The Cloud Business Services and Tanya’s Bookkeepers’ Bootcamp team attended our first in-person conference in three years. It was great to see everybody in person again, and it was interesting that the theme that seemed to carry through everything within the sessions, main stage, and conversations, was not the official theme, seemed to be self-care. This really hit home with me and made me start to think. After going through everything that we have with COVID and supporting all our clients as we have, many of us have not been looking after ourselves.
Self-care is extremely important to all of us, regardless of what industry we are in. If we do not look after ourselves, we cannot look after our clients. One of the best analogies I can think of that took me a long time to really relate it to taking care of ourselves and not relate it to being selfish, is the oxygen mask on an airplane example. If you are on an airplane and the oxygen mask drops down, you are supposed to put your mask on first and then help anybody around you. Up until recently, I could not understand why I would not help others with theirs first. But if you think about it, if you attempt to help others first, and something happens, and you have no oxygen, there is a big problem. You could all pass out from oxygen deprivation or worse. If you put yours on first, you are giving yourself oxygen which means you can then help them, and if a problem occurs, you can continue to help others because you are getting oxygen.
There was an amazing session by fellow colleague and friend Kathy Grosskurth on setting boundaries that I was fortunate to attend and learn from the active participation and conversation within the session. Boundaries are especially important for both our clients, ourselves, and our own mental health and to make sure that we are not allowing those boundaries to be crossed and therefore putting ourselves at risk of having a negative impact on our mental or physical health. We can't help our clients, we can't help our friends, we can't help our families, we can't help our colleagues, and we certainly can’t help ourselves if we have not looked after ourselves first.
So that is what I want everybody to think about within this blog. I want you to think about the fact that it is not selfish to put yourself first. It is important to put yourself first so that you have the ability to help others. I am focusing on the next month or so of getting rid of things in my life that cause me stress or doesn’t make me happy. I challenge you all to do the same.
Until next time,
