First, Show Up for Yourself.

Everyday we have a million things to show up for. We show up for work, we show up for school, we show up for our friends, we show up for our family, we show up for the woman behind the checkout counter at the grocery store. We show up for our dog, we show up for our students, we show up for our poetry community, our kung fu community, our climbing community... Whatever community we are a part of, we show up, we smile, we interact, even on the days when all we want to do is go home and crawl into bed for a week. Heck, we even show up for our egos, sacrificing the time we might use to unwind to catch up on reading, or studying for a test or certification we have coming up. Every damn day, we have something we need to show up for, so we show up for it. Over and over again, we show up.

This is not sustainable.

Going - all the time - showing up again and again without any self-time in between is not sustainable.

I have always struggled with this. The more I've examined this pattern, the more I recognize it as a quality I imbibed from my mother - a woman who would constantly go, go, go. I am just like her in this way.

I do my best to show up for everyone, everyday, because that's what I believe the world deserves from me. But even though I constantly preach self-care, self-time, self-love, eventually, because I love showing up for everyone else, I start forgetting to show up for myself. And when we fail to show up for ourselves, we are no longer able to show up for anyone else.

The tricky thing here is taking this time for ourselves, especially when our pattern of showing up for others has been sustained for so long, people have actually started expecting us to show up, every time, everyday, for everything.

But guess what? It's okay to disappoint those people. It's okay to say no. It isn't the end of the world. They will be okay. And they will forgive you. And you will make it up to them, 1000 times over later, when you have given yourself the time to say yes to you.

So say no sometimes. Don't just try to say no. Don't beat around the bush about it. Don't apologize for it. We cultivate these habits of "sort of" saying no, and then we allow our guilt to drain whatever energy we might have gained. Say no, damn it. Be firm. People who respect you will respect your no, and they will understand it.

And show up for yourself. Find that single place where you don't have to show up for anyone. Maybe that's playing your instrument, reading in a coffee shop, hiking alone in the mountains.

For me, that place is my yoga mat. That is the one place where I don't have to show up for anyone else, including my ego. That is the one place where I can have as graceful or sloppy of a practice as I want. I can take it easy, or I can push myself. But when I go to yoga, it's just me and my mat. It's the one place where I can fully show up for myself. And it is the only place where someone else has to show up for me.

I suppose this is why I love taking class - as opposed to sustaining a home practice. I spend so much time pouring myself into others, I feel infinitely indulged when someone takes time out of their day to pour into me.

So find that place. Find the place where you don't show up for anyone but you. Find the place where you feel nurtured and fed. And occupy that space as often as you can. You deserve it. We all deserve it.

Because you can only show up for the rest of the world when you've taken the time to show up for yourself.