3 Ways to Self-Care By Giving Yourself Grace
Beatless Meetup Tour NYC by Candace Howe
What is self-care for you?
At the Beatless Meet-up Tour stop in NYC, I was asked what does self-care mean to me.
For me, self-care is giving myself grace. There are points in our lives where we are hard on ourselves, especially when it comes to our work lives. We often forget to give ourselves grace when we make mistakes at work. We steal our own joy when we don’t recognize our small victories because we are disappointed in something that did not go our way. We don’t give ourselves enough credit for continuing to run the marathon that’s called entrepreneurship because we know it’s not a race.
It’s those little things that can set us back, waste our energy, and lose precious time over. There are three constant reminders that we should set for ourselves to help extend a little grace your way.
Don’t Fear Failing Forward
You have to fail to win, so don’t be afraid of failing forward. Think about all of the apps and devices we use daily and how often the systems update itself. It’s updating because it wasn’t created to perfection. It has flaws that can be improved upon just like us humans. Grace is giving yourself room to fail and to make a mistake but succeeding you have to try again. Remember to be kind to yourself when you fall short at work. Now you know there is a flaw in your workflow that needs a little updating. Learn from it and move forward.
Stop Negative Self-Talk
There’s power in the tongue, and we have to make sure we use it for good. What you say to yourself has long term effects on your self-esteem, mental health, and life’s outcomes. Negative self-talk turns into self-sabotaging that you can’t take back because you start to believe in the negativity. When a negative thought comes into your head, career coach and entrepreneur, Reese Evans suggest you ask yourself: Does this thought line up to the person who it is that I want to be? If the answer is no, think of what the opposite of that thought would be and decide to move forward believing in just that. “I recognize that I am not my thoughts. I’m the thinker of my thoughts, and I am in control, and I get to decide which thoughts I lead my life based on,” Evans shared with me on ESSENCE.com.
Be Patient
It’s hard to see other people win and you feel like you are stagnant, and in the same place, you were in a year ago. We forget our small victories and steps towards success when we focus on the finish line. Grace is being patient with yourself and giving yourself the time and space to heal, to grow, and to build. Remember each of us is embarking on our journeys, and it will take some of us longer than others, but whenever that “thing” happens, it will be right on time.