Be Good to You!

Hello Beautifuls!

I’m gonna start with the lil quote I read online today that sparked this whole post.

I had this in my mind all day long, as I was packing lunch/snacks for the pool, chatting with friends, and driving around town running errands.  It just kept coming to me.  As I kept hearing my inner voice tell me to be good to me, it finished with…if not you, than who?  By that I mean…if you’re not good to yourself, take care of yourself, give yourself love and acceptance…who else will?

There is a DIRECT link to how you treat yourself and how the world treats you.  If you look around and see hate, anger, blame, guilt, lying, shame, and negativity then you need to take a good look at that person in the mirror and ask yourself how you treat you!  When you start to see love, happiness, forgiveness, peace, and acceptance then you can rest easy knowing you’re doing your part.

Every week I have a moms group at my house where we talk about how to be better moms (people in general really).  One thing us moms do ALL the time is take care of EVERYONE ELSE.  We make sure everyone is ok, where they need to be with what they need to make sure everything goes ok.  We feed our kids before we even think about the last time we ate, make sure they go to bed at a decent hour without thinking about the last time we had a full nights sleep etc.  I’m ALWAYS telling them that ‘putting yourself first’ does not equal being ‘selfish’.  I usually get a couple of ‘oh yeahs’ when I say it that way.  When I tell them this, “If you don’t take care of yourself…who is going to take care of everyone once you’re gone?”  I get some people starting to kinda hyperventilate.  I then take it another step further by saying, “Do you want your children to grow up to act and feel the same way you do now?”  this usually brings some tears to their eyes.

Why is it ok for us to treat ourselves like crap for the sake of our children?  Why is it ok that society tells us it’s ‘normal’ and even ‘good’ to put aside our wants and needs to take care of our family?  This has created a society that is so out of touch with their own hearts desires and feelings and end up resenting our children over it and that resentment leads to guilt because ‘it was all for a greater cause’ right?!?  WRONG!!!  The best thing you can do is take care of yourself FOR your family!  Show your children that it’s ‘ok’ for grownups to have their hobbies and passions.  Don’t you want them to do the same when they get older?

Taking care of yourself does not mean neglecting your family to go out all day long and do whatever the crap you want because this lady said to on a blog.  Taking care of yourself is getting enough sleep, eating healthy food, moving your body, forgiving your mistakes, taking chances, laughing, playing, loving, giving, helping, creating, and so on.  Stop being so much of a grown up and start living.  Stop using the excuse of being ‘responsible’ to not get down on your hands and knees and play with your child while they still think you’re the most awesome person on the planet.  Put down your phone and actually look at your child while they’re telling you silly stories instead of cruising Facebook and reading other people’s silly stories (people you never see).

Bottom line…Be Good to You and the people around you will be good to you back.  Love yourself and those around you will love you back.  Forgive yourself and those around you will forgive you back.  Do you see the pattern?  The BEST thing you can do for yourself, your family AND this world is to be the best you that you can be…because no one else can be you and trust me if you don’t believe this, but the world needs you!  Put down the roll of martyr, grownup, responsible, civilized etc. and just start being!

Peace!

Jennie Carlson