It Isn’t Selfish: Why You’ve Got to Want Health for Yourself

Please enjoy this important guest post from Elizabeth Scala, a great friend and frequent guest on RN.FM Radio.

Self-care is often seen as selfish. I hear/see it from the nurses I work with. I’ve received written responses on surveys and in emails that I send to my nursing tribe.

“I don’t take care of myself because my family comes first. I don’t have time because I’m always at work.”

Reading between the subtle lines, a common theme emerges:

Many nurses view self-care as selfish.

I’m not sure how these two terms became one-and-the-same; let’s have a quick look at their definitions. According to the Wikipedia:

• Selfishness is placing concern with oneself or one’s own interests above the well-being or interests of others.
• Self-care is personal health maintenance. It is any activity of an individual, family or community, with the intention of improving or restoring health, or treating or preventing disease.

Wow. To me these terms couldn’t be farther apart. Self-care is about improving or restoring your health; it has nothing to do with ranking your interests against another’s.

So I’m a Nurse Health Coach. And being a nurse entrepreneur, I put myself in somewhat of a ‘public eye’. I’ve created a social media presence, blog regularly, host my own radio show, and have self-published two books. My ‘soap box’: nurses’ health.

I want you, as a nurse, to desire, embrace, create, achieve, maintain, and sustain a happy, healthy lifestyle of total well-being. I believe that as nurses we have a duty to our patients to model what ‘healthy’ looks and feels like.

And I pride myself in walking my talk. I don’t just tell nurses to do this; I live this lifestyle as an exemplar of what it’s to be like.

Well, last week a very strange thing happened to me. I developed this odd feeling that I was “sick of being healthy, fed up of making the right choices all of the time“. I wanted to give up.

I thought to myself: “I’m so tired of being on display all of the time, making the healthy choice. I just want to be bad for a while. I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to sit around, watch TV, eat junk, and drink alcohol.”

While I have decided to take a break from some things, ease the pressure I place on myself, I’ve also reflected on this experience and received a fascinating lesson which I share with you here today.

You have to want self-care for you.

Sustaining healthy behaviors is hard, hard work. Sometimes we resent it. Sometimes we’re sick of it. Sometimes we’re bored, stuck, irritated, and tired of it all.

But in that very moment–in that moment when self-care becomes “hard”–the reasons behind why we do it become crucially significant.

From my example above, if I am making healthy choices and living healthy behaviors for some “image”, it won’t last. If I am choosing healthy options to be a role-model, I may fail. If I’m doing things for everyone else on this planet, except for myself, it’s likely I’ll give up.

You have to choose self-care for you. You have to make healthy choices because you want it. You have to live healthy because you decided that it is important to you.

What are your reasons? Why do you choose to put work first? Why do you put family needs before your own? Why did you make this or that healthy choice?

I encourage you to really take a look at your motivators, values, and reasons why. Live health for yourself. Follow what’s inside of your heart. Enjoy your healthy decisions. And success–in terms of good health, total happiness, and ultimate peace of mind–will follow.

Namaste, my friends.

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You can find Elizabeth Scala at her website, Living Sublime Wellness, and you can also connect with her on Facebook.