Prioritizing yourself, changing yourself, and acknowledging your own needs is an important part of having a good and well balanced life. Having a well balanced life is like a pyramid, and at the very bottom is taking care of yourself and evaluating yourself. Though some may argue helping others is more important, if you can’t even take care of yourself and change yourself, how can you influence and help others? I believe changing one’s self is more important than changing the world. In order to help others, you should change yourself and take care of yourself first.
Changing yourself first allows you to look into certain situations with a different light which makes it easier to elevate the needs of others and to help others. Changing yourself first not only improves your life but is also a gift to others. Author Brené Brown found out in her research on wholehearted living it is easier to help and fulfill the needs of others when you change yourself and take care of yourself first. Improving yourself allows you to make yourself a better person and have a positive influence on others which can help change them. Remember, doing something big and changing the world is a big thing and everything starts a square one. And most times, that square one is changing and evaluating yourself. Initiating change in the world is the big thing, but it all comes down to changing oneself.
Caring for oneself is important as it reduces stress and can help one mentally. When you help others too much and ignore yourself, this often brings resentment which people hide by giving to others which only damages one mentally. This isn’t an easy thing to do as many people feel obliged to take care and help others before themselves. This causes many people to ignore themselves and their own needs which eventually can wear out and stress a person. Remember that we are no use to anyone if our energy is depleted because we have given every last bit of it away. When your cup is half-full, it is harder to give to others.
However, when your cup is full, it is easier to be a giver and help/change others/the world. Like the oxygen masks on an airplane, you can’t help others until you’ve helped yourself first.
Our actions that we make in life teaches others how to treat us. Many times, we are so absorbed in helping others that we ignore how others are treating us. When you bend over and take care of others before yourself, others will view you as a doormat and easily step over you, and soon, you will feel as if others are taking over/taking control of you. Ultimately, this causes one to think that others are worth more than them, which is not true. It is an important life skill to prioritize oneself. So maybe, it is time for us to change ourselves, and tell ourselves, “I matter.” Afterall, even though the change may seem small, it is a crucial part of living a good life and it also allows us to take care of others and feel good about ourselves at the same time. Changing the way we view and treat others can change the way others view us and treat us.
Though helping others is important, it is even more important to treat and prioritize ourselves. Changing the world and others before changing yourself isn’t going to be very effective and can only build up stress. Changing the world and impacting others is a big thing to do and there is a staircase that leads to it. At the very bottom of the staircase is evaluating oneself and changing how one acts. Changing ourselves not only allows us to have a brighter future, but allows us to move forward in life and have more opportunities such as helping others. When we want to create a big action, the bottom building block is acknowledging yourself and changing yourself.
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