1. Self care gets easier the more you increase your self worth.

To start with, self care was hard to justify!

Sitting in a group supervision or with my trainer, talking about self care was easy. Yes, of course I see how important it is. Easy to talk about, not so easy to follow up. Self care isn’t defaulting to some random thing you already do 4 hours a day (looking at you Netflix and TikTok). Self care means creating intentional time to be present with yourself.

If self care is too tall an order, start by learning more about self worth.

2. Burn out is preventable with personal development.

Burning out and nuking my life or seeing it coming and acting early: I’ve done both.

Plenty of organisations talk a big game about self care and put the burden on their workers, when they have systemic issues causing people to overwork (emergency services, nursing, support work and child protection are famous for it). The only thing you can control is you.

Regardless of your workplace culture – setting boundaries is the most powerful tool to keep you in good mental shape.

3. You will tolerate the pain of staying the same until it outgrows the pain of change.

In my life I’ve done some wild things (read: substances) to avoid self knowledge.

It took my avoidant, escaping, destructive behaviours to get bad enough before I ever decided to act on them. By then, damage was done and relationships were destroyed. I’ve since learned I can act before things get to boiling point, but to do so I have to get real.

Once per week I think about who I want to be next year and ask: am I on the path to becoming that person?