyone’s needs – including your own. But you don’t have to be in pain. Custom orthotics, like the ezWalker® Custom Performance Orthotic, provide your feet with the exact support and alignment they need. If you’re an active individual (which you likely are, if you’re running around taking care of everyone else’s needs), functional support from ezWalker® Custom Orthotics can help you achieve better health and comfort all day, every day. In fact, this level of support has been proven to help people actually realign and rebalance their feet in less than a year of continuous wear. That’s means you’ll have better health overall, so you can keep up with everything you do.
So take care of your foot health, too! Order your ezWalker® Custom Performance Orthotics today. Your feet will thank you.
Because … when your feet feel good, you feel good!®
