Self-Care and Joy: How You Can Use What You Love to Love Yourself

Like any other commitment, self-care can become a chore. Whenever we force ourselves to do something the fun factor flies out the window. Yet, self-care should be one thing on our schedules that feels good! How can we turn a commitment into a pleasure? I think the key is committing to something that brings you joy. Let me explain…

Six years ago, at the age of thirty-seven, I was diagnosed with advanced osteoporosis. Putting it bluntly, my endocrinologist explained, “If you don’t immediately commit to a regimen of strength training, your bones will begin to crumble spontaneously.” You can imagine my following crash course in self-care.

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Up until that point I had never thought about what I do to take care of myself. I had worked out, or not, when the spirit moved me. I meditated or not when I felt the desire for that kind of inner connection. My self-care was based on whim, not necessity.

So there I was facing the spontaneous crumbling of my bones and needing to commit to a regimen not only of strength training, but of a level of self-care I’d never previously entertained. Suddenly, self-care wasn’t some amorphous idea but an action that pertained to my very ability to walk upright. Suddenly, self-care had a purpose.

Making the commitment to self-care isn’t easy. Mood, other activities and time constraints can make it difficult to follow through. Fear, however, is a great motivator. Terrified that my bones would crumble I committed to self-care with the ferocity of a hurricane. I didn’t enjoy it but I did it. Within two years I completely reversed the osteoporosis. Since then I’ve stuckto my workout regime without a hitch.

When motivated by fear, sticking to a self-care schedule becomes incredibly easy. The problem comes when we don’t have that instant inspiration. When self-care offers purely emotional or spiritual benefits we’re much more likely to forgo the commitment altogether. Unless, I’ve discovered, the commitment centers around something fun.

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Not long after the osteoporosis diagnosis I fell into a very deep depression. As a trauma survivor, years of trying to outrun the past finally caught up with me; I needed to do some intense emotional work. The arduous process left me feeling powerless and overwhelmed. I needed to commit to emotional self-care at a time I didn’t feel capable of committing to anything except the black hole in which I lived.

One day, as I was marveling at just how black the hole actually was, a thought occurred to me. What I really needed was to do something that would help me get in touch with the part of myself that could feel joy. What I really needed, I mused, was a way to feel something outside of the despair in which I lived. There was only one thing I thought might help me do that: dance. Throughout my life dance had always offered me a transcendent feeling of release. I decided to dance. A lot. I signed up for a dance class every single day of the week.