Is Self-Care The New Work-Life Balance?

======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ==== ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ====

I used to think self-care was for the birds. I thought it was a frilly concept that lazy 20-somethings employed to avoid working hard. I thought it was what rich kids demanded because their parents could afford it and taught them that they deserved it. I associated self-care with the common “treat yourself” rhetoric, and it made my baby hairs stand on end.

I always felt that self-care sounded aggressively millennial. Like an Instagram worthy trip to the spa or an over-the-top juice cleanse magazines somehow tricked us into thinking would make us happier (read: skinnier) – I hated how overindulgent it made my generation sound.

“Why do we need another buzz phrase for something that is innately human?” I would ask myself. Haven’t people, for generations, ‘taken care’ of themselves? Why then, do we need another over the top, sexy phrase that ultimately is just one more branding tool to either sell us things or make us feel less-than.

So, because I didn’t have the money to go on yoga meditations or an interest in detox cleanses, I added “self-care” to the list of millennial things I wasn’t good enough at and wrote it off.

But, like almost all of the things I took a strong stance on as a fledgling adult with a knack for hot takes, my feelings about self-care have shifted. With a little bit of perspective – I can see that I had it all wrong.

Instead of an overindulgent excuse to avoid reality, is self-care the way young people have learned to cope in today’s world? I think so.

I have come to realize that self-care isn’t the dramatized version of work-life balance we never needed, but rather it is the evolved version of work-life balance that we have never needed more.

Stick with me here and I’ll explain.

One of my more prominent flaws is that I over commit. Since I was little, I have been overwhelming myself with tasks and obligations, friends and events, and jobs and side hustles. I have often wondered if I even have the capacity to say no.

Even now, as an adult that feels like I have this impulse relatively under control; I have a full-time job, sit on the board of a young professional organization, bartend and blog as my side hustles, and coach in a community sports league twice a week. Couple that with a proclivity for drinking with friends and you’ve got a girl with a tight schedule and a lot of external pressures.

And look, I know you know (or at least I suspect you do), that the above is not some humble brag in search for an interweb pat on the back – my slew of obligations are not unique. The world we operate in, especially as young professionals in our 20s and 30s, demands more balls to be kept in the air than ever before. We are the 24-hour news cycle, viral content, work-hard-play-hard generation that stipulates we do more than just clock in at a 9-5.

The stark truth of my reality, at least, is that oftentimes one job isn’t enough to save for the future or pay down loans, so side hustles are a must. Pile on top of that the unwritten rule that we must curate personal brands as if we’re selling our successes to the highest bidder, (meticulously refining an image has become an expectation as much as a social currency), top it off with the “everyone’s a business person” facade, drizzle in the “travel bucket list” we’re somehow supposed to check off, and you’ve got an extra large helping of expectation pie. We might as well join a circus, what with how expert we have become at juggling dozens of flaming obligations all at once.

We’re expected to march and protest, listen to academic podcasts, stay on top of popular culture enough to tweet about it, and all the while pay into a Roth IRA because Social Security may very well be a thing of the past.

Now, I don’t say all of that to paint a bleak picture of our lives today, but rather to paint a realistic picture of how unceasing our world is – as young people in 2018, the very abundance of opportunity that makes our lives incredible can also feel overwhelmingly ceaseless.

I do believe the good things will always outweigh the bad. Hell, in 2018 musicians release records without label backings, little girls believe one day they will become president, I can look up synonyms for “ceaseless” at the touch of a button, SpaceX is sending rockets into outer space, and there is something called Amazon Prime (ever heard of it?).

The speed-of-light reality we operate in is not a detriment to our lives, it is an enhancement. That being said, it would be a disservice to us all if we didn’t acknowledge that the very thing that makes us so connected, so informed, and so active, can also be massively fatiguing.

A world that operates at the speed-of-light leaves very little room for us to slow down.

But doesn’t “work-life balance” feels slightly antiquated, or at the very least naive? I think that is because, for most of us, it is.

Life is no longer one or the other. Yes, we’re will work and find time for ourselves in the traditional work-life way, but we’re also writing on the side, serving on boards so we can find a new job in 2 years, and designing t-shirts in our basement while holding down a full time IT job or driving Uber until 6 a.m. If life were as simple as work-life balance then maybe “self-care” never would have become so prevalent, but, alas, here we are.

So, how do we cope? How do we combat the incessant abundance of opportunities to always do more? Well, one way is through self-care. Work-life balance is to the company man as self-care is to the side-hustle millennial.

When I first began to burn out, a year or so into my job, my girlfriends and family members all peddled the same self-care cure, and let me tell you, it drove me insane! My anxiety was not going to wane if I bought myself a nice dinner out or tried acupuncture for the first time, and, while I know that being in nature relaxes me, all the hikes in the world weren’t slowing me down.

I equated “self-care” to “relax,” but I already knew how to relax! Sitting on a beach wasn’t going to make me less concerned that I wasn’t doing enough, in fact, it probably would have done the opposite.

That’s when it hit me. Maybe my version of self-care has nothing to do with zen gardens or spending time with my loved ones. Sure, those things relax me and feel like well-earned solace from a busy day, but they are not my version of self-care.

I think self-care is the collective urge by our generation to forgive ourselves for not being able to do it all. Real self-care has nothing to do with Sunday brunch and everything to do with extracting ourselves from the 24-hour news cycle and the ever-present pressure to be relevant online.

(Now before we go down the iPhone rabbit hole, I’m not talking about “disconnecting for a day.” If you would like to delete all of your social media apps, please feel free. Disconnecting is wonderful, but it is a quick fix that doesn’t get to the heart of the issue.)

Self-care is more than work-life balance because, for me, it is the act of constantly reminding myself that as humans (especially ones that strive to be happy), we simply can’t do it all. It has taken a lot of time for me to learn that wanting to do everything and having the capacity to do everything are two very different things, and that I will never be content until I begin to forgive myself for being incapable of giving 100% to 100 different things all of the time.

I am inherently a do-er, so much so that I run myself into the ground with incredible ease, and accepting my limitations in a world where there is often an expectation for limitless has been the truest test of self-care.

Finally, I realized to relieve the enormous pressure that was building in my head, I had to accept that there will be weeks when I have zero content to write, I have nothing funny to say on Twitter, and that I am not going to die if I skip one or two networking events. It is allowing myself to ignore people urging me to cultivate a personal brand or to spend a week without reading the Washington Post. Giving myself permission to not always “participate in the conversation,” but rather to manage what I currently have on my plate without feeling guilty for not striving for more, is far more restorative than any vacation I have ever taken.

So while I do believe the “treat yourself” mentality does has a place in our collective rhetoric, I have finally realized that self-care is about so much more. It is the evolved version of work-life balance that we need to survive.

There is plenty of room for scented candles and fishing trips and facials with your friends, but maybe, maybe those things are just the cherry on top instead of the main course. It’s like putting expensive night cream on before properly exfoliating – layering the good stuff on a bad base feels restorative at first, but ultimately won’t make your face baby soft.

See, that’s where I had this whole self-care thing wrong. I thought it was about taking the easy way (relax) instead of the hard way (show yourself compassion). But really, that’s not it at all. If indulgences, like fancy champagne or weekends away with your friends, are the Maraschino cherries of life, then self-care is the very frozen ice cream – hard to scoop but well worth the effort..

39

Respond

Email this to a friend

Hey, I saw this on Post Grad Problems. Check it out.

CallMeVictoria

Life is messy, let's get dirty. itwasvictoria@gmail.com

• @callmevictoria
• @itwasvictoria