Take care of yourself. Actually, though.
Calibrate your own energy before tending to others
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Sometimes a thing demands to be felt before it is fully known. This essay is about something I have known for a very long time, but only recently came to capital-K-Know. This insight continues to reveal itself, in new and dimensional ways, imploring me to write this piece and say exactly what I am coming to know, or be forced to learn this lesson in new and painful ways. So alas, allow me to tell you about a lesson I thought I knew, but have only recently come to viscerally understand.
What is this dreamy new knowledge I have downloaded into my flesh, you may ask?
Well, dear reader, it is the importance of simply taking care of yourself.
what do you do when you return from the void?
A few weeks ago, I got back from a nearly month-long trip, and found myself with 3 to 4 days of mostly unstructured time, entirely to myself. Instead of rushing to get back into routine, I found myself approaching this re-adjustment period differently. I noticed there was no rush. And that no one needed me all that badly! I noticed that if I would just listen, I would see that I needed quite a lot from myself before I was ready to turn towards the world, offering up my attention and energy somewhat recklessly to others, before recalibrating to my own grounded state first.
Instead of thrusting myself at the requests that life makes of you when you signal to others that you are highly available, I decided to drag my residual-heightened-presence-from-being-away on a little longer. Quietly returning to my routines and rhythms without announcing myself to the world. This became an exercise in noticing what I needed and wanted, in the absence of external influence. I was waking up early, lighting candles before turning on the lights, getting ready slowly, showering in candlelight, lathering myself with body oil, dry brushing my limbs, dressing myself carefully, slowly, putting on layers and jewelry and accessories just for fun… all very Jasmine-in-the-header-image-coded. I was polishing and tending to my energy before stepping out into the world. The way that I felt when I finally left my abode and entered the chaos that lies outside of it was a feeling of having taken care of myself. This sense that I had sewed myself up, knit my energy together and was prepared to bring this bubble of well-being that I had created into the world without it being so permeable to the demands and expectations outside of myself.
aesthetics vs. reality: self-care edition
Some of what we are nudged towards doing — aesthetic acts of ‘self care’ — do point you in the right direction, but until there is an authentic vector within yourself, orienting you towards taking care of yourself for reasons that stem from within you (i.e. until the acts are coming from your heart and not your head)… the true importance of tending to yourself before you turn to the world will not click.
Because true acts of self-care need to be an actual reflection of your priorities for them to work. Not something you are doing because you think you should, or because it is chic to do so, or because an influencer told you this is how you get hot and become successful.
But because it is a principle of yours to take care of yourself.
Taking care of yourself isn’t self-absorbed or self-centered. It is how you give your best to the world. How you discover what you can uniquely contribute.
dysregulation is a form of avoidance
With my energy centered, I can also see the subtle ways that I will keep myself dysregulated and ungrounded when I haven’t tended to self, by continuing to offer myself up to others’ needs. That is the generous perspective. The less flattering one is that I keep myself stimulated and feel useful by paying attention to others’ problems and stories instead of focusing on resolving and releasing my own.
Whenever I find myself talking too much about my friends’ lives, scheming and solving for other people instead of facing the raw materials of my own life, I now know that I am avoiding something. This pattern is so subtle, so deeply practiced and unconscious, that only with this ‘veil’ recently lifted on my behaviour after several weeks away making the space for many of my relational dynamics to dissolve and patiently wait to be resurrected, was I able to see this clearly.
watching the ego at work
As I returned home, a remarkable thing happened. I watched myself architect all of the suffering I had felt like I ‘escaped’ from when I had been away. One by one, I recreated every pattern I claimed to resent. Then I would claim I was trapped, internally blaming others for putting me inside of this cage. A cage that I not only had the keys to, but had constructed myself! And implicit in my constructing the cage, I also had the disassembly map if I wished to use it. It was humbling to realize that I was responsible for the conditions in my life that I claimed to resent.
visceral awakenings
I cannot overstate how much this realization evoked a felt sense of awakening. One I’m not sure words entirely do justice to. It felt like I could truly step outside of myself and observe how I was acting in a way that created these circumstances I did not enjoy being in. I was no longer trapped behind by my eyes, but patiently and thoughtfully noticing my actions from beyond them.
This pattern I was now seeing so clearly had previously felt so challenging that it would occasionally drive me to consider leaving my environment entirely… convinced that if I did, somehow everything would be fixed. But even in my heart of hearts, I knew that my environment was not the problem, that I would inevitably recreate the dynamics I felt plagued by elsewhere. I knew I needed to dissolve these patterns at the root, or chase internal peace externally in futility, demonizing every beautiful place I love in the process… believing it was the perpetrator of my suffering, while I was the one pulling the strings behind the scenes of what I claimed to be a victim of.
time warps when you’re taking care of yourself
When you are truly calibrated (not performatively taking care of yourself, but actually taking care of yourself in a way that reflects your genuine needs and desires)—time starts to feel like it is emerging from you, instead of passing by you, slipping through your fingers elusively, impossible to grasp.
When you are genuinely taking care of yourself, you can do hours of work in minutes. Days of work in hours. You can spend a whole day with a challenging friend, and find that the time with them passes effortlessly, full of laughter and joy. Because you can be genuinely present. Because you are not subtly, unconsciously trying to escape. Because you have taken care of yourself. Which lets you show up for them from a genuine place of wholeness.
When you have truly tended to yourself, the things you typically have to ‘exert’ yourself to do or make happen start to feel easy… and you realize that those things only feel hard when you are NOT taken care of, when you are forcing yourself towards something, even though it feels wrong.
Taking care of yourself should feel inconvenient to your obligations and the demands on you from the outside world. Because those things are not responsible for prioritizing you! Everyone is going to ask of you what they need from you (such is our nature), and you need to know when to prioritize yourself, even if it is painful, inconvenient, or uncomfortable. That is your responsibility. That is how you show up authentically. That is how you protect your precious, one-of-a-kind energy.
And yes, you can do this and still be an amazing friend, lover, sister, daughter, son, brother, partner, grandchild, employee, leader, founder, artist, whatever role you are engaged in. In fact, you can be a much better version of all of those things when you have genuinely tended to yourself.
try to actually feel these words, not just read them
I know this may sound like just words; a cliché you’ve heard a thousand times. ‘Put on your oxygen mask first’. ‘Take care of yourself before you take care of others.’ But I am here to tell you, after having this viscerally click, that all of these phrases now ring with a certain lucidity and honesty that is almost comically undeniable to me. Like: of course we cannot be good agents for others in the world when we have not taken care of ourselves! Because our energy is uncalibrated! We are not a grounded tool of attention and care, because we haven’t tuned our own instruments. We are messy, energy-leaking, uncared-for-balls-of-consciousness, oozing our un-looked-at needs and desires out onto others ways we cannot even recognize. Because we are not genuinely grounded and centred when we have not tended to ourselves. And if this continues, our un-cared-for selves start to wither, becoming harder to reach, reducing our glow and radiance, distancing ourselves from our own creativity, intuition, and magic.
It is all just one cycle of over-extending, then blaming, then resenting self/other UNTIL you remember to take care of yourself. And then you’re like ohhhh that is all I needed. To say no until I felt well and whole enough to turn back outwards and pour from a full cup.
What used to feel frictional may now feel easy
When you have taken care of yourself, what once felt hard, tense, frictional, or abrasive suddenly begins to feel effortless. Simple things, like cleaning, ordering things you’re out of, emptying a closet, doing life admin, arranging and planning things for the future, getting to the long list of errands that keep compounding in adult life when we are not well-cared-for… All of this suddenly starts to feel easy, frictionless, and obvious to do.
develop your own language of self-care
When you truly integrate this insight into your life and understand that self-care isn’t some performative aesthetic to signal outwards, but a ritual that will be completely unique to you, depending on what you need and feel nourished by… Everything starts to shift.
Yes: it may involve dry-brushing, and saunas, and face masks, and red light or whatever the current trend is. But it might also be much simpler than that. You might just need to slow down a bit. Literally: walk and move slower. Take your time. Arrive early to things. You might need to burn extra energy through exercise to keep you grounded. You might need to bake, to clean your home, to not talk to anyone for two days as you do nothing at all. It might be all or none or some of those things. Only you can figure the ‘what’ of your unique needs by actually listening to yourself.
If you need ideas, I’ve written a piece about what returns me home to myself, which includes some of my favourite rituals that help me cultivate my own energy when I feel depleted. But I really encourage you to make your own list and practice it! It is so grounding to know and reach for what returns you home to yourself.
do you want to figure out what works for you, together?
If you want guidance in understanding what feels off and how you can recalibrate to a place of grounded, nourished, radiant, effortless flow, DM me with a one-sentence-version of how you wish to feel differently right now.
related essays you may enjoy: embrace the exhale, slow down, one thing at a time, on slowness, taste and living well,
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'Capital K Knowing' is such a weird realization : understanding you didn't understand so you can understand for real this time.