Think of yourself as starting out with a full cup. Over time, your cup slowly empties as you do things for other people. The problem is, sometimes you're doing so much for others that you forget about yourself. Everyone else is taking from your cup, and eventually, it will be empty. When your cup gets empty, you burn out. So how do you prevent your cup from being empty?
The simple solution, and the one that most people have a hard time doing, is taking time for yourself. We're put into so many scenarios where we're working with and trying to help other people that we forget that we need to take care of ourselves too. If our cups are empty, we're not able to help other people -- but as much as we should focus on keeping our cups full, we don't.
In college, you're doing a lot of things -- from academics to extracurriculars, to work, to trying to be social and have a healthy lifestyle. That's a lot of opportunities for your cup to be emptied. Not only do we try to figure out how to balance all these things, but we try to figure out how to keep everyone we know pleased at the same time. Unfortunately, this costs us time for ourselves that we desperately need.
We need time to fill our cups back up. This sounds harder than it really is. You don't need to go on some weekend-long break from doing anything. Sometimes, you just need to take a moment to do something for yourself. This could be sitting down and watching your favorite show or treating yourself to dinner one night. It's the simple stuff that fills your cup back up and allows you to help others.
As important as it is to have your cup full for others, you also have to remember that you have control over who is taking from your cup. You make the decisions on what to do with your time -- so don't do things that you know you'll regret or give your time to people who don't deserve it.
It's your cup, and you have every right to fill it up and keep every drop to yourself.
