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You manage to find three seats together even though you were at the back of B boarding. You’ve got Tot #1 on your left and Tot #2 on your right. As you get all three of yourselves buckled in, the flight attendant begins the safety speech. You’re flying Southwest and sometimes they try to throw some jokes in there, but let’s face it, they can be a little hit or miss. “In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure…” They hold up the mask and pretend it drops from the ceiling and demonstrate how to put the thing on. “If you’re traveling with a child, put your mask on first.” Now your first instinct might be to say, What a minute, if there’s suddenly no oxygen in here, the first thing I’m going to do is get this thing on my kid’s face. And it would be understandable to feel that way, of course, but if you think about why they give you those instructions, it makes perfect sense. You may only have seconds to act and you’re not going to be any help to your kids if you're unconscious. So put your mask on first so you’ll be able to help others around you. Which, it turns out, is also a pretty good metaphor for life.
See, in some ways, we’re hardwired to do more for others than we’ll do for ourselves. Because back in the day, by which I mean 30, 40, 50 thousand years ago, staying alive was wholly dependent on the strength of your tribe. Survival wasn’t an individual sport, it was a group activity. So let’s say you and Ragnar are out one afternoon, looking to bag a juicy gazelle, and he steps in a hole and breaks his ankle. You’re helping him limp back home when you realize you’ve been surrounded by a pack of hungry hyenas that sense injured prey. If you were alone, your nervous system would be screaming for you to hightail it out of there. But you’re not alone. Instead, your instincts put you between Ragnar and the hyenas, and after a lot of screaming and yelling and jumping up and down like a lunatic, the creepy little critters sulk away. You deliberately put yourself in the path of danger, not because you have some kind of hero complex, but because your nervous system knows that keeping Ragnar alive is in your own best interest. It’s all about strength in numbers.
So, thanks to a couple hundred thousand years of evolution, we're all programmed to help our kid or the stranger next to us before helping ourselves. Which is great if you’re in a car accident and a good samaritan subjects themselves to second degree burns pulling you from the flaming wreck. But sometimes the instinct to help others can go a little haywire, to the point we end up sacrificing our own wellbeing in the process. In the case of the airplane scenario, it'll mean the difference between staying conscious or passing out. In the case of living our lives, it'll cost us our peace.
I see this kind of thing all the time. Take Marjorie, for example. Totally devoted to an incredibly demanding career. A beloved dog, her constant companion, is coming into her end days and requires constant care. An ailing father whose needs keep mounting and Marjorie has named herself Caretaker In Chief. From the time she wakes up until her head hits the pillow, every moment of Marjorie’s day is in service to someone else. But with all of the working and the caretaking, she’s completely neglected herself.
No time to move the body; that got put on the back burner a long time ago. Eating healthy? Who has time for that? A typical day’s menu looks something like a Poptart in the car on the way to work, drive-thru for lunch on the way home to give Cranberry her pain pills and help her limp outside for a pee, and maybe a Lean Cuisine in the microwave sometime between sorting dad’s pills for the week and getting all of his doctor’s appointments on the calendar. She hasn’t had a decent night sleep since the Obama administration. Intimate relationship? Only if romantic comedies on Netflix count.
Marjorie is always promising to slow down and take care of herself. There’s always just one more thing to manage, one more hurdle to cross. In the meantime, all she’s creating is big piles of anxiety and overwhelm, she feels burdened which then creates resentment toward the people and the four-legged critter she’s devoted herself to. It becomes a vicious circle where Marjorie volunteers herself to do…everything, then gets angry because everyone expects her to do…everything. So the work is getting done, the dog is getting cared for, and dad is getting what he needs, and Marjorie is left exhausted, unhealthy, and alone.
Now, we could explore all kinds of reasons why Marjorie feels the need to play this role. There could be unworthiness there, or inadequacy. There could be some guilt or regret, a need to make up for some past transgression. Maybe there’s a fear of losing which can make us try to hold on too tight. Whatever the case may be for Marjorie, what’s important for her to understand is that killing herself in the name of service to others isn’t going to do anyone any good. And the thing is, Marjorie can design a life where she can make her own well-being the priority and be of even more profound service to those who need her.
So you’re saying, Okay Joey, how’s she going to do that? Well, the full answer to that would require more than a blog post. And it’s going to mean some training for Marjorie. She’ll need to learn about boundaries and how to set them, how to find peace with her current situation and acceptance of the realities of those she loves, and she’ll have to decide what she wants her life to look like. Lucky for her, that’s exactly what we do at Inner Matrix Systems. We have the tools, techniques, and strategies that Marjorie can use to design a life where she can be of service and take care of herself. And do it without resenting everyone around her in the process.
Where to start? One of the most important things to dial in is a morning routine, a non-negotiable start to the day that is going to set you up to serve in the most beautiful way possible. It can become very elaborate, but it doesn't have to start out that way. Inner training, some movement, hydration and nourishment. Start small and simple and flesh it out over time. Think of a solid morning routine as putting on your mask first so that you are capable of supporting others. And when you're ready, why not add one to three Resets to your list of non-negotiables? At Reset, we train the parasympathetic state within your nervous system and access higher and higher emotional states. It’s like taking your nervous system in for a tuneup.
Being of service to others is a great thing to be up to, but not when it’s at the expense of your own wellbeing. Join us for Reset and get your nervous system realigned with the outcomes you want to create. Click HERE to learn more about upcoming programs, and sign up today!
