It is Saturday the 20th of February, and I have to admit that this week has been one of those busy weeks; so tough that it feels like all the energy I have is gone because I have given out so much.

This morning I woke up around 4 a.m., exercised and I cleaned my apartment. Energy was still high right? I made some pancakes, had breakfast, and proceeded to wash and deep condition my hair. Then I looked at the time and saw that it was already 11:30 a.m. I got so angry because I felt like I did not even do enough before the meeting I had scheduled from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. I was so frustrated! Even though I had a productive day, it did not feel like I did enough.

So, I told myself that work will always be there, and it is up to me to take out time to breathe. We talk about self-care a lot these days, but I am learning that self-care is in the little we do on days like this. Self-care is not just about planning to go to the spa every Tuesday or having an expensive meal, but also in little things like forgiving yourself when you do not get the task done and celebrating yourself for what you have done so far.

In life, urgent things will always come up, and I know this feeling too well because I have found myself in this situation too many a times. So, this evening, I decided to just write my feelings because writing is a happy place for me.

When you start experiencing burnout, maybe you need to eat, sleep, decongest your schedule or perhaps do some unplanned fun activities to just relax and recuperate.
If you have so many tasks staring at you and you do not think you are making any progress, some things that I just learnt tonight are:
– Remind myself of what I have achieved so far
– Break what is left into little and realistic portions.
– If I miss one of these targets, learn to forgive myself for it
– If my productivity is still dropping, maybe I need to decongest my schedule, take some time away from the tasks (do not seize this as an opportunity to be lazy, but sometimes you need those lazy days)
– Self-care for you can be getting $3 fries, watching cartoons, sleeping, playing video games, shopping, or even dancing.

For some people, self-care is about releasing yourself from negative emotions like unforgiveness or anger, or appreciating and celebrating your accomplishments.

No one can define self-care for you. The whole focus of self-care is the preservation of multi-dimensional wellness in healthy people; therefore, you need to define and prioritize your own version of self-care.