Are you a giver, always putting the needs of others above your own? I spent years of my life defining my identity around my ability to help others, and there are many other people out there who do the same. That is a laudable goal; the world needs more selfless people. But it simply isn’t sustainable to continually put others ahead of yourself.
If you’ve flown on an airplane before, you’ve seen the instructions to secure your own oxygen mask before helping others. Those instructions aren’t in place because the airlines want you to be selfish. The fact is, you can’t help others if you haven’t first taken care of yourself.
The idea of self-care is starting to get a considerable amount of mainstream attention. But don’t be too quick to write it off as a fad or a buzzword. Self-care is incredibly valuable. Even if your priorities lie outside yourself—helping others, your career, or something different—practicing self-care will help you better accomplish those ends. When you feel healthy and cared for, that leaves you in a position to perform at your best in the other aspects of your life.
If you’re not used to putting yourself first, you may find it difficult to do so. It takes a significant overhaul of your mindset and approach to life. But the benefits of practicing self-care truly are worth the effort. Follow along, and I’ll discuss those benefits in-depth and give you a few pointers on how to get started. But first, let’s address some concerns you may have.
Concerns
You may still be wary about making an effort to put yourself first. If this isn’t how you’ve lived your life up until this point, you almost certainly have a few concerns. Before we move forward, I’ll try to anticipate and address a few of them.
I’m Being Selfish
We briefly touched on this earlier, but it’s natural to feel like putting yourself first is a selfish act. That is especially true when you haven’t been used to doing so. No one wants to feel like they’re being selfish; should we really prioritize ourselves and our own self-care?
While it’s natural to feel that way, it’s not really true. There’s nothing selfish about taking care of yourself first, and changing this mindset is the first step towards being able to put yourself first and practice self-care. Selfishness is when you act in your own self-interest to the detriment of others. It is narcissistic, malicious, and exploitative.
Self-care, on the other hand, is merely about making sure your basic needs are met. It’s not about taking anything away from others, and no one is hurt because of it. Sometimes, the most selfish thing we can truly do is ignore ourselves. When we allow ourselves to get run all the way down, out of some misguided sense of responsibility, we can’t take care of anyone.
My Friends Will Resent Me
The next concern is a fear that if you start putting yourself first, your friends will regret you for it. That, too, is a logical worry. If you’ve been the type to say “yes” to any and everything your friends ask you for, and suddenly that’s no longer necessarily the case, won’t that cause them to resent you?
The fact is, you can’t control their reactions. But if you frame it in a positive, productive way—let them know you aren’t abandoning them, and you still have their backs, you’re just taking care of yourself first—they should understand.
Real friends appreciate what you’ve done for them, but above all else, they want you to be happy and thriving. It’s possible that you might lose a person or two because of this, but ultimately that will be a good thing. If someone only wanted you around because they knew you’d take care of everything for them and never tell them no, they weren’t your friend to begin with. They were being exploitative, and you’re better off without them in your life.
Ultimately, though, it’s likely nothing will change with your relationships. If anything, they may get stronger, as you will be healthier as an individual. We’ll have more on this concept later.
I’ll Lose My Identity
The next concern is likely more subconscious than conscious, but that doesn’t make it any easier to overcome. It’s possible that you’ve defined your very identity by your willingness to do everything you can for other people while ignoring yourself.
While you may not have actively chosen to define yourself this way, the idea of losing your identity can be, frankly, terrifying. What you need to do is reframe the situation. You’re not losing your identity. Instead, you’re gaining one.
Your relationships are important, and they’re a significant part of who you are. At the same time, it’s important not to define yourself based on other people. You are your own person, a fully formed individual.
Putting yourself first means discovering more about who you truly are. As you gain this more profound understanding of yourself, a new identity will form. And it will be all your own.
Benefits
If you’re still not sold, self-care carries with it a tremendous array of benefits, which we will break down one by one, including:
- Improved health
- Self-discovery
- Greater confidence
- Boosted productivity
- Better relationships
Get Healthier
The primary benefit you’ll get from practicing self-care is improved health. I’m not just talking about better moods; it is a holistic benefit that will reduce stress and improve both physical and mental health in a tangible, demonstrable way.
Reduce Stress
When you don’t ever choose to put yourself first, one of the most significant issues is chronically elevated stress. Even if you like the idea of being a team player at work and putting others first in your personal life, if you don’t take care of yourself, it’s sure to wear you out. That is one of the biggest causes of burnout, and the main reason this type of lifestyle is unsustainable.
Elevated stress can cause a whole host of adverse health outcomes. Those include depression, anxiety, fatigue, headaches, and even acne breakouts, among much more.
One of the most prominent threads running through many of the otherwise disparate aspects of self-care—like exercise, relaxation, introspection, meditation, and more—is that they all work to reduce stress. Self-care is primarily about making sure you have the emotional energy to navigate the world; inherently, that is about reducing stress and the harmful effects it has on your well-being.
Mental Health
We just touched on how chronic stress can contribute to depression and anxiety, and how self-care can help reduce stress and mitigate those effects. That is important and powerful, but it’s not the only way self-care affects mental health.
In many ways, self-care is about nourishing our emotional intelligence. When we take time for ourselves, that can have an incredibly therapeutic effect. If we’re never putting ourselves first, we never take the time to understand our feelings or emotions, and that can cause significant emotional distress.
By prioritizing time for introspection, we get in touch with our feelings and their sources and develop our emotional well-being. That is a very powerful tool that can have life-shaping effects.
Physical Health
While it may be logical that self-care lowers stress and boosts mental health, it may come as a surprise to learn that it can play a role in promoting physical health as well.
Activities like aerobic exercise or mindfulness practice can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is vital to regulating our bodies’ heart rate and conserving our energy. That function helps the body relax after encountering stressors and maintain healthy blood pressure, among many other things.
These types of activities can play a role in reducing harmful inflammation and boosting our bodies’ immune systems. Self-care, then, isn’t just about making yourself feel better in the moment. It can play a significant role in improving tangible, physiological health outcomes.
Self-Discovery
When you’ve spent your entire life prioritizing other people and tasks ahead of yourself, that can make it very difficult to get to know who you truly are as an individual. Too often, we form some sense of identity and decide what we want to do with our lives early on, and then coast along without every critically reflecting on those things.
One of the most important things we can do in our lives is to discover who we are deep down. What we want to do with our lives, goals we want to accomplish, skills we want to foster, and so on. If we’re unsure of who we are, our goals can’t guide our choices in life. We float along with the current, uncertain if it’s taking us closer to the life we want or farther away.
A critical part of self-care is reflection and introspection. Self-care isn’t just about spending time alone. Sitting in your room swiping along on your phone for a few hours doesn’t serve any productive purpose. You need to set some time aside to truly be alone with your own thoughts.
That might be scary at first. In this modern era of technology, we’re programmed to need constant stimulation. And when you aren’t used to putting yourself first, it may take time to start getting comfortable in your own skin. But eventually, you’ll begin truly looking within, and taking steps towards living a fully actualized life.
Improve Confidence
When you put yourself first, you take charge of your life. You’re no longer letting others make decisions for you; you’re doing what’s best to create the happiest, healthiest version of yourself. Those who practice effective self-care focus on gaining control of their choices and actions. When you know you are in control of your life, that boosts your confidence and sense of self-efficacy.
This effect is particularly noticeable when coupled with the above introspection and self-discovery. As you further get to know yourself and understand your true wants and needs, your goals in life begin to come into clearer focus.
When you also focus on developing a sense of self-efficacy in addition to that self-discovery, your goals can inform the decisions you make. When you know what you want and know how to take action in pursuit of it, you will naturally develop increased confidence in yourself.
Boost Productivity
The next two benefits may be quite counterintuitive on the surface. Self-care is about stepping back, relaxing, and taking some time to focus on yourself. If anything, that seems like a waste of time. How could it make you more productive?
There are a few critical concepts at play here. The first is one that we’ve already scratched the surface of a few times, and that’s burnout. We need energy (both physical and mental) to perform at our best. When we’re always in go-mode, prioritizing our occupation and our relationships ahead of our personal health, we can’t help but run out of energy.
You may keep working, sure, but you won’t be working at your best. And no matter how much time you invest, your productivity will fall. The other concept we need to explore is the idea of wasted time. Our time is well spent when it is in service of a worthy goal. And it doesn’t need to be directly related to that goal to be in service of it.
While spending time on self-care is inherently time that we do not spend being productive, it is still time we are spending in service of our productivity. While we may spend less time in the day working overall, we’ll be performing at a higher level during that time. We do our best work when we’re happy, healthy, and focused.
Better Relationships
Likewise, it might be surprising to learn that putting yourself first can improve your relationships with other people. If you’re a giver, your relationships are defined by your willingness to always say yes to others. When you decide to put yourself first, that will change. Maybe you’ve accepted that your friends won’t resent you for this, but certainly you wouldn’t expect your relationships to get stronger because you’re prioritizing yourself.
First of all, you will clear out the exploitative people who treated you as a friend solely so they could take advantage of your selflessness. Those who stay are the ones you are worth being friends with in the first place.
Beyond that, though, this is all about quality vs. quantity. When you feel healthy and fulfilled, you have more to give to others. Yes, you’ll have to say no to some requests. But when you are there for your friends, you will be able to give them the best version of yourself.
Further, your relationships will thrive simply because you yourself are thriving. Relationships are made up of the individuals who comprise them. That may sound obvious, but when we define ourselves according to other people, it can be easy to forget that we are part of the equation ourselves. A better you means any whole you are a part of is better off.
How to Put Yourself First
Now that you’ve seen the potential benefits, hopefully, you’re committed to trying to put yourself first. But that’s still a big challenge. As I mentioned, learning to prioritize your own well being requires a fundamental reshaping of your mindset. Even if you’ve committed, you may not know where to begin.
But I’ve got you covered. Follow along with this guide for some tips and strategies for how to put yourself first.
Learn to Say No!
Learning to say no is the first step on your journey to self-care. It is also the most important, and possibly the most difficult. When you’re used to always saying yes to every request that comes your way, it becomes a reflexive response. And the idea of doing otherwise can be very intimidating.
How do you know when to say no? How do you do it without hurting the other person’s feelings? Will you burn bridges by doing so? Indeed, the way you say no is important. You have to find a balance between being polite and being firm.
But the most crucial part, simply enough, is being able to do so in the first place. I’m not asking you to turn your back on your friends when they come to you for help. But when the stakes are low, and you recognize that your battery is running low, let them know that you have to take care of yourself before you can do what they ask.
One of the keys is distinguishing refusal from rejection. You’re not rejecting your work or your friend; you are simply saying no to a request. It’s not personal, and there is no need to feel guilty.
At first, though, you probably will feel some guilt. That’s okay, allow yourself to feel these feelings. But don’t let them consume you or weaken your resolve. It’s a transition that takes effort. But if you’re going to learn to practice self-care, this is an essential skill.
Find a Work-Life Balance
Something that is often romanticized in our culture is the devotion of as much time as possible to one’s work. We demonstrate our commitment by being the first ones in and the last ones out. The more time we spend at work, the better we want to succeed. Or so the idea goes.
In reality, there is nothing laudable about being a workaholic. It hurts you personally and can hurt you professionally as well. Overwork breeds chronic stress and exhaustion, which are accompanied by a variety of depleting effects. As we discussed earlier, elevated stress causes depression, fatigue, headaches, and far more.
And your work can suffer from it. When you’re spread too thin, you can become unfocused, disorganized, and unproductive. Conversely, you’ve already learned how self-care can actually increase productivity.
One of the most important things you must do to put yourself first and practice self-care, then, is to find a comfortable work-life balance. Your job is an important part of your life, and hopefully, you enjoy it. But it isn’t who you are. You need to make sure you carve out free time away from work to remain relaxed, recharged, and performing at your highest level.
Practice Mindfulness
Possibly the most critical skill you can learn during your self-care journey is the ability to practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is arguably the most powerful way to regulate our bodies’ stress levels while also helping us understand exactly what we’re feeling at any given moment and why.
Mindfulness is a concept with considerable depth, but in its broadest sense, it’s all about focusing all your attention on the present moment—both your environment and the way you’re feeling. What does this have to do with putting yourself first, exactly?
One of the biggest obstacles to self-care is concern over past imperfections or future obligations, which continuously pull you away from the opportunity to focus on yourself in the here and now. The past cannot be changed. Your future responsibilities will be there when you get to them. The present is all you can control.
When you make an effort to practice self-care, do what you can to be in the present moment. If you’re going out to a restaurant with a loved one, leave your phone at home. If you’re taking a bath, take that opportunity to reflect on how you feel. And bring that mindfulness with you into your day to day life.
Go for Walks
Here’s a practice that is far simpler, but nonetheless has very significant benefits. Going for walks is the perfect time for introspection. Your body is active, you’re outside in the fresh air, and you’re alone with your thoughts. It’s an excellent opportunity to reflect on your life, your goals, and to connect with yourself on a deeper level.
If you live in an area where you can do so, it’s even better if you’re able to hike out in nature. Surrounding yourself with trees and other plant life has a surprising number of demonstrable health benefits. Studies indicate that spending time out in nature can reduce stress, lower the risk of heart disease, improve mood, and boost your immune system.
But either way, the point of these walks is to carve out a period of time for just yourself. If you have a family, it may be difficult to find time alone in the house. Walking for 30 minutes a day gives you a bit of exercise, but beyond that, it’s a chance for you to be alone with yourself.
Don’t Force It
It’s no secret at this point that I believe putting yourself first is incredibly important. But you can’t force it. As you work towards changing your mindset, you have to let things happen organically. Otherwise, it might backfire and cause you even more stress.
One of the most significant stressors many of us face in our day to day lives is when things don’t go in accordance with our expectations. When we develop an idea of how things have to be, and then our reality doesn’t live up to that standard, that can cause considerable distress and anxiety.
It can be natural to embark on this journey with lofty goals. But don’t bite off more than you can chew. If you set out to spend a specific amount of time each day and then fail to meet that, that may discourage you or cause you to quit. Or worse, it can be a daily cause of stress, as you scramble to find your chance to relax. That is, of course, the opposite of the intent.
As you set out to put yourself first, then feel free to set goals if you think that will help. But don’t create an idea in your head of how things need to be. The goal is to reduce stress, not create it. So don’t force anything. Allow your self-care to arise organically.
The Final Word
Being selfless is a laudable trait. The more people are willing to do things for others, the more the world benefits. But when you constantly give without concern for yourself, it can be easy to run out of energy and burn out. To give the best of yourself in a sustainable way, you need to be able to put yourself first.
While some people may be concerned that putting yourself first is akin to being selfish, it’s not. You aren’t taking advantage of others; you’re merely creating the happiest, healthiest version of yourself.
Prioritizing yourself has a wide array of benefits. It can help you reduce stress, boost productivity, improve confidence, and learn about yourself on a deeper level. And it puts you in a better position to help others to the best of your ability.
Self-care can take many different forms. But the most important aspect (and the most challenging) is to learn how to say no. Understand that you’re not rejecting your friends; sometimes, you just have to take some time to focus on you.