I am thrilled to report that I recently learned something truly valuable:
The most important skills a woman can (Correction: Should.... No, wait, MUST!) develop in her life is self-love and self-care.
Seriously. A solid foundation of self-love and self-care beats any other skill - even the ones that you master so perfectly - over the course of our lives.
Why do I say that? Because my recent diagnosis with breast cancer made me realize how often my relationship with myself has been rather crappy over the last four+ decades. And if I would have had a truly loving relationship with myself and would have put my own needs and wants first - and thus taken better care of myself in very many ways - I may not be in the situation I am in now.
Don't get me wrong, I "think" highly of myself and am darn proud of my accomplishments in life and the personal traits I've cultivated.
I think highly of myself, but most of the time I feel that my child, my work, my husband, my relationships, my extended family, my....you get the picture... come first and that my own needs and wants are, actually, not that important. I get to them later. After I've taken care of all the other things on my to-do-list.
You with me?
We women are really awesome. We give, oversee, and manage like no other gender can. We can simultaneously write a business email, comfort a crying child, keep a smile on our face and not forget that the dinner is in the oven. We give all we have to our jobs and careers, our partners and families, our relationships, or to the process of trying to conceive (which can feel like a full-time job, can't it?!) yet we often forget to give to ourselves.
We run 100 miles an hour until our batteries are empty and we find ourselves in a predicament like mine. Let's use my example of how not to do it.
This summer I am proclaiming the summer of "Doing more of what lights me up" and "fills me with joy" and I'd love you to join me!
YOU are the most important person in the whole universe! Your job, your relationship, your passion, your future child, your ... fill in the blanks... can only truly thrive when you are thriving!
I shot this video a couple of weeks ago in the early morning in the Hamptons, on the East End of Long Island, just a couple of hours away from Manhattan. This is what lights me up: Travel. So I vow to do more of it this summer.
What lights YOU up? What will YOU do this summer to bring a huge smile to your face and fill you up with love and joy?
Let's do more if it, shall we!!!
xoxo,
Bettina
PS: Everything I do for my community comes from my heart and is usually unscripted -- as is my camera work. I laughed when I saw that I hardly made it into certain frames of this video. Or that part of my head was missing in some frames. But I am sure, you get the picture. ;-)
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