I’ve been pondering about writing for the Odyssey for a while, and now I’ve finally gotten the chance to actually take some time and write something out. Speaking of taking time…
It’s an incredibly important thing to please other people, considering that nearly everyone experiences face to face contact with another person on many occasions throughout their daily rituals. However, it’s also important to take the time for yourself and focus on self-oriented actions or behaviors. Whether it be taking yourself out of a stressful relationship, playing hooky from work or school for a day, or staying home and watching some TV under a blanket instead of going out with your friends, you need to focus on you and treat yourself to something nice and something personal.
Some people say, “But I don’t know how to take time for myself. I’m always helping others,” or, “I don’t have the time to take a day for myself,” or come up with other excuses to push off having personal time. Speaking from experience, this is just going to build up and up and up until you’ve crammed all of your stress and emotion into a bottle, and that bottle’s going to break at some point. Before that bottle breaks, take the time for yourself. Go get your nails done, go for a nice walk in the woods, go shopping, do something that’ll de-stress you. Some stress in life is a good thing: eustress is scientifically known to benefit us as a population; however, distress, or negative stress, will undoubtedly create havoc in your life, and that’s not a good thing at all.
It’s really not a selfish thing to go out and take some time for yourself. Take it from me, an unfamiliar source with recent experience. I was in a relationship with my boyfriend for five months, and just recently we decided that we needed to take time for ourselves since we weren’t really able to handle the relationship, our adjustments to college life, classes, extracurricular activities, etc. So much of my stress was due to trying to juggle everything, and once I took that time for myself, I felt some of that stress float away. While yes, I feel guilty about having to take myself out of the romantic equation, I’m learning that in order for me to be able to handle another relationship, I seriously need to focus on myself first, and that’s exactly what I’m beginning to do.
But don’t just take it from me; take it from your mom, who has been telling you for a while now to focus on yourself; take it from your friends, who only want the best for you; and most importantly, take it from yourself, as only you know how much stress you’re going through, and only you know how to relieve some of that stress.