What defines you? Is it your home? Your job? Your family? Your weight?

What about your purpose? Is it to make more money? To retire in the Bahamas? To run away and live in the mountains with a pet squirrel named George?

Are their pieces missing from the puzzle that make it hard to see how you will get from where you are to where you want to be - to your purpose?

We often spend our lives working for others, doing things for others, helping others. Taking care of ourselves and focusing on our own needs as a means to work toward our own goals is usually WAY down on the list, if it's on the list at all.

It feels selfish.

So, what if I told you it was actually selfLESS? Yep, you read that right.

Self-LESS. Let me give you a scenario...see if this sounds familiar...

Imagine that you wake up in the morning, your child is in the bed with you (laying sideways, foot wedged in your kidney, as usual) and as you're getting up, you realize you've overslept and that child is going to be late for school. You then rush to get him ready, grab some breakfast as you run out the door, call your boss (who of course, sounds frustrated), apologize and offer to stay late (again), and rush to the school. You get to work, apologize again, and are reminded that you are presenting at a meeting in an hour. As you scan through e-mails and vaguely hear your voice mails, there is a message from your mother reminding you about dinner at her house tonight. You make a mental note to call her. Rushing into the meeting, you apologize (again) for being late, but you handle the meeting like a champ. After the meeting, you continue your day, pausing every time someone asks you to do something and responding to their requests. That's what you do. Finally heading out the door at 7:30pm, you realize you've missed a call from your mother, and suddenly it hits you that you forgot to call her back. You call her back as you're rushing to her house, apologizing (yep, again) and thanking her for picking up your son (yet again). By the time you get home, there is barely time to shower and fall in the bed (with a precious foot jammed in your kidney), and hope that you set your alarm this time.

Sound familiar?

Where's the time for you? Not a moment of it anywhere.

So what happens when you get sick? Or injured? Or have a nervous breakdown because you Just. Can't. Even.

Stop. Breathe. Read this very carefully:

If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anyone else.

Go back and read that again. And once more.

Are you hearing that? That's not selfish, that's self-LESS. If you don't take time for YOU, you won't be able to do anything for ANYONE ELSE. You will break, you will fall, you will crumble.

Give yourself a moment to let that sink in. While you are doing that, take a look at a few suggestions at how to make that happen:

1. Give yourself permission to say “no.” - Let's go ahead and get the hard one out of the way first thing. You aren't responsible for making sure that everyone gets everywhere or that they get everything they want. Granted, young children have more needs than adults, but I'm betting that if you sit back and think for a moment, there are times that if you said “no,” the individual would either: a) just do without it, or find some other way to make it happen. Often, you're the “go to” person because people realize that you'll say YES.

2. Set aside a specific time for you and treat it like an appointment you can't miss. You know that doctor's appointment it took you 2 months to get? And how you made sure that nothing stood in the way of you getting to that appointment? Yeah, treat your self care time just as special. Program it in your phone. Write it on the calendar. Let your family know that you have an appointment that you can't miss and that you won't be available. You need this.

3. Expect others to push your boundaries. Especially in the beginning. They won't be used to you being so assertive, so the attempts to make you feel guilty for not dropping everything to attend to their needs may ramp up for awhile. It's okay! Remember, this is expected. You're preparing for it now, by reading this, so when it happens you will already know that it is temporary. By sticking to your boundaries and not giving in, IT WILL GET BETTER. If you give in now, you have shown that if they push hard enough, they will eventually get there way. Don't stop.

Remember: we cannot be good caregivers if we don't practice self care. It's not selfish, its self-LESS.

Are there some specific ways that you already practice self care? Share in the comments and you may give a push to someone else!

Either I will get up early or stay up later than I should so that I can take a nice, long, HOT shower. If I can just have like 20-30 minutes in the quiet of a hot shower to decompress, I'm a-ok for the rest of the day.

That's such a great plan! I have my self care time between my agency job and my practice, about 30 minutes as well. Just quiet time to decompress and get myself centered. And a nice hot shower before bed REALLY is essential for me, too. I've never been a morning person, and showers always put me in sleep mode!

A very important thing to do is actually use your vacation time and take your sick days if you are sick. Even if the culture at your workplace seems to discourage it, you have to take care of yourself.

The same goes for taking meal breaks and other breaks.

A former colleague of mine recently passed away from complications due to an illness and I am convinced the fact that he never took sick days and worked on his vacation days was a major contributing factor in his death.

Life is too short.

Yes! I completely agree! The dietitian that leads the support group I recently began helping just talked about making time for meals last night! A very important part of self care for anyone, but especially us!

Wonderful article. A reminder of things I try very hard to do. Losing weight was my self care after for years of intense caring for a post stroke husband. Even he is thrilled with my doing this for me. I also take 1/2 minimum before he gets up every morning for me and bath time is all but sacred.

That's awesome when you have the support of a spouse! So glad that you consider self care sacred and that you have the support to make it happen. Hope you and your husband continue to do well!

I'm a social worker and suck at self care. It's hard. My job is emotionally demanding. I also work many many many hours. Like right now, I've been in the hospital the past two days and they want me to work from home today. And I'm gonna do it, because people are relying on me.

It's hard to find time for self care. Usually I come home, have dinner and go straight to sleep at 7 or 8. I need to find something to do. Like a hobby. I also need to get back into exercise.

There are so many small ways we can improve our self-care. Here's only one small thing I've done for myself:

The first thing every morning when I open up my laptop, instead of checking my business email, I now open My Fitness Pal, record my morning weight, and plan my meals and Snacks for the day.

It's such a little thing -- but it is important, and it reinforces for me that I do put my needs first.

I'm a social worker and suck at self care. It's hard. My job is emotionally demanding. I also work many many many hours. Like right now, I've been in the hospital the past two days and they want me to work from home today. And I'm gonna do it, because people are relying on me.

It's hard to find time for self care. Usually I come home, have dinner and go straight to sleep at 7 or 8. I need to find something to do. Like a hobby. I also need to get back into exercise.

It is very hard when you are in a helping field, but even more important I feel. We are naturally givers and it's hard to make time for ourselves. Scheduling time for yourself takes some of the guilt away. I felt that guilt for such a long time until I started to "work myself sick." Then it became evident I couldn't fully be there for my clients if I didn't take care of myself. That really helped when I took this perspective.

There are so many small ways we can improve our self-care. Here's only one small thing I've done for myself:

The first thing every morning when I open up my laptop, instead of checking my business email, I now open My Fitness Pal, record my morning weight, and plan my meals and Snacks for the day.

It's such a little thing -- but it is important, and it reinforces for me that I do put my needs first.

Excellent job, VSGAnn! Planning is so important for us. Taking that time is an important part of staying on track and helping to derail bad choices during the day due to lack of a plan!

I'm a social worker and suck at self care. It's hard. My job is emotionally demanding. I also work many many many hours. Like right now, I've been in the hospital the past two days and they want me to work from home today. And I'm gonna do it, because people are relying on me.

It's hard to find time for self care. Usually I come home, have dinner and go straight to sleep at 7 or 8. I need to find something to do. Like a hobby. I also need to get back into exercise.

Setting boundaries is a very important skill to learn.

I just finished reading a book written by a therapist who works with weight loss surgery patients that had some excellent advice about setting boundaries. It's called Eat it Up! and I highly recommend it.

Another is called The One Life Solution, Dr. Henry Cloud.

I would definitely recommend both to those of us who have had weight loss surgery and struggle with boundary issues.