What if I prioritized myself instead of my business?

For years, I’ve toyed around with a very simple idea –

What if I actually prioritized taking care of myself, instead of my mission with Man Flow Yoga?

For me, that meant:

• Putting my own workouts over creating workouts.
• Doing self-care work first thing in the morning, before creating content and exchanging messages with people about it later on.
• Being healthy in mind and body, instead of just doing enough to keep my muscles looking big (this inevitably breaks down very quickly, when I’m not doing my mobility work or sleeping well.)

Very easy to understand, but much harder to do when it comes time to do it.

Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy all of the self-care things.

Journaling. Working out. Walking. Meditating. Calling friends/family and talking. But the real struggle is the compulsion to work. The compulsion to create. The compulsion to “be better”, and to always be productive.

I’ve learned over the years that this desire to be productive is probably driven more so by a feeling that I’m not “enough” than by anything else. It essentially says that I need to produce, support, and create in order to be loved and accepted. I’m aware of this, and am working on giving this feeling of enough to myself. (No amount of external validation is going to do anything, so don’t worry about feeding my ego and telling me I’m doing meaningful work – I already know I am.)

Point being…

In the moment, when it’s time for me to decide if I (1) practice self-care, or (2) work, it’s very, very difficult for me to choose myself. I can usually do something quick, like take the dogs for a walk, do some journaling before the kids get up – but once it’s the work day and I’ve had my cup of coffee, I am ready to go. The productive Dean is in charge, and very little is going to sway him from completing his mission of getting his productivity dopamine hit, hour by hour, for the entire day.

It’s easier when things are going well. When I realize we’ve got some ‘cushion’ in Man Flow Yoga, and I don’t have to worry about what paying bills is going to look like that month. But when it’s NOT going well…. That’s when the chaos sets in.

• Trying to outwork the feeling of failure
• Spiraling and ruminating on the fear of not having enough
• Taking control of things that I’ve normally entrusted to others

And that’s when self-care gets a back seat.

I’m so focused on survival, that it becomes a luxury. And I know this is normal. It’s human to have these responses. So I try to give myself grace – I use a combination of reactionary strategies, some of them more useful than others.

The most useful strategy, by far, has been simply been getting out of my HEAD and getting into my body, paying attention to the physical sensations of the mental and emotional stresses; which essentially means noticing where these fears – of failure, of not being enough, of not being confident in the future – show up in the body, and focusing on them in such a way that the only solution to them is to FEEL them, rather than to solve the external conditions causing them.

Other strategies include:

• Grounding myself in my body; exercising, walking, doing yoga, breath work.
• Doing a reality check – what am I worried about vs. what is actually happening
• Talking it out – sharing my feelings with a friend or family member

It’s after I do these things that I’m able to refocus, to get grounded in what is happening now, what I can do about the situation, and then with that perspective I’m able to shift back into the mindset that places importance on self-care.

So I continually come back to this idea – 

What if by prioritizing self-care, so essentially, being more selfish, I’m able to be more ‘successful’ in every other area in life?

(I hesitate to use the word ‘successful’ because of the productivity connotations that come with it, but I’m drawing a blank on what other word I would use right now. Maybe “fulfilled”.) 

Walking. Exercising. Journaling. Talking with friends. Moving toward my truer sense of self.

I recognize this isn’t a luxury for everybody. I’m incredibly fortunate. (And I’m grateful to everybody who has paid attention to what I do with Man Flow Yoga, and is thereby supporting me.) But I think that the best way for me to fulfill my mission with Man Flow Yoga is by putting myself in a place mentally, emotionally, and physically (and dare I say, spiritually), where I’m able to be the best possible resource for the community I’ve created.

Come be a part of it – we’ll work on all of this stuff together. (And if you are already part of the Man Flow Yoga Community, thank you 🙂 I’ll see you on the workouts!)

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• 3 Profound Takeaways from the Be The Better You Retreat | Dean Pohlman | Better Man Podcast Ep. 094
• Why is Self-Care so Difficult? | Dean Pohlman | Better Man Podcast Ep. 092
• The Power of Being Alone: My 24-Hour Solo Retreat Experience | Dean Pohlman | Better Man Podcast Ep. 082
• 9 Personal Strategies for Making Time for Self-Care | Dean Pohlman | Better Man Podcast Ep. 045
• Movember Week 4: The Importance of Self-Care for Men

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