The picture above is of the inside cover of a book I borrowed from the library last week. On Mondays after school and in amongst my daughters' ballet classes, tap classes and Brownies, the three of us fit in a half hour visit to the library. Although this library visit is mostly focused around the children's section, I do sometimes manage to grab a book or two from the display shelves right by the entrance door whilst following my two speeding book worms.
The inside cover of this particular book from the Fast Back section came with it's own set of instructions. The first 4 instructions are explaining the rules of borrowing a Fast Back book, basically you have one week and then your time is up. But the last instruction made me stop and smile...
"All those jobs you hate doing should be left whilst you enjoy the book!"
Firstly, as I've said many a time before, I love a list so this appealed to me. Secondly, and most importantly, this gave me permission to leave those grotty jobs I didn't really want to do. By not doing these jobs I was simply following the instructions in the book, in fact I'd go as far as saying, that these instructions are the agreement of borrowing the book; the contract I was signing up to by scanning my library card and bringing this book home.
So this library book not only looked like it would be a good read but it also came with an anti dusting permission slip as dusting is one of the grotty jobs I don't like doing...and so I didn't do it. Simple as that! The book instructions said I shouldn't and so being a good girl, I didn't!
A friend was round later that week and before I could stop myself I declared during our chat, "Oh just look at the dust on top of the piano! No don't look!" Too late! Thankfully she is a very good friend and certainly not one to think any less of me for having a dusty piano top.
So in addition to the addictive story and the anti dusting clause, this book gave me permission to take time for myself and to sit and read my book when normally I would have been filling my time with jobs, tasks and errands.
Yes some jobs didn't get done but the important ones still did. Nobody suffered as a result of me reading more, in fact the spiders positively loved it building their webs wherever they liked undisturbed. I love reading and always have a book on the go but this particular book was quite thick and therefore needed a concerted effort to get through it in a week. So I made time in my week for reading this book knowing that I had a 7 day headline. In fact this book made me make time like stopping for lunch and reading for 40 minutes when normally I wouldn't have stopped for that long. I felt better, like I'd had a proper break, I was refreshed, revitalised with a new burst of energy ready to tackle my work again.
This article isn't about reading more (although I think that in itself is a great idea). This is about making time for yourself to do something you enjoy. Taking time out from the busyness; time to rest and relax and recharge your batteries. Me time.
Would you feel guilty taking some "me time"? Does "me time" sound selfish? I admit to answering "yes" to both of these initially. I thought about the jobs I should be doing, the emails I ought to answer and the un-ticked tasks on my to do list. But why should I feel guilty? If making some time to read a book I was hooked on gave me a break and stopped me becoming a frazzled, stressed out, exhausted, grumpy person who upset people, made poor decisions because I was too tired to think clearly, snapped at those around me and became ineffective and inefficient....then surely that has to be a good thing.
Think of it this way, in air safety announcements you are always instructed to put your oxygen mask on before helping others. You must take care of your basic needs before helping others. Skipping this and neglecting our own well-being will catch up with us, maybe not immediately but it will. Looking after ourselves means we can then be more help to others and there's nothing selfish about that.
As a parent, do you insist your children get enough sleep and rest? Do you ensure they have fun activities such as playdates and after school clubs and activities, their version of "me time"?
So I'm calling on you to do the same for yourself and to make it official, I'm giving you your very own Fast Back permission sheet. It's right below, you just need to print it off and fill it in.
Click for Your very own Fast Back style permission sheet.
I'd love to hear what you decide to do so please let me know in the comments.
And one last thing, if you're still not convinced have a read of this article Take care of others by taking care of yourself first from productiveflourishing.com
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