Loading ...Iris Benrubi
Webitor’s Note: This is the second instalment of Iris Benrubi’s “Seven Mistakes Women Make.” The first part can be found here.
3. Not valuing yourself enough to nurture you!
The third critical mistake working women make is that they treat themselves as though they are second class citizens, and their place in the grand scheme of things is at the bottom of the ladder. If there is any energy left at the end of a day after they have done everything for everyone, then maybe they will do something for themselves. But most of the time they are running themselves so ragged that the only energy they have left is enough to crawl into bed. When one continually does for others without doing for oneself, one can end up feeling drained.
I borrowed this analogy from someone but can’t remember from whom, so I can’t take credit for this. When you have $500 in a bank account and a loved one wants to borrow $100 for something really important, you will have no problem lending her the money. If, however, she wants to borrow $500 instead, you might still lend her the money but will probably feel a great deal of stress because it leaves you at $0 balance.
Now, consider that a loved one comes to borrow $1000 from you. If you really love her, you might still lend it to her, but your stress level goes through the roof because you now have minus $500 in your bank account. I want you to consider yourself an emotional bank account. You need to make regular deposits into your bank account. These deposits can be the usual forms of self-care. They often don’t need a long time frame to implement into a schedule that is already overbooked. They can take the form of:
i. a massage,
ii. a manicure,
iii. getting your hair done,
iv. going for a coffee with a friend,
v. having a warm cup of tea 30 minutes before anyone else gets up in the morning,
or anything else you can think of. You can schedule yourself for an activity that may take an hour or you can create a short ritual that takes less than a minute. The shorter the activity the easier it will be to find time for it and the more often you will be able to do it and deposit into your emotional bank account. When you make a deposit, you will be able to give to loved ones and feel great about it. When you don’t do things for yourself, you put yourself into deficit. Then you feel the stress when someone asks you for something and you give it to them anyways but feel guilty for feeling resentful.
“Thinking about it another way, doing something for yourself is doing your family and loved ones a favour.” Iris Benrubi
4. Not challenging the images, expectations and role models society gives you!
As I mentioned in the introduction, we are bombarded with messages that tell us how we should live and look, and what we should do and own in order to be happy. We make a big mistake when we ‘buy’ the message (pun intended) the media sends our way. One of the recent soap commercials shows how we are duped into believing the standards we see on television without challenging what we see. It starts with a close-up of a fairly good-looking woman sitting in a chair. Then the picture begins to be altered digitally and her neck and forehead are lengthened, her cheekbones are made more defined, her eyelids are lifted, her eyes are widened and enlarged, her cheeks are tapered and her hair is improved. Then she walks away. What we are left with is a digitally enhanced, ultimately impossible standard of what we should look like. We are left trying to achieve this, but we can’t.
Iris Benrubi is a Business and Life Coach who specializes in working with Women Entrepreneurs. To contact Iris, please e-mail her at iris(at)simplysuccess(dot)ca or call 905-709-8185.
NOTE: Part III of Seven Critical Mistakes will be published in a future issue of Prospere Magazine
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