Why take care of yourself over others in the first place

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The most important person in your life is you.

When a serious accident suddenly occurs on an airplane at high altitude, the cabin is depressurized. In this case, passengers have only 15–20 seconds left to save their own lives by wearing an oxygen mask.

Flight attendants always warn in advance that the mask should be put on first on oneself, and only then to help others. If you do not have time to protect yourself in the allotted time, you will simply lose consciousness and die.

If you take care of yourself first, the chances of helping your family and loved ones survive will increase dramatically. If you try to rescue them first, chances are good that no one will survive at all.

This is not about heroism, but about common sense. For example, your child may start asking questions about what is happening around, why wear a mask at all, why is it the same color, why is it hanging from the ceiling, and so on. If he sees that the mask is already on you, then, most likely, he will simply repeat the same thing.

Or imagine another situation: in order to keep yourself in good shape, you regularly visit the gym. Suddenly, your loved one ends up in the hospital with a serious injury, and you give up all your affairs to be with him around the clock. You take care of the victim, devoting all your free time to him and neglecting the need to take care of your health too.

For all those months while your loved one is struggling with the disease, you manage to lose weight beyond recognition, ruin your stomach with constant dry water, and in addition to all this, you experience constant nervous tension.

There comes a time when you make a very unexpected, but the right decision - to start playing sports again. It would seem why? Because you neglected your health for a long time. Because the illness of a loved one is not at all a reason to put an end to yourself. Because you understand that caring for yourself and caring for your loved ones are not mutually exclusive concepts.

There is a very fine line between being overprotective and just being helpful. Sometimes we only care about someone else because we are afraid to be alone with ourselves.

When we see someone with more serious problems than ours, we immediately switch to them. We allow ourselves to spit on our own difficulties only because we are too lazy and cowardly. We postpone everything all the time. People are very inventive and always find millions of reasons just not to do anything. Sometimes these reasons are really weird. Here is one of my favorites: a person creates a bunch of non-existent problems for himself in order to distract himself from the most important and unpleasant ones.

Joe Rogan is an American stand-up comedian

In addition to switching to the problems of others in the hope of escaping from their own, people often fall into the other extreme - workaholism. How tempting it is to go headlong into work and not notice anything around! Yes, this is often very, very pleasant, especially for those who are really passionate about their work.

We take overtime, stay up late in the office, start working on weekends, agree to replace a sick colleague so that we don't have time for anything else. Do you feel that something is unclean here? The way it is. We try to hide from problems we don't want to deal with. Problems that we really fear are ashamed and avoided. From those problems that are really important. From their own problems.

If you are tired of being inactive, hiding from difficulties and taking care of everyone except yourself, then remember a few basic rules.

• Do the things that make you happy and enjoyable every day. Go to the gym if you like it. Read books. Sing, paint, eat sweets. All of these small rewards can help you avoid burnout. If you are a creative or public person who constantly does something for others, then do something that will benefit only you and no one else.
• Take care of yourself. Expand your horizons, finally figure out what you want from this life, what goal you strive for. Understand that no one but you can do this. Stop neglecting your interests and find your source of inspiration. For example, check out the biography of someone you consider worthy of imitation and praise.
• Learn to pause and stop overworking. Give your brain a break, during which you just let yourself not think about anything. Yoga or meditation can be of great help here.

We cannot share with others what we ourselves do not have.

Whitney Cummings is an American screenwriter and producer

It is much easier to give friends and loved ones joy, support and inspiration when they are within ourselves. That's why you need to take care of yourself first.