The importance of me time
Many times, people say I don’t get time for myself. There is so much to do. It is not possible.
I want to tell you, it’s possible. So let me tell you what me time really means.
Me time means being there in the moment with yourself. It can mean anything from spending one minute with yourself before an exam to motivate yourself to remove an hour a day for yourself to relax, to spending an entire day with yourself doing acts of care to even allowing yourself to let your emotions out and cry, to taking a holiday for yourself. All of this is me time. The moments you spend connecting and being there in the moment with yourself, mind, body and soul is me time. (You can count a wonderful massage as me time too, as long as you are there with yourself through the experience.)
On that note, I wouldn’t define sitting and watching something on a screen as me time, as you are disconnected from yourself in this moment,
The act of removing time for yourself, is you showing yourself that you matter.
That’s just not it.
The time you spend with yourself is very crucial in assessing and developing your relationship with yourself.
What does that mean you say? A relationship with self?
Well, honestly it is to be understood as any other relationship.
So let’s look at what is our definition of a healthy relationship. The key factors in a healthy relationship are clear communication, trust, respect, acts of care, appreciation, compassion, forgiveness and responsibility.
How many of us have ever assessed or tried to understand our relationship with self, with this lens? Or how often have you done it?
What does that tell you?
One of the ways to develop a better relationship with yourself is spending time with yourself.
How does that help? Here is how
- Getting to know yourself
How do you get to know any person in your life? Well, we start with spending time with the person and noticing things about them. The same goes with yourself.
Only when you start spending time with yourself is when you can notice what your mind, body & soul is telling you. You notice your self talk, your feelings towards self and others and the way you treat yourself.
- Listen to yourself
As you sarted spending time with yourself and get to know your needs and yourself. You can now practice listening to yourself with this knowledge. Many times, we end up living a frustrated life because we don’t realize that we are not working from a space of self awareness. We are most of the times, acting on other’s thoughts and ideas thn our own.
Spending time with yourself gives you clarity of what you want and hence help in taing action from that space.
- Value yourself
Well, if you had to judge your relationships with people and things, you can very well see that time is spent on priority basis. Priority is based on the amount of value the person/ thing holds in your life. Now if you do a check on how much time you spend on yourself completely being present
- Showing up for yourself
Everytime, you remove even a minute to check on yourself is a minute you have showed up for yourself and made sure your self knows that you are there to take care..
- Self care
Me time is the definition of self care. The care can be in any form that is comforting and allowing yourself to just be. It can totally depend on how you are feeling and what you need at the moment. Sometimes all you need is a 5 minute break from work, to allow yourself to just be. You removing that time for yourself is an act of care.
- Build trust
Trust in any relationship is not developed over night. It is built with time, based on how one is there for another. The more you spend time with yourself, getting to know yourself and being there for yourself in good and bad times, the stronger trust you develop in self.
- Building independence
As you get to know yourself and start learning to be there for yourself more, meeting your needs and trusting yourself, an independence is developed within.
The way we have been raised, we have developed dependence on people and things to tell us about who we are and what we need, thereby constantly spending our time there for the validation and meeting of needs. We end up losing ourselves here, so much so that we don’t realize that we are neglecting the only person who can know you best, i.e you.
This dependence is not sustainable, nor is it healthy. Therefore, spending me time helps us unlearn this pattern and develop a new pattern of independence.
- Build confidence
As you start developing a healthier relationship with self, where you show up for yourself, trust yourself, care for yourself and meet your needs in good times and bad. You start developing confidence within. You learn that you can be there for yourself no matter what, even when the world around you is crashing. That is what a healthy true bond with self, makes you realize.
- Being present help in better mental & physical health
Me time is bringing your body, mind and soul in sync. As you do so, you are also training your self to be more in the present. It is a wholesome mindful practice. Many times our body is in the moment, but our mind isn’t, vice versa as well. This doesn’t allow us to deal with the moment with our whole potential, because of the disconnect. Which leads to various mental and physical health issues. There fore me time helps in training our mind,body and soul to be in the present and helps in better mental & physical health
- Making memories with yourself
This is my favorite way of looking at ‘me time’. Everytime I am spending with myself in joy, laughter, sadness or encouragement it is a memory I am creating with myself. It is a moment I have with myself for life.
Few tips to start with:
- Set a specific time in the day for yourself. Even if it is 10-15 minutes. That’s alright. If you are there with yourself all of the 15 minutes, it is fruitful.
- Observe your breath during this time, if you don’t know what to do. Take deep breaths and relax, if you feel you are out of breath/ tensed.
- Look at this metime as a date with yourself, so do fun things that you would do on a date with yourself.
- Play time is one of the best me times. This can be doing activities like painting, dancing, singing etc.
- Plan your long metimes. Eg. A holiday, a day at spa etc.
In the end, all I want to say is the most important relationship you have is the one with yourself, cause you are the one who can understand you the best and you are the one who can help you the best, from this understanding. Also, you got you at all times all of your life!
So darling, do not neglect yourself. You matter the most. You need you the most.
Take time out, even if it is 5 minutes a day. Do it.
It is for a better you!
Written by: Dr Vidhya Nair