Do This One Thing a Day

You need to do one thing a day. You need to do this at least once a week. This is a small goal. A reward or treat for your self. This thing is "For Me" (You).

I have had a few classes, from my darker days, that turned out the be one of the best lessons of life. We talked about how to handle life, how to turn around your perspective of stress, and most importantly how to love yourself.  Everyday in class, we would each take turns talking about our stressors, recent activities in life, being positive or negative. But each time, our instructor would ask, "What is one thing that you will do for yourself today?". She said it could be anything, big or small. Is it walking the dog that day? Is it cleaning the apartment? Is it calling a friend? Or is it about your self-care?.

Each day we should be asking ourselves,"What will I do for myself today?". What can I do to make myself feel better? What can I do to make me feel like myself? These questions can seem unrealistic at first. Me? Why should I care about me? I have so much going on, who has time for that? I don't even feel like doing that, why should I? It was all numbing at first to start this process of making myself happy. I wasn't really sure what that meant, let alone loving myself and taking care of me. And to do it everyday? There was no way, I thought. But day after day, the reality was growing.

There is something special about accomplishing a goal. You feel like you did something that day. You feel proud after knowing you could do it. After sometime, it starts to feel natural. We all have a laundry list of things to be done, and time for ourselves gets pushed to the end of the list or not even considered. But what if you did make it a priority? It doesn't have to be a whole day or an hour long. It could even be a few minutes to catch your breath, standing in your bathroom with the door closed. Each day needs to have some moment of time for ourselves. Our class instructor mentioned going to get coffee with a friend, going to a movie by yourself, treating yourself to ice cream, or other tasty treats. Getting your nails done, buying a new shirt, or even catching up reading you favorite book, are more great examples. The point is that you take time to focus on your self. It's small steps to learning how to love and treat yourself, knowing it's ok to do so.

I wanted to write this because sometimes we need to look differently at our daily lives. We need to know that we do have time for ourselves, and that we deserve to. We deserve to feel love internally, and feel it everyday. Some days I have look at myself in the mirror and ask, "What is one thing I will do for myself today?"

Today, I am going to run at the gym because I feel better afterwards. The gym is a peaceful time for me to reflect on myself knowing that I am working towards my weight-loss goals. Tomorrow, I will ask the same question. I hope that this encourages others to ask themselves, and encourages friends. There is only one "you" in the world, you deserve to take advantage of that.

- DC