Are You Asking Yourself The Right Questions?
During our journey through life we ask many questions. What is the direction of your questions? Are they external or internal?
External questions direct us towards what others want from us. Internal questions allow us to listen to what we want.
There are so many areas in your life that you need to ask questions about: relationships, friendships, family, careers, children, money, and sex. Let’s focus on one very important area: you!
Is it revolutionary or selfish of you to focus your life questions towards what your heart tells you is important for your own well-being? What if you were to ask questions around what is important to you? Does that make you uncomfortable?
Women know about nurturing, yet for some reason we believe that self-nurturing is a ‘no-no’. Society has done a great job is educating us that taking care of ourselves shouldn’t be our first choice.
Well, you know about that word ‘should’. Delete it from your vocabulary! ‘Should’ doesn’t provide self-caring thoughts and in fact just the opposite happens. We lock ourselves into doing things we don’t want to do, or believing negative thoughts about ourselves when we don’t act or do what we believe we ‘should’ do. So let’s take another tactic, another direction, in creating our life’s journey.
Let’s start asking the right questions. When was the last time you listened to yourself? You need time to think about what is important to you and how you can listen to yourself. Allow yourself time to have fun with this.
I’m assuming you are a busy woman. So, it’s important to start slow and choose a manageable action. This way you can succeed in supporting yourself.
Ask yourself: What do I need to do for myself…right now…in order to add comfort and self-caring into my life? Take time to think about this.
Supporting yourself is premier in your overall well-being. For the mothers in our community, taking care of yourself will benefit both you and your family.
If you are in business, you would be asking the question “how can we improve the experience for the customer?” or something similar to that. Well, you are in business – the business of taking care of yourself. So ask yourself “how can I improve my self-care by one action today?” Like I said, start small and build on it each day.
Create space for yourself today to ask “what do I need to do for myself today that will build my well-being?” Just create a long list of ideas and then select one idea to honor today. Write the word or action step on sticky notes and paste them all around you. Keep them within your gaze so you can focus on them.
Something You Can Do Now
Wake up 5 minutes before you normally do and take that time to ask yourself “what one thing can I do today to take care of myself?” Write down your answer and plan when you will do it. Then do it – even if you’re tired – do it anyway.
Final Thoughts
Learning to listen to ourselves will provide self-nurturing as well as the wisdom to nurture others. So start asking yourself the right questions. What do I need? What is important to me? How can I best support myself?
Karen & Pat
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Comfort Secrets for Busy Women: Finding Your Way When Your Life Is Overflowing
by Jennifer Louden
This is also a great book to use for discussion points at your women’s group.
This is where I got the question: “What is the one thing I need more in my life right now?” She covers topics like ‘fear of being self-absorbed’, ‘mindful listening’, ‘is it possible’, ‘yearnings’, ‘faith’ and many more topics. When we honor ourselves we have so much more to offer everyone else in our lives.
Tags: right questions, self-growth, self-nuturing
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November 6th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
this post reminds me a quote” how can i help the others if i can’t help myself”
i believe too that the first person you should take care of is you. if you do that in the right way then you can do almost anything for the others. and you can help them help themselves.it’s always about you as an individual, and you are the only one who can help yourself.
“you are the only one who can stop you permanently. the others can stop you only temporary.”