At the most basic level, yes, obviously, you need to care for yourself. But that’s not what “self-care” has come to mean. Similar to “good vibes only,” “self-care” is a selfish narrowing of the world, where your needs, wants, and desires are all the matter. If someone else happens to overlap with your vibes, cool, but if not, fuck that: my good vibes only.

And since when did it become hard to address your needs? Isn’t that the default position? Don’t you just unthinkingly do what your self, in this very moment, wants? And isn’t THAT the problem? That you are so focused on yourself, you’ve missed that perhaps the best way to care for yourself is to care for others? Instead of self-care, how about WWJD? How about civic duty, responsibility, honor? How about some real fucking values?

So I’ll start taking “self-care” seriously when someone says she is caring for herself by helping grandmas cross the street or by doing something she doesn’t want to do, like reading a book instead of binging another mindless show.

There is no comfort quite like the comfort offered by forward-focused excuses. “Forward-focused” means we aren’t explaining away past behavior – If only I had a good night of sleep I would have crushed that test– but rather dreaming and hoping that If I get this thing in the future, then my current issue will be resolved. The current issue is almost always some form of unhappiness. Hence the comfort: one is able to soothe himself with an explanation (read: excuse) for why the present unhappiness won’t persist forever. After all, suffering is easier to endure when it plausibly promises to be less than infinite.

But there’s also comfort via the meaning derived from chasing. What will you do with your time when eating, sleeping, and work are completed? Even the most motivated needs more than margaritas and some great show on Netflix. To have a forward-focused excuse provides a satisfactory answer that creates good feelings through both the pleasant thoughts of the-stuff-that-you-could-do and the tangible actions undertaken. Armed with an answer, you now have an additional reason to wake up, at least on some days.

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shortly after “absorbing” new material to increase retention. More open-ended the better.

Also, think about material immediately after learning. Just a min. This can happen during. Take a sec to process before moving on to next section.

Testing as a form of studying.

Here.

Reminders of not having money are everywhere because prices are everywhere. Positive-thinking and paeans of You Are Enough fail miserably in preventing these reminders from extracting a psychological toll – even Tony Robbins’ mind would be helpless in surrendering to the objective, concrete reality of money. So, yea, this leads to stress that can only be escaped by multiplying one’s bank account to the point where a purchase of whatever represents an irrelevant dent in the account balance.

But there is another stressor associated with financial deprivation that will not vanish simply because you now make six figures. Quadrupling a salary is hard, positive-thinking is ineffective, but value-hunting can begin today and deliver today. Finding deals, collecting coupons, negotiating constantly, stretching the limits of return policies: spend less by spending smarter, by never getting ripped off, by always finding a deal. And so the must-find-value stressor develops. For a certain type of person, this stress may well become an energizing and adored personality trait. Let me tell you about the INSANE deal I just got!!! This positive affect is probably adaptive, but it still remains a stress response. And the deeper it’s ingrained, the harder to shed when it’s no longer adaptive. Like when you do, in fact, quadruple your salary and saving $1.25 on 2lbs of chicken breasts doesn’t matter. Yet it will matter if must-find-value is left unadjusted. You want to still find value because it’s fun? Do it. You want to still find value because you have to or because you feel dumb if you don’t or you really, really should? Well, then you’ve unfortunately managed to escape the conditions that created stress without dropping the stress. 

And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats it only prevents them from hiding.

– C.S. Lewis

offer a hug.

It’s the bit of advice every well-meaning parent gives to every child. Just be yourself. Divorced from external outcomes, this wisdom is pretty unimpeachable. Because, yes, it will be hard to ever be internally tranquil if your social persona is critically divergent from your true self. If we stopped there, all would be fine. But we won’t stop there.

Try as even the best Buddhist might, being completely disconnected from social performance is just not how humans operate. Run Just be yourself through this unavoidable lens and its wisdom begins wilting. What if your true self sucks? Is super weird? Cares about things society ignores? Discards communal values? You could very well end up in a position where you reveal the true self, feel calm inside … and end up a total loser outside. Contrast that against hiding the true self, feeling conflicted inside, and gaining much social credibility from one’s deft playing as a poseur. It’s not obvious which path is preferrable.

Perhaps you think back to that lame kid in high school who pretended to like System of a Down when his real passion was Britney Spears, and you say, “Naw, that second path wouldn’t work because we know poseurs when we see them.” Yea, the bad ones. Just consider all the “successful” people admitting they played a “character” to remember that much posing goes undetected. Or really, just look at yourself. You’ve surely gotten away with claiming to like/believe that which you didn’t like/believe; you’ve seamlessly done things you didn’t want to do.

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I’m all for quitting … just not when there is a disconnect between mind and body. This incongruence usually occurs with mental quitting leading the physical. It’s fine to quit running marathons after a marathon; it is not fine during. It’s fine to get divorced; it’s not fine to mentally check out of a marriage while still married. Sure, the mind can lead the body, can serve as an indication of what the body should eventually do, but you probably should catch your spiraling mindset while still in it..

The mind is aggressive in pushing us to quit or compound errors when there is zero benefit in doing so. You may not be happy with your golf play, but you truly gain nothing by giving up on a hole and “saving it for the back nine.” Nothing, that is, other than the relief from having to stay “locked in.” But when have you ever been unhappy with yourself for remaining “locked in”? When have you been displeased for preventing errors from compounding? Yes, you may not be at your best, and yes that may be legit disappointing, but don’t you want to be the type of person who can still summon it on days where you aren’t 100%? You do know that you usually will not be 100%, right?

1. Hurts your life in spirit
2. Gets progressively worse
3. Can’t stop doing it even though you know it’s not good for you

Person A has just told you something seriously bad or sad or difficult. You want to say something positive. You want the person to not feel alone. It’s those generous impulses that will lead you astray.

“I understand…

“A similar thing once happened to me…

“I can imagine…

These responses deny the uniqueness and depth of the issue. Person A has been thinking about whatever this thing is for countless hours and you think you instantly comprehend? At some point, it may be prudent to express understanding and solidarity, but almost never after an initial reveal.