Unfortunately, being good to yourself isn’t just sitting around watching movies and eating popcorn, although there’s certainly nothing wrong with doing just that every so often. Sometimes being good to yourself involves doing things that are not at all enjoyable. We all know what they are, but we don’t always get them done.
There are really two categories when it comes to being good to yourself – things that we like to do that are good for us, and things that we really need to do, even though we don’t like them. Depending on the individual, a specific activity could fall into either category. Some people love working out, which is generally acknowledged to be an important activity for almost everyone. Others can’t stand it, but force themselves to do it anyway because they know how beneficial it is.
It’s typically not hard to make time to do the things we enjoy. It’s much more difficult to do the things that we really don’t want to do but need to do in order to be good to ourselves. Some people use what can be classified as a “reward” system – they defer something they like to do until such time as they have completed something in the “don’t want to but really need to” category. Others try to schedule things in this “need to” category within a specific time period, either a part of a day, a full day, or a couple of days, knowing that although they may not particularly be enjoying themselves during this time period, they will ultimately enjoy the satisfaction of completing the tasks they needed to do in order to be good to themselves.
There are a number of difficult things that we need to do in order to be good to ourselves that we will not enjoy doing. Figure out a way to get them done anyway. You will be glad you did.