{Part 1} Self-Care Excuses for Teachers Debunked

I’m just going to rip off the bandaid.  Self-care is not always pretty and it’s not always a luxurious experience or a day at the spa.  Self-care can be those things, but that’s not always practical, possible or necessary. Self-care is necessary.  Self-care is non-negotiable. Self-care is hard work. Self-care is consistent. Daily. Practice.  

It’s easy to plan for a big day or an outing, mark it in our calendar for our special time that we are going to finally “take care of ourselves” but here’s the thing, if we’re just waiting for that day, what happens to the rest of the moments in between?  What happens to the time that we spend barely holding on, hanging by a thread, waiting for someone else to save us. Well, again…I’m ripping the band aid off again. No one is going to save us. If we are constantly looking outside ourselves for something to change how we feel inside ourselves there are simply no guarantees that this time is ever going to happen.

We’ve been waiting a long time, some of us have been waiting too long.  So I want to give you some excuses that we need to stop telling ourselves so that we can move past this.  We’ve got to get real about self-care. We’ve got to see it for what it is. A completely necessary way to nourish our minds, bodies and souls on a daily basis so that we can be our best selves both inside and outside the classroom.  We need to stop perpetuating the belief that self-care is a luxurious indulgence reserved for sporadic special moments.

So read over these excuses and see if any of them sound familiar.  See if you can try to reframe your thinking to consider the counter point to the excuse.  I promise you once you turn these excuses on their heads, you will be ready to take those first steps to start your own daily school self-care routine and your life both inside and outside the classroom may never be the same.

Excuse #1 Self-care is selfish

Excuse #2 I don’t have time

Excuse #3 I’ll get to it later

Let’s get into a little more detail about each of these excuses.  We’ll briefly lay out how the excuse works to stop us from feeling better and how we can reframe the excuse to start our daily self care routine.

Excuse #1-Self-care is selfish

This excuse is getting you to think that self-care is something that it’s not.  You’ve probably spent a lot of your life giving others what they need and not spent a lot of time giving yourself that same courtesy.   Maybe your family doesn’t have extra money for extra indulgences and you don’t have extra time in your calendar to spend on an outing or event.  Let me tell you…I totally get it. My husband and I saved for a long time so that I could stay home extra time with our newborn before going back to school.  If someone would have told me that I needed to get a pedicure each week or spend money on a massage once a month as the only option for self-care, I would have felt even worse because there was no way I could do it.   

But here’s the thing, by definition, self-care is simply caring for yourself in ways no one else can.  So in fact, when we take the time to take care of ourselves, we are actually being very NOT selfish. Think about it…what happens when our time for self-care goes out the window and we barely have time to take a shower, brush our teeth and throw on an outfit to make it to school just before the kids come in.  Or when we are working around the clock on school work and our home responsibilities suffer or our sleep gets cut short?

When our self-care isn’t a priority, our scattered, over extended selves actually impact others far more than if we had a self-care routine that allowed us to give ourselves daily moments of what we need.  Creating a daily school self-care routine can actually be one of the least selfish things you can do. You are not using money or taking time, instead you are creating a daily routine that gives you moments to check in with yourself so that you can be more balanced and not overextended.

So we’re changing the excuse of self-care is selfish to self-care is selfless.

Stay tuned for the next two weeks as we debunk the next two self-care excuses and give you some ways to flip them on their heads!

If you’re already on board with creating your own daily school self-care routine and are ready to let these excuses go, check out Teaching Well’s FREE COURSE 4 Self-Care Solutions in Five Minutes a Day.

This course will give you the exact daily school self-care routine that I use every day to make sure I get those moments of self-care into my schedule so that I’m living selfless, instead of selfish!