Am I the only one who feels that it is shameful that society supports and praise some women who feel that the only quality they have to offer men is their bodies. Women are carving themselves up in the name of vanity and the practice of modesty is no longer respected. Nowadays, it’s about what women are willing to show and how much. Beauty in the kingdom of women is measured by body parts meaning, breast, buttock, and lips size, in addition to the other accessories, fake hair, nails, eye lashes, and tons of makeup this has become the norm. And elegance is determined by tight transparent clothing, cleavage, and BBL’s.
This year dragthepen will host various discussions about Self Care. Why? Because you matter. Your life matters and the quality of your daily life should matter to you.
Self Care: should not be treated as a luxury but as a necessity daily practice that helps to rejuvenate a person’s holistic well being. In other words, your daily practice of self care should be a combination of relaxing and meditative activities that treat your mental health, your soul, the essence of your core of spiritual soul, activities that strengthen your body and final activities that promote a good emotional balance.
Daily self care should not be an occasional trip to the nail salon or weekly happy hour or that once a year vacation. A daily practice of self care in this hectic society should include awareness of our eating habits, sleep patterns, exercise, how much television we watch and the content of what we are watching.
Question, what does yourself care practice look like in your home? Are you teaching your children how to be kind to themselves and not allow society to shape their thinking with distorted images of who they should be? Husbands, wives, partners, brothers, sisters, mother, daughters, father and sons, what do you do when you notice that your loved one is exhausted, emotionally broken, repeating harmful patterns in their life? We have to teach each other about the power of self-reflection and self care and knowing when it is time to step back, breathe, slow down and push the reset button.
We have been taught that we are our brothers and sisters’ keepers, but we are living in a society where we look the other way when those we claim to love and hold in high esteem need a lesson in self care. This conversation will continue.
Let’s make self care a daily practice and not an occasional treat.
People say that ” self-care is the best care”. I say, we in a society where we don’t have meaningful conversations about and how to enforce self-care thus taking supporting our mental health on a daily basis. We talk about mental health and protecting our peace, but how can we protect our peace when we lack good self-care practices?
What is your mental health worth to you? Think about some of these points while you’re grinding yourself into exhaustion and developing poor eating and sleep habits.
Do you lack a productive social life and I am not referring to Happy Hour. Is family time something you avoid or take time to plan for the wellbeing of your family’s emotional and mental health?
How many people reading this will admit that they are overwhelmed at home and overworked at the job.
You feel drained, angry, have become an emotional eater, gain weight, lost weight due to stress, and are short tempered.
Have you allowed your mental and emotional health to suffer due to remaining in dysfunction relationships? When I say relationships, this includes intimate situations, family, and friends.
People bottom line we all need down time, alone time, spa day, a weekend getaway, and a night out on the town. We need to laugh more, increase our listening skills, and practice disconnecting from technology and all social media, and have old fashion conversations.
I am going to leave that right there. Throughout 2023 I will be offering suggestions like, good books to read on self-care, reminding you to step back and take some down time and more topics on the importance of good self-care and mental health practice.
We need to stop applauding women for being exhausted due to forsaking self-care and their mental and emotional health, while supporting families, working outside the home and wearing multiple hats. I don’t believe in the myth of superwomen. Society is overwhelmed with women who are physically drained, suffering from health issues, emotionally empty, depressed, oppressed, feeling trapped and ignored. Women are told that women complain too much and are never satisfied. Women give so much and get little in return.
When a woman says, ” she doesn’t want a man in her life” that’s not an open door for people to throw shade, condemn or label her a lesbian. You have not lived her life nor her experiences. She might be on a path of healing and self-discovery. So, before you become judge and jury respect and honor the fact that these women choose to remove herself from dysfunctional men so she can be all she can be for herself. Respect the journey.
Dear Readers, A word from dragthepen A.K.A. J. R. creator of Conversations with J. R. Floyd. Be careful when you allow family, friends and others to dictate the path of your life or behavior. Recently, I was mentally, emotionally and physically burning out, but people kept telling me to push through, or your strong you can handle it. I was advised by my circle of girlfriend if I had a man life wouldn’t be as difficult. At the end of October, I completed a 14 day fast, and talked to God. Then I took a three-day mental break. Moving forward…the smoke has cleared, and I have clarity and arrived at this conclusion that some people, places and things need to be removed from my life. Lighting the load means more time for the things that matters to me. SELF CARE AND YOUR MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS.
Dear Readers, in 2018 I made the discussion to end my engagement. The choice was painful, l had to be honest with myself I was going into the marriage for all the wrong reasons. For a period of time, I felt lost, broken, unloved and unwanted. I decided to journal my way through the healing process and what I’ve discovered about myself was life changing. The biggest lesson I don’t have to settle to be happy. Read 90 Days of Reflection, Discovery & Renewal.
The Conversation is a collection of my short stories, poems, my award-winning play and an intimate conversation with my mother.
Dear Readers, blogger Colleen (Colleenconversation.com) inspires today’s topic Reset, regroup, refocus. Colleen’s blog inspired me to encourage others to think about their lives and contemplate if it is time to reset, regroup, and refocus
There are 4-5 months until the holiday season and a New Year. I know people are thinking hey slow down It is still summer, and you are thinking too far ahead. I say why wait for a New Year to make changes. The only difference about waiting for a New Year is for a new number to change. Have you been listening to that voice in the back of your head nagging you about reset, regroup, and refocus areas of your life that you have been in denial that needs to be changed.
Let us be honest with ourselves, people make excuses about taking time for self-reflection, busy because of marriage, kids, job, school, finances, and lack of resources. I believe the reason people do not reflect on life is because of fear and having to put effort into changing. I think that people have become comfortable with being stuck or pushing the reset, regroup, and refocus mode means that their relationship or your family dynamics may change, not wanting to hurt other people; they remain stuck and unhappy.
3 years ago, when the world was sheltered in place I was forced into the mindset of reset, regrouping my life. Before the pandemic I was like millions of people just going about my busy life, I was stuck and was not aware of how I arrived at being trapped in a pattern of running on the hamster wheel.
When I took the time to refocus my life, I discovered clarity and the awareness of how I was living an unfulfilled life. I went to a job where I was overworked, underpaid, overwhelmed and angry, but at the same time I thought that was all I was worth. I was living in a rut and moving like a robot. There were days I felt hopeless, but instead of acknowledging my feelings I suppressed them and kept moving.
Presently, there are other distractions to blame for our less than happy life and more excuses not to take time for self-reflection. People are focused on inflation, gas prices, new viruses, and politics. The insanity does not seem to stop, all this other stuff adds to people’s stress, panic, fear and numbs people, causing them to become distracted from thinking about what I call WIN what is important now. People say they do not have time, but the truth is they avoid reflecting about life because they may not like what is brought to their attention or the emotions that will surface.
Reset, regroup, and refocus means reorganizing, planning, deep thinking and this takes time. Question, when was the last time you prioritize your life in order of importance? People should stop packing their schedules with unnecessary activities that take them away from goals. Sometimes being busy does not mean being productive, especially when you do not see the desired results. It is time to revisit the goals and visions that you had but along life’s path your dreams got lost.
I know that is what happened to me. When I reflect how I allowed the events in my life to take over casing me to put myself last. People say life happens, I say, yes life happens but people need to learn the skill and practice of consistently and constantly evaluating their life. I use various methods to evaluate whether I am on the right track or if I am just being busy and nothing is getting done. I use vision boards, journals, every time I accomplish a goal, I write it on a post stick, put it in a jar and every three months I read them to make sure that I am staying on track.
Resting, regrouping, and refocusing my life revealed how much I was neglecting myself (no real self-care) and the quality of my life was nonexistent. I have learned to put what is important to me first, I consistently prioritize, down time is especially important to my mental, physical, and emotional well-being. I feel free, light, and experience more joy out of life.
It is not your responsibility to change someone or make them into someone different. People are capable of change, but that should be their decision. When we encounter people, the choice is to either accept them for who they are or move on. I know that it is not easy learning to deal with other people’s pet peeves, faults, and what we see as habits. Ladies there is no prince charming so get your head out of the fairy tales, and rethink revising that long wish list of requirements for what you think will be the perfect mate. Men stop fantasizing about Beyonce or Kim Kardashian. Those are plastic Barbie dolls surgical enhanced superficial women who will not look twice at your sagging belly and receding hairline. People snap out of your daydreams and look at the person in front of you growing with disappointment because you wish she or he would change.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be with a physically attractive person, however sometimes beautiful people come with ugly souls and bad characteristics. It is not our responsibility to nag people into becoming the ideal mate according to the impossible Standards of beauty and materialistic needs. I have learned from years of bad choices and reading and believing self-help relationship books about ” how to have the man of my dreams” for years I worked out and starved myself to create a body that men would like, only to be ignored and ill-treated. Do not feel sorry for me this was my fault, why, because the men I encountered did not asked me to change. If they were getting their needs met, they did not care about changing me because I was already what they wanted weak and desperate.
I spent thousands on clothes, hair, make up, lingerie and time and energy to improve myself to be better, so when my prince arrived there would be nothing about me that needed to change or improve. Oh, how shallow was my thinking. I was preoccupied with my outer appearance that I was not paying attention to the fact that I was suffering from low self-worth. When people struggle with low self-esteem and self-worth that is when others prey upon them because people who struggle with lack of self-confidence will allow people to change them because of the desperation to be like, love and belong.
I strived and arrived at the age of fifty-eight. Learned many lessons through difficult experiences that did make me stronger, wiser, and proceeding with caution. I do not wish for people to change to suit me because I have learned to let people be who they are and keep checking on who I am. Remember the saying, ” be careful what you wish for because you just might get it”. When you create the monster, you must learn to live with what you created.
Balance is a simple word. It means to distribute weight evenly. Recently I forced myself to slow down by rearranging my schedule due to feeling overwhelmed. Each passing day I began to declutter my schedule and gain a better perspective on how to solve the issue of rushing, and not getting enough rest. The rest I am referring to isn’t about the recommended 7-8 of sleep. I mean resting from that never ending To Do List.
The last two years I’ve examined the quality of activities in my life, and made some changes. First, I do not volunteer my time for anything unless I am benefiting from the activity. I no longer say yes to any requests unless I review my calendar. I stopped cramming my calendar with activities. In other words, what I did not need in my schedule is more activities, instead take the activities I do have an add Balance.
I am preparing for retirement and I need the time to explore and research my plan to relocate and build a tiny house. At this stage of my life I no longer feel the need or have the energy to Grind. I have noticed as I am advancing in age my mind and body are no longer willing to cooperate with me working 16 hour days. What I need more of is Balance and Consistency in making the quality of my life a priority.
I do not need to add more tasks to my To Do List. I need to practice Balance. Being busy doesn’t mean productivity. Have you ever stopped to question what you’re busy doing and why? I have recreated my To Do List into five areas of my life: health, worship, finances, rest, and retirement. The goal is to prioritize these five areas and Balance my time to give equality and quality to the goals I want to achieve in these areas. For example, in the area of Rest, I have been traveling more and taking weekend mental breaks by staying at an airbnb. The more I take weekend breaks from the same routines I feel energized, refreshed and I have more clarity.
It’s so easy to lose sight of the demands we place on these human bodies. When was the last time you paid attention to how mentally and emotionally drained your feelings? Society tells us to be positive, push through, be strong and that multitasking is good. What I observe is a population of people who are exhausted, angry, eating poorly, rushing from one activity to the next, not enough quality time spent at home, and taking less and less time for mental breaks and vacations.
Declutter your schedule, home and workspace. Throw out that never ending To Do List. Cancel the bucket list. Create a Life List. Take time to critically think why you’re feeling overwhelmed. How do you rest? How is your mental and emotional health? Don’t you think it’s worth taking time to slow down and practice Balance, Consistency and adding some peace and joy into your life.
dragthepen 