Self-care Myth #2

Today we tackle myth number 2.

Myth 2: I need to do everything or people will think I am lazy, uncommitted, etc

I’m hoping this is something that people grow out of as they age, and that one day I’ll wake up and not care what other people think, but I sort of doubt it. Also- if this is something you think about because you are a much more self-actualized person than me 1) teach me your ways and 2) you can skip the rest of this post.

You do not need to work yourself to death. You do not need to martyr yourself to prove yourself. I am the type of person who needs people to know that I am a hard worker. I feel insecure if I am perceived as weak, so I push myself to the point of exhaustion. In high school, I almost passed out at marching band practice because I wouldn’t take a break when I needed it in the 100 plus temperature. I didn’t want my coaches to think I was lazy. The thing is: no one thought I was lazy, and even if they did-- it didn’t really matter. My fighting to save face did nothing to achieve the goals of the team. If anything-- me passing out would have caused lots of problems that could have easily been avoided if I sat out for a minute. There would have been a missing person in our next performance and it would have looked weird!

We are all different people, comparing yourself to someone else is just as much a waste of time now as it in middle school when an after-school special had to teach us not to. I am insanely bad at handling the heat. It really wears on my body. I think I was built to live in a more temperate climate and this is my body’s way of telling me that. I didn’t realize how much my body rejected Florida summers until I experienced a New York winter with a roommate who was having difficulty adapting to the cold. I had an “aha” moment, realizing that some environments are easier for some to handle than others. The fact that my teammates didn’t have as much trouble in the heat as me, or that I could handle the cold with more ease than my roommate are not judgments on any of the people involved. They are merely examples of how we are all different.

(Me in my element in the NYC winters, because all the pictures of me out of my element in Florida summers are scary)

Our difference goes far beyond our adaptations to the natural environment. We each bring different skills to the table, have different factors impacting our time, energy, and so on. We have different experiences that impact how we perceive the world and how we respond to stress or trauma. We don’t need to be comparing our resistance to the woman or man next to us. This way of thinking causes people to exerts unnecessary internal pressure on themselves and therefore pulls our focus away from fighting necessary external injustices.