My intentional self-care practice started about 6 years ago after I was challenged by my coach at the time. What I was trying to work on was improving my time management skills, thinking I could cram even more into my already busy schedule.
My coach, a wise Muslim woman who showed compassion and grace, prompted me to tell her more about my motivation for overstretching myself in that way. “Does Jesus require Christians to love others more than yourself?” she asked me.
I immediately started to defend my Lord – it wasn’t His fault that I was so harsh with myself. I explained that He commands us to love others just like ourselves (Mark 12:31).
What my coach said next was something that my heart had yearned to hear, even though I didn’t even know it. It completely and forever shifted my perspective:
“You are one of the people who need your care.”
Nowadays, as a Christian social and emotional intelligence coach, I’m a big advocate of self-care. If you think about it, any kind of meaningful change that people are looking for requires holistic self-care. When we meet our spiritual, intellectual, social, emotional, and physical needs, we have the resources to invest in our growth process and the attitude required for it to happen!
Speaking from my own life and my observation of my clients, I realized action-oriented change doesn’t work. We can read books and articles about tips and tricks, but if the change doesn’t happen from the inside out, it won’t last. What we need first is the renewal of our hearts and minds. That way, we have a strong foundation for biblical self-care. I call that the prerequisites of self-care – the things that need to be in place in our Christian life for holistic daily self-care to happen consistently.
In what follows, I identify and discuss five of these prerequisites.
1. Love for God
Love for God might not be the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about self-care, but hear me out:
We love God as a response to His infinite, amazing, unconditional, sacrificial love.
We love Him because He first loved us.”
— 1 John 4:19 NKJV
Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”
—John 14:15 ESV
Because we love Him, we believe Him and obey Him in everything He says about ourselves. We believe that we are dependent on Him and interdependent with each other. So we need God for everything and we need people as much as they need us.
I believe love for God is the strongest and healthiest motivator for any good thing in our life, self-care included. Out of love for God, we can take care of our bodies: our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and thus worthy of all the care due to the sacred space where the presence of God resides. Out of love for God, we can take care of our spiritual needs: not as a chore, but because we yearn to connect with the One who loves us so much. Out of love for God, we make the effort to give and receive in our mature relationships.
Everything is so much easier when it is done out of love. And what is even more comforting is that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). We can connect with His love and all His resources that are in us through the Holy Spirit, so we can love God, love ourselves, and love others.
Question: What can you do to increase your awareness of God’s love for you? Knowing deeply how much you are loved will lead to an increase in your own love for Him.
2. Love for ourselves
The command Jesus named as the second in importance, after loving God, is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). That means our own interests are not to be neglected. We are called, rather, to make sure neither are other people’s.
Self-love doesn’t mean being obsessed with myself: it is not the same as being selfish or self-centered. Self-love includes self-denial because we can only love ourselves truly when we deny our sinful, worldly ambitions and we submit our lives to Christ. Then we can really love ourselves.
Self-love happens out of the conviction that God loves us and it’s our responsibility to partner with Him in His objective of looking after us, of providing what we need for living a holy and joyful life.
I want to emphasize this partnership with God in loving ourselves – because God loves us, we also love ourselves. We ought not to think, feel, or act against God’s intentions for our lives. And it is disingenuous to ask God to take care of us, while we neglect ourselves.
We have the right and the responsibility to take care of our needs (spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social, and physical); to work towards goals that are in accordance with God’s will and our legitimate desires; to know ourselves and to develop our potential, and to talk to ourselves in a compassionate and empowering way.
I like this quote from Martin H. Padovani:
Self-love turns inward only to turn outward to others. Selfishness turns inward and remains there – and dies. There is no outward-looking vision, only inner blindness.”
(Martin H. Padovani, 1987, “Healing Wounded Emotions – Overcoming Life’s Hurts”, Twenty-Third Publications)
Question: What is one good thing you can do for yourself today? Choose something you haven’t done in a while or you find difficult to do consistently.
3. Self-acceptance and self-awareness
I have put these two together because they influence each other. And both are important for any sort of life change, whether related to self-care or anything else.
Some people don’t want to develop self-awareness because they aren’t ready yet to accept either their strengths or their weaknesses. Or both.
I think one of the reasons people don’t even want to try and accept themselves is because they confuse “accept” with “like.” But there is no “Thou shalt like thyself” in the Bible! It is normal to wish some things about ourselves were different, but rather than fixate on the things we can’t change, we can ask God to help us identify and improve those that we can.
Self-awareness in general, and emotional self-awareness in particular, helps us in self-care: it is important to know the specific needs we are required to meet.
It is also important to be aware of our specific strengths and limitations. We need to know our strengths because utilizing them and making the most of our gifts is part of holistic self-care. Neglecting them deprives us of feeling fulfilled and impactful, and in time leads to dissatisfaction with life and decreased productivity.
Knowing and understanding our limitations reveals to us where we need to grow. A need to grow is part of our design as humans and Christians, and neglecting it will lessen our ability to live a joyful and fruitful life. That’s why there is no need to fear getting acquainted with our limitations: they simply show us where to focus our efforts to grow and develop.
As Christians, we have no reasons to lack awareness: the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth and He is always willing to reveal us the truth about ourselves. We also have the Bible as a “mirror” that can show us who we are and what we need to change in our lives. Our loving Father both makes us aware of our needs and generously provides for their fulfillment.
Of course, self-awareness doesn’t come naturally – it is a skill that can be improved by practice. If you are not used to checking in with yourself during the day to see what you need, just say this short prayer: “God, what do I need now?” Your loving Father answers this kind of prayer.
Question: Stop for a moment, take a few deep breaths and ask yourself or ask God, “What do I need now?”
4. Commitment to living a life aligned to our values
In my rewarding job as a coach who supports people in achieving their goals, I have discovered that identifying our values and deciding to honor them in our daily life is a faster and surer way to getting results, rather than mindlessly chasing them.
Values are the guiding principles in our lives – what matters most to us. There are, of course, general values that all Christians hold in common: love, faith, hope, integrity, etc. However, some of the values will be specific to different Christians. Some things will have more importance for certain people, and less for others. We all have a particular set of values that resonates with our unique identity. And they can even vary through different stages of our life. Among these can be: evangelism, creativity, freedom, risk-taking, health, care for the environment, etc.
One of our main Christian values is love for others. It is out of love for others that we are called to be responsible and more committed to taking care of ourselves. In the long term, we can only continue to serve others inasmuch as we have looked after ourselves too.
Call to action: If you have never taken the time before to write down your values, I encourage you to do it soon. Write down your top 7 values. Then, take time to observe how many of them are related to self-care. Remind yourself to live according to your values.
5. Self-compassion and responsibility
Stretching ourselves to do the hard work and showing compassion to ourselves, with patience and kindness, need to be held in tension in our lives at all times. We need both.
I started this article by talking about my experience with my Muslim coach. At the time, I was one of the leaders of a non-profit organization who was assigned a coach through a sponsored program. Normally, I would have probably chosen a Christian coach so that we’d be on the same page regarding our biblical beliefs, but in this case, it was helpful to work with somebody who wasn’t a Christian because I was challenged to evaluate my experiences and assumptions about the Christian life. As a result, my faith grew and I became even stronger in my commitment to be like Jesus and show compassion to all people.
Right before I started the first coaching session, I realized I was afraid the coach might say something that would make me feel I’m not good enough for my role. When the call finished and I hung up, I started to cry. I was overwhelmed, on one hand, with gratitude: what I had received during the coaching session was understanding, a non-judgmental attitude, and an invitation to be gracious to myself.
On the other hand, what was spilling out in my tears was the hurt I realized once more I had endured at the hands of the legalistic Christian church I was raised in. I had been made to feel like I didn’t measure up, like any minute I might be found guilty of something I hadn’t even been aware of.
That was a turning point in my process of learning how to hold in tension both responsibility and kindness towards myself.
At present, in my coaching practice, I get to make the most of what I had learned: it seems that the majority of my clients are over-responsible Christians. God is using me to give them support in finding a way out of the burnout and into a practice of compassion and kindness to themselves.
While I think we all need a special focus on grace towards ourselves, it is also important not to lose sight of any areas of our lives where we could benefit from pushing the boundaries of our comfort zones. Sometimes it is too easy to get used to the status quo, and not realize how much we could benefit by taking responsibilities in new areas of growth.
Question: Do you need to stretch yourself a bit or be more compassionate with yourself? In what areas of your life? Maybe in some you need to take more responsibility and in others you need to show more compassion to yourself.
Written by Daniela Stark
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Jen Roland
Featured Image by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash
