Aspire Magazine: Inspiration for a Woman's Soul.(TM) Feb/Mar 2020 Aspire Magazine FULL Issue | Page 43

If you are wondering how your New Year’s
Intentions are faring, then look no further
than your calendar. Does it reflect your
intentions and commitment to be more
nurturing to yourself? Do you have time
prioritized for your self-nurturing activities?
Do you schedule time for those activities in
your calendar? If someone else picked up
your calendar would they be able to assess
what you value by how you spend your time?
If your calendar does not reflect your New
Year’s intentions, you are not alone. Many
women have difficulty prioritizing time for
themselves. When we don’t prioritize time for
ourselves, we end up attending to everyone
else’s needs and breaking our commitments
to ourselves over and over again. Whether
our commitments are to exercise, learn to
meditate, eat healthy delicious food, be
creative, get a massage, or any other self-
nurturing activity that would nourish and fill
us up, prioritizing time in our schedules is
essential.
When we do not prioritize time for ourselves
and break our commitments to ourselves
we undermine our self-confidence and self-
worth. When this happens consistently, we
create a powerful cycle that makes nurturing
ourselves even more difficult. We may feel
guilty and/or bad about ourselves for not
following through with our commitments,
which fuels our belief that we are not good
enough. These feelings of unworthiness
then stop us from nurturing ourselves and
reinforce the idea that to have value, we
must care for everyone else in our lives first
leaving little time for us. It is easy to get stuck
in this cycle of overwhelm and exhaustion,
but it does not have to be that way. We can
choose to break the cycle by reestablishing
trust with ourselves and keeping our self-
nurturing intentions.
So how can you reestablish trust with
yourself?
This process begins with self-compassion
and self-forgiveness. If you have broken
your commitment to yourself, recognize
that you made a mistake but you are
not a mistake. Forgive yourself for not
following through and start anew. There
is no need for perfection on this journey
of self-nurturing. You have an opportunity
to see this experience as a lesson about
the growth process and welcome your new
awareness with gratitude. Bring attention
to what choices you are making about how
you spend your time. Our choices will lead
to our empowerment and being intentional
with our choices will lead to our renewed
belief in ourselves.
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If you have broken your commitment to
yourself, recognize that you made a mistake
but you are not a mistake.