How to show up for yourself and why you should

Your first thought may be that showing up for yourself is selfish. I’m going to prove to you that it’s not selfish. In fact, showing up for yourself is the way we take good care of ourselves so we can take good care of other people.

We are in a season where maybe you just set some goals for yourself. Maybe you decided you wanted to create a new habit or two. Maybe you looked at your life and decided you wanted to see some changes.

We get a little ways along the path of doing that, and we do just fine, but then we lose steam. We have second thoughts. We have some failures. We make those failures mean that maybe we were never supposed to do that thing in the first place. Then we stop showing up for ourselves.

You take care of you.

What I mean by showing up for yourself is that I want you to take responsibility for everything that happens in your life. I want you to realize you have agency over the life you’re creating and for the habits you create or don’t create.

I want you to begin to realize that it’s all you, sister.

The reason this is so important is because if you don’t prioritize showing up for yourself, you will become needy for other people to show up for you.

I hear this all the time. I’ve been asked so many times, why doesn’t such and such support me in my new business? Why didn’t such and such support me on my birthday? We come up with all of these reasons why we think other people should be doing things for us.

The responsibility for somebody to show up for your business is yours. You show up for your business. Nobody else needs to believe then your business but you. And if you begin taking responsibility and agency for it, and cultivating that in yourself, you’ll have enough belief for everybody.

I remember when I first started my business online. I now do life coaching, and I do health coaching with essential oils and supplements. The first time I ever introduced other people to the magic which is essential oils I got lot of negative feedback.

I felt so sorry for myself. “Why can’t people just support me and my business? Why are people mean? I need their support!”

I realized really quickly, thank goodness, that actually I don’t.

I support me. I believe in what I’m doing. I know how they’ve helped me in my life. I’ve studied the literature. I don’t need other people to do that.

If we don’t show up for ourselves, we expect somebody else to show up for us. If I don’t have my own back, then I expect everybody else to have my back. It’s okay if they don’t say nice things actually. I have enough belief for all of us.

I used to have all these issues with my birthday. I felt like everybody always forgot and I needed people to remember! I needed support. I’ve realized that the responsibility lies with me to create the experience for myself that I want on my birthday.

I stopped blaming other people for my crappy birthdays, and I started creating my own magic for my birthday. I love my birthday now. You know why? Because I take responsibility for it. I show up for my birthday. I make sure I have a cake that I want. I make sure if I want to go on a trip, I go on a trip.

Normally what I do on my birthday is host a big event and teach people all kinds of good stuff about how to create the life they want. That sounds like fun for my birthday. I don’t blame other people anymore.

I don’t expect other people to show up for me in a way that I’m not willing to show up for myself.

The reason it’s so important to learn how to train yourself to show up for yourself, is because if you don’t, there will be a void there. Nobody will be showing up for you, right? And then you’ll expect that it should be your husband, or it should be your best friend, or it should be your children, or it should be somebody. No, the person who needs to show up for you is you.

The amazing thing about learning to live this way is it gives you so much freedom then to really, really appreciate it if other people do show up. It puts you in a state of gratitude instead of a state of entitlement of what other people should be doing for you.

It’s our responsibility to take care of ourselves. You’re the one who knows better than anybody what you really want for your birthday, right? Create your own magic. Show up for yourself and stop expecting that other people should do that.

There are a lot of times other people will show up for you, and they’ll emotionally support you, and they’ll have your back. But I want you to find the freedom that comes from doing that for yourself, because the more you are equipped to do that for yourself, the more you’ll be able to do it for other people.

If I go to the gym, you know who brings water for me? I do right? I know exactly how I like my water. I take a big old Yeti, and I fill it up with ice, and I put water in it, and I put my little iodine drops in it. I know how I like my water. I don’t expect anybody else to bring my water to the gym. I don’t get to the gym and say, “Why did nobody bring me water?”

And the cool thing is, I take such a big jug of water to the gym that if somebody else needed water, I could guzzle mine down and still have some leftover to share. But it’s my responsibility.

I want you to start thinking about your life like that.

I want you to start thinking about your relationships like that.

I want you to take care of yourself.

I want you to take good care of yourself so that you’re equipped and filled up and ready to take care of other people.

When you show up for yourself, you create rhythms and routines that will benefit you when times get hard and chaotic.

When you get in the habit of doing this, you will create amazing habits, and rhythms, and routines that serve you well.

I spent night before last taking care of my little eight year old who got a stomach virus in the middle of the night. I loved taking care of him, but it was a weird day. When I got up this morning I felt really exhausted. It would have been so easy this morning to start the day off in the wrong way and in the wrong mood.

But I have a daily ritual. I have a daily routine, and especially a morning routine, that is very nourishing to me. After I went through my morning routine this morning, I was so much calmer and ready to take on the day no matter what.

If you don’t have nourishing routines and rhythms for yourself, you’ll start thinking, “Why isn’t somebody else helping me? Why is it always me? Why is this happening?” Then you’ll end up not taking care of you. You’ll end up taking care of other people, doing what you need to do for the sick child, but you’ll do it with resentment. You’ll do it halfway, you’ll do it with a bad attitude, or you’ll do it and feel sorry for yourself.

I want you to create rhythms for yourself. You take responsibility for the kind of day you want to create, for the kind of person you want to be, so that when things are hard or off-balance or chaotic or not in your normal way you would do things, it gives you that comfort.

I’ve recently really revolutionized my own nighttime routine. I’ve done it as a way of taking care of myself. I’ve done it as a way of showing up for myself instead of expecting that other people will do things for me, or being resentful that they don’t, or feeling sorry for myself that nobody’s taking care of me.

You will enjoy life so much more, because you will learn to depend on you. You will cultivate an amazing relationship with yourself.

Obviously I’m a person who believes so much in connection and community. I love having relationships with other people. It’s really one of my favorite things, but I want you to learn how to cultivate relationship with yourself first. I want you to learn how to show up for yourself first.

I remember when I was first starting my workout program at CrossFit, it was really hard to get in the routine of a new workout. It was hard to make time for it. It’s funny because I would look at my husband and he is like clockwork. Every day he comes home from work, gets on his running clothes, and he goes out and gets his exercise. He comes back and does pushups.

He so faithful to it. No matter what happens, he doesn’t vary from his routine. And don’t you find it sometimes harder harder as women for us to do that because we feel like we’ve got to be more flexible. And I realized there’s something about that that I really appreciate. He takes care of him.

What I’ve realized about my routine is that sometimes it inconveniences other people. Sometimes he has to pick up the slack for me in the mornings. Maybe I have to pick up the slack for him in the afternoons, and that’s okay.

I want you to get in the habit of cultivating a relationship with yourself where you show up for yourself.

If you made a lunch date with a friend, you wouldn’t just willy nilly not show up, right? You would have enough respect for them that you would show up for the date, or at the very least you would call him and let them know what happened. But we cancel stuff for ourselves all the time! We look at our own appointments with ourselves with no regard, with no respect.

I want you to learn how to cultivate this relationship with yourself, where you can trust yourself, where you know that you’re committed to taking care of yourself because you don’t expect other people to do it. I want you to do it with a good attitude, not with resentment.

You don’t want to feel sorry for yourself, but you are committed to that relationship with yourself so that you take good care of yourself, so that you are then equipped to take good care of other people.

You are the one who knows most what you need.

Don’t expect other people to anticipate your needs.

“Well, I wish he just knew what I needed. I wish he just could see into some crystal ball and know what he should have gotten me for this anniversary,” or “I wish my kids just knew that mom need.” No, you know what you need. You take care of you. Nobody is equipped to do it like you are.

When you learn how to do show up for yourself, guess what? You get so much better at doing the same thing for people in your life. You have so much more room. You have such a better attitude about it.

You don’t have this entitlement, or resentment, or bitterness, that other people aren’t showing up for you the way you want. You know why? Because you show up for you. And that is amazing.