Halo People and why I don't like acting like a ball-bag

Catchy title right?

A lot of things I see around at the moment are about self-care and looking after yourself and in principle I get it. As an idea it makes sense; look after yourself, make time for you, don’t let other people who aren’t worth your time take precedence. 

But the term self-care doesn’t actually relate to that. If you say self-care to most people they think of face-masks, bubble baths etc. if you’re a mum, getting dressed might be self-care enough for the day. For me, the term doesn’t actually say what it is.

I’ve been thinking about this recently and have come up with my own description of how I look after myself and how, as a result of this, I end up liking myself a bit more. In my opinion, liking yourself is hard and exhausting all the time. In fact, liking anyone all the time is exhausting and difficult. There’s a reason why people in relationships end up throwing things at each other, slamming doors, storming out, kicking each other in the head etc. (that last one might just be me actually...it only happened once).

So, I’ve started to look at it as a regular reflection and ongoing evaluation on how I want to live and be and even when I don’t like myself very much, I can understand why pretty quickly. 

My steps are:

1. Live my life

2. Something happens that triggers a negative emotional response (I’ll get to positive things in a minute).

3. Look at what happened, why it triggered said response and look at how I might change my actions if it were to happen again.

4. When it happens again, make the change and see what difference it makes.

For me, by following this kind of process, I get better at managing my responses to certain things and therefore feeling better about myself and the outcome.

BUT - in my opinion, if you just look at yourself and how you’re impacted all the time, you end up behaving like a bit of an egotistical nob.

I think a big part of why I consider myself to be a fairly nice person (could I sound any more dubious about considering myself a nice person?) is getting into a habit of evaluating what I’ve done when I've caused someone any hurt and how I cold have behaved differently. Prioritising yourself is great, I’m good with it but not if in the process you act like an absolute ball-bag. That’s less okay with me. You can still value yourself and not treat people awfully. Basically, if I do something shitty and take notice of it, I’m far less likely to do it again. As a result, I feel like I’m a nicer individual.

I mentioned noticing when things trigger a positive response. When this happens I imagine a big lightbulb/halo type thing around the activity or the person (that's what my awful drawing is of by the way) and keep making sure I spend regular time with that person/doing that activity. People with imaginary halos round them are good for you (I don’t tell them they’re Halo People by the way, they’re just called that in my head).

And one last thing, I feel like if you talk about this with some people, they completely glaze over and are unwilling to talk about this because it’s seen as a bit out of the box. Like yoga or mindfulness is just a step too far for some people - it regularly is for me too. BUT. I had a genuine epiphany like moment the other day when I was talking to someone who just didn’t get what I was saying and I was babbling on about all of the stuff above and I wasn't wording in way that connected with them.

Cut to a few days later and I got a message saying (I’ve power-phrased):

Basically what you were saying was if I’m a dick, realise I’m a dick and don’t do the same thing again. And if someone else is a dick and they continue to be a dick, it’s okay to not want to spend time with them.

In a nutshell that’s pretty much it. Evaluate your actions continuously. Notice the behaviour of others continuously. If you’re in a constant state of evaluation then you’re constantly improving your wellbeing and quality of life. I think at first I had to remind myself to do it but now it just happens and life ends up being nicer.

That’s what on the brain today. It’s not a well formulated or research driven piece of writing but over the last year, me thinking about this has helped.

Up next is how I feel about negative friendships and how they’re the same as toxic relationships and the length of a friendship is not a reason to keep them in your life. HARSH BUT TRUE. 

Might chuck another dating story in before that.

#newblog #selfcare #halopeople #ballbag #benicer