Have You Been Told to "Put Your Oxygen Mask on First"? - Self-Care for 2023

I don’t know about you, but for us, 2022 was a REALLY. HARD.YEAR. 2020 was the year of lockdowns, 2021 was the year of rebounding, and as for 2022- it was absolute fallout from 2020. When we talk to our patients and tour personal loved ones, 2022 was the year of death, divorce, depression, job change, financial unrest, health problems, you name it.

Everyone we talk to, including me, has had coaches, doctors, and therapists saying, “put your oxygen mask on first”. It became the drumbeat all around me and so many clients told me that they had received this same advice.

I don’t know about you, but I am a really tactical person. In fact, I joke with my family that I’m the “executor”. This doesn’t mean that I kill ladybugs and small rodents around our house. It means that if you give me a task, I will turn it into line items and will check off each box until the task is completed, ie, the executor.

I’ve been really thinking about this whole “Oxygen Mask” thing and how to execute it. What I realized is that It really comes down to self-care, no? My mind first started to think about 2023 as being the year that I finally stopped eating gluten and nightshades – but that seemed too daunting. I then thought about working out with a trainer 3 days a week and my financial worries set in. Do I really need to spend 20k in 2023 to have a new workout friend?

As the owner of Dedham Acupuncture, I am always trying to “lock in” the small stuff – are the door knobs clean? Do we have clear communication around insurance verifications? Do we carry the most patient-friendly needle brands, and so on and so forth.

I realized that I needed to lock in the basics of self-care for 2023 before I took a bigger leap into the nutrition and fitness world. I am sharing a PDF with you that I used to set up my self-care for 2023. It covers scheduling the basics and addresses topics like “what is holding me back?” from scheduling bigger procedures like colonoscopies. It helped me to get my financial house in order to pay for care so that wasn’t an added stressor.

When you look at the people in your life who are successful with self-care, they are easy to spot. You can see it in the way they carry themselves, the way they interact with the world and stressful events, and the inner peace that they exude day to day. This can be easily achievable by you as well – it just has to be broken down into “bite-size” action steps. Hence, the PDF to Self Care!

Download it today to get started. It will really only take you a few minutes to start turning your self-care into a system. Once you zoom out and plan ahead for the necessities like appointments and procedures, you’ll feel more prepared to take on the day-to-day. Your self-care foundation can be started right away and it will easily help you overcome “blocks’ around taking care of yourself. I hope that in 2023 you become the CEO of your health. Your loved ones around you depend on you – this is your time to “lock it in”!

Oh – and if you haven’t finished your holiday shopping – take a look at what we have bundled for you to give out as presents this year. Call us or stop by. We can charge your card on file, run a bag of goodies out to your car or have it ready for you at the front desk. Easy peasy.

Talk Soon,

Nicole