Giving Yourself Permission

I am enjoying a lovely Sunday afternoon at home doing very little.  I have been doing very little for a day and a half now.  Some of you may be thinking how nice it is for someone to be doing very little and practically bragging about it.  Does it make a difference if I tell you I'm also home with a cold?  Another cold.  My fifth cold this year.  And since we're in the month of October that makes my colds an on average bi-monthly occurrence.  Forgive me if I sound a bit defensive.  I have been recovering from adrenal fatigue for the past almost year and a half and rebuilding myself has taught me some pretty important lessons.

One of the most important lessons after I’ve learned is giving yourself permission for whatever it is you need.  Once I have fulfilled by responsibilities as a mother, I need to take care of what I really need for myself.  This weekend its sitting around in my comfy clothes drinking tea and reading a book.  And while I am here at home, I am very grateful that following my classes yesterday morning I was able to cancel my other obligations and take the time I need to rest.

Permission to take time out from other obligations in our lives and focus on our needs is one of the most difficult tasks to do for ourselves.  To often we feel guilt for saying no to someone who has asked us for our assistance just to sit at home.  But if we are dreading going somewhere, and we are only attending an event or sitting on a committee to avoid hurting someone else's feeling or letting them down, we are neglecting our needs.  If we continue this behavior over months, years or even a lifetime our neglected needs add up and it is our bodies and minds that pay the price not the people whose needs we put first.

Sometimes it is difficult to let others down.  Guilt is an incredible motivator.  But when we sacrifice our own needs at the expense of making others happy we do ourselves a disservice.  People who truly love and care for us wouldn't want us to be in that situation.  And those who can't understand our reason for saying no and putting our own needs first aren't really worth having in our lives.  

So today I am giving myself permission to just chill at home.  I know that I will get over this cold faster and get back to working out and being social again.  But the more I fight against it, the longer my cold will linger.  The people in my life who matter most just want me to recover and that is exactly what I’m giving myself permission to do.