What About Me!
Now that grabbed your attention didn’t it?
Many of us were raised believing that you don’t take anything without giving something back in return or as the old proverb says “give and you shall receive”. This article reflects a different paradigm shift into the value of ‘giving back’ to ourselves.
Women are natural born givers. We spend copious amounts of our time caring for others, volunteering at school and community events, donating to local charities, sponsoring and attending business networking events and mentoring staff and those in a similar business. We walk around with fit bits to count how many steps we have taken, text on our mobile phones because we haven’t got time to talk.
As we age we become at risk of increasing health issues relating to stress, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and obesity. We spend copious hours aligning our goals and targets into our diaries to make sure that we stay focused and monitor that we are on track and that we can account for every waking moment of our day as we tick off tasks on our to do lists. We get so busy that we forget to take time to simply breathe in some fresh air and bask in the sunshine.
As our business grows we continually seek new opportunities to expand our range of products or services to reach even more clients with the primary goal of creating the lifestyle that we dream about, to provide for our families and most importantly to ensure that we have sufficient funds for when we retire so that we can relax and enjoy life. If we already have a successful business then we can be even more generous in giving back to others by apply a 10% tithing to charities incorporated into our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) obligations. Heaven forbid that we might be seen as being too greedy or selfish for the income that we earn if we don’t ‘give something back!
While these are all very important considerations, along the way we can often lose sight of the importance of giving and getting back some of that precious ‘Me Time”? This is particularly challenging for women who run large corporations, are in senior positions, are the pivotal “go-to-person’ who work under extreme pressure, juggle multiple tasks including being the Super Woman or Super Mum who leaves no spare time in her day just for herself in between dropping off and picking up kids from school or day care or meeting that deadline before close of business.
In his book The Go-Giver, Author Bob Burg challenges our thinking that the concept of “giving back’ implies that we have first taken something that we need to return. He expands on The Law of Value by suggesting that our true worth is the value that we give to the people that we serve rather than what we take in payments. For many of us this underpins our true value and belief that what we are doing makes a difference to helping others less fortunate. We can often miss the opportunity to apply the same principles of giving back to ourselves for all the extra hours and activities that we spend giving to others. This does not mean that we are being selfish nor should we feel guilty when we crave those precious ‘me time’ moments that enable us to recalibrate, reflect on our progress and realign our passions with our work. By incorporating a ‘giving back’ to me philosophy into our daily lives enables us to sustain our own momentum of giving to others more easily and reminds us that our own health and wellness must be our first priority.
When we align what we define as our purpose in life with our passion to make a difference, we discover that what we genuinely give back to others is an extension of how we honour ourselves. By giving back some me time we will also discover an overwhelming feeling of happiness within. Seek out those like-minded business owners that enable us to create special ‘me time’ moments together to build lasting relationships that benefit us personally and professionally.
