The relationship with yourself is vital to your quality of life.
I believe wholeheartedly that the relationship you have with yourself is the most important relationship you will ever have. It shapes how you experience life and how you show up in every other relationship.
Yet so many of us put ourselves last. We focus on caring, fixing, pleasing, and achieving. These things can give us purpose, but they cannot sustain us when we continually overlook our own needs.
I learned this early in my life.
When my worth depended on doing
My younger self put everyone and everything before my own needs. In fact, I didn’t even know what I needed.
Back then, my self-worth was attached to achievement, performance, and how much I could handle. I believed that being capable, doing more, and meeting expectations were how I would be loved and, ultimately, how I would feel safe.
That belief gave me a strong drive. Slowing down or acknowledging my limits felt difficult because so much of my worth depended on what I could do.
After finishing high school, I felt tremendous pressure to “be someone.” I was working in retail and believed I should be doing more. Without much thought or planning, I enrolled in an intensive Travel & Tourism program.
I hadn’t learned to ask myself: What do I enjoy? What kind of work would make me happy? What can I realistically manage?
Self-care and listening to my body were foreign concepts to me. I believed putting myself first was selfish.
I was working 25 hours a week while completing a 40-hour-a-week program. During that time, I became ill with Epstein-Barr virus and couldn’t get out of bed for weeks.
Looking back, I recognize this as the beginning of my journey to wholeness: learning to pay attention to my body, understand my limits, and find a balance between doing and being.
I was beginning to question the belief that I had to earn love through achievement. Could I value myself even when I wasn’t accomplishing something? Could I allow myself to rest and still feel worthy?
Those questions opened a different relationship with myself.
Put your oxygen mask on first
On an airplane, we are told to put on our own oxygen mask before helping someone else. We understand that we need oxygen to remain able to help.
Our everyday lives require that same care.
Rest, boundaries, and time to connect with yourself are essential. You deserve that attention for your own quality of life, as well as your ability to care for others.
How you respond begins within
Charles R. Swindoll said, “Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.”
The percentages are a reminder of the power of our response, rather than a literal formula. We cannot control everything that happens to us, but we can learn to respond with greater awareness and choice.
Your relationship with yourself plays an important part in that. Knowing your needs, understanding your beliefs, and treating yourself with compassion can change how you meet life’s challenges.
That includes becoming curious about what triggers you. Instead of always avoiding the discomfort, pause and ask:
What am I feeling? What am I making this mean? What needs my attention?
A trigger can be an invitation to do the inner work, to understand a belief, acknowledge a hurt, or express a need. Sometimes the response we need is a clear boundary.
It starts with you
The more compassion we practise toward ourselves, the more capacity we can develop to offer it to others. As we learn to love and accept our own humanity, we can make more room for theirs.
This is part of what Human First means to me: remembering that our humanity needs care, including our own.
For me, wholeness includes making room for both doing and being: pursuing meaningful goals while honouring the person living that life.
Your worth is there when you achieve, and it is there when you rest. You deserve a relationship with yourself that honours both.