Taking Care of Ourselves First

One of my friends once wisely told me, "the only way for us to take good care of others is to take care of ourselves first."

She spoke from personal experience. When I reflect on her words, I think I understand them more than I can communicate with words here. Sometimes, when we do things because we feel we must do them as otherwise we will feel bad, or when we don't do things because we think we should not do them, we end up accumulating stress to a point that we lose perspective on what is most important. We end up losing temper over trifles, which in any case would be a silly thing to do. But had we pampered ourselves without the obvious connection to "preventing a bad outcome that no one had the crystal ball to foresee), we could not possibly defend it with vigorous reasoning in advance.

Hence the vicious cycle. When we finally realized that we should have stuck to our grounds on certain things that would meet our needs, the bad consequence already occurred.

Therefore, no wonder most people don't do it, because it is really difficult to practice it. Guilt, self-doubt, uncertainty or just plain wishful thinking that perhaps things would turn out okay even if the odds were against it make us victims on multiple fronts.

Can I manage to be a slightly wiser woman after listening to my friend, without having to go through the same experience she did to gain that wisdom?