Filling the Well - Part 2

Last week I talked about filling the well of your creativity with ideas.  To be able to create the life you want, you have to make time for those activities that are important to you.  This involves a little self-care, self-nurturing.   You must be able to express your needs and indicate your preferences. You must set up boundaries.

We need to be able to dwell in our own private sphere to create.  We need to feel separate from everyone else and narrow our focus to what we want in our lives.  Now sometimes that may mean we need to do things that have nothing to do with our art, our creativity.  This is part of filling the well.  And to do this we have to put up boundaries.  We have to be able to say, "I want or need to do this at this time."

This can cause problems especially if you have been available to everyone in the past.  Making your needs known may cause confrontations, misunderstanding and hurt feelings. It will appear to others that you don't care about them, their needs, and their happiness.  We want to care about others and take care of those people in our lives, but it is impossible for us to do that all the time.

Often times the people who hear of our boundaries feel rejected. We are pushing them aside for some 'thing', be it an activity, person, planned event or just to be by yourself. That is not at all what we are doing.  We are in fact practicing self-care.  When we take care of our needs first, we can then be available to others.   It is like traveling on a plane. You are instructed by the flight attendants that if the cabin pressure drops, you are to put your oxygen mask on first before helping the child traveling with you.  You do this because you can't help anyone if you lack oxygen.  If we give all the time to what others need without caring for our needs, we are giving away our oxygen.

It is the same with your creativity.  If you first attend to that part of you that is important, you can be there for those people in your life.  You have been oxygenated, your well is full.  As opposite as it seems, the greatest gift you can give someone in your life is taking care of you. 

If this is hard for you to do, start out small.  Pick an activity that will take 15 minutes, a walk around the block.   Then build up from there.  Take a bath. Go somewhere quiet to read a book instead of watching a TV program with the family. Work in a secluded corner of the yard while everyone else is in the house. Say no thank you to an invitation from a friend. The more you practice this type of self-care, the easier it gets.  You are probably saying that is hard to do.  Yup it is.  I am still learning.

But the more the people in your life will see how happier you are, the more they will understand why you take care of you first.  It makes you a better spouse, parent, child, friend.  It might even prompt them to take better care of themselves and form boundaries of their own. Think of how nicer the world would be then.

© 2018 – Cheryl Fillion