This is a great one for the archives and it's currently what I'm doing right now. I would love to know how you prioritize yourself. What things do you put in place to put yourself first? Be it your needs for recharging, be it your needs for creativity, be it your needs for just being able to get 8 hours of sleep. So how do you prioritize yourself first? And please go ahead and let me know in the poll. Do you, number one, engage in self-awareness and development through digital content? Kind of like this? Number two, do you work with a coach or mastermind group like myself? Do you three have a gratitude and mindfulness practice that you engage in? And number four, do you never really prioritize yourself? Let me know and enjoy listening to this episode. Bye.

Hello, and welcome to the not so travelling introvert. Today I want to talk about prioritizing yourself. I'm guilty very much of not doing this. I don't want to say I'm a regular basis frequently enough and one of the worst things you could ever do is pile on the guilt of wanting to have some time to yourself and putting yourself first. In fact, putting yourself first is really the reverse of being selfish.

Because of that fact, there is no reason to feel guilty. I want to talk about some of the ways that you can be helped by prioritizing yourself. People who care about you will respond healthily to you finding time to put yourself first, especially when it comes to your health and happiness. Because they want you to be happy. If you tell them that these 15 minutes, an hour, a day, a particular activity that you do alone is important to you and why they truly care about you, they'll respect it.

And even if they don't first and you explain why, they see the benefits of you getting that time to do what you need to do and prioritize yourself. Then they will understand. Don't get me wrong, even your best friend at times might take advantage of you if you let them. But it's not that they don't care about you or they even mean to take advantage, it's the fact that if you just say yes, they assume you wanted to say yes. Try saying no or not right now or let me check my calendar.

Or actually I'd prefer to do blah blah blah set boundaries. So you help yourself to prioritize yourself. When you have some downtime, that's just for you to do whatever it is that you love doing, whether it's reading, painting, walking, meditating, coloring, all of those things. If you put aside downtime for you to do these things, you will be a happier person because you get to do things that you enjoy. So you will enjoy life more.

And let's be honest, prioritizing yourself is a requirement, not an option. The fact is you shouldn't feel guilty for doing something that is a requirement in your life. It is not optional for you to take care of yourself. If you don't take care of yourself in the way that you know best, you won't be productive or happy and you can't blame other people for that. And then if you think about it, what happens if you don't put yourself first?

You'll end up sick in some way, shape or form. What happens when you feel sick? If you go to bed for a few days with the flu or any other illness? Does the world fall apart? No.

If you take time to take care of yourself, you're less likely to be stressed, you're less likely to get ill. And even when you do, you won't be ill feeling stressed that you're missing stuff, or that you'll feel guilty being sick, that won't happen because you know you're taking time to prioritize yourself. When you're overworked and say yes to all the things or things you'd rather not do, it shows. People might not be able to interpret the actual reason behind your attitude, behavior or energy, but they will be able to sense that something is off. And this can make people feel uncomfortable without understanding why.

So don't do it. Only you can control yourself. You might have a hard time with guilt, and I get that. But the truth is you can only control yourself. You can't control all the things that are going on, no matter how much you try.

And just a word of warning prioritizing yourself does not mean neglecting others. Some people think that me time means that you neglect others, but that's actually just not the case. You have to learn to differentiate needs versus once. Needs are before once. You need time to yourself, you need time to recharge.

You need to take care of yourself. That's far more important than whether you run the PTA bake sale or whether Betsy does. There's a difference. And honestly, the more that you learn to put your needs before other people's wants I'll say that again. The more you learn to put your needs before other people's wants, the happier and healthier and better you will feel.

And to be fair, if you don't put yourself first, no one else will. Not your partner, not your kids, not your friends. So it must be you.

Why would you feel guilty about being true to you? Thank you for listening. This is janice@thecareerintrovert.com, helping you build your brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.