Why Wait

So many of us tell ourselves we’ll start eating better, moving our bodies, prioritizing rest, or chasing our dreams “when life slows down.” But what if waiting is costing us more than we realize? In this episode, I share how living with Graves’ disease changed my perspective and why I stopped waiting for the perfect moment to care for myself. If you’ve been putting your wellness on hold, this conversation is your reminder that today is a good place to begin.

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Welcome to Holistic Life Diaries. I'm your host, Jacqueline Lovett. And in today's episode, I'll talk about how so many of us tell ourselves we'll start eating better, moving our bodies, prioritizing rest, or tasting our dreams when life slows down. But what if waiting is costing us more than we realize? In this episode, I share how living with Graves' disease changed my perspective and why I stopped waiting for the perfect moment to care for myself. If you've been putting your wellness on hold, this conversation is your reminder that today is a good place to begin. So I have my diary here. And this was a diary entry that I made a few months ago. And it started out, I started out by saying, waiting until I felt better to take care was causing me more harm than I realized. I used to wait until I felt better to exercise. Therefore, exercise became non-existent. I used to wait until I felt better before getting up and getting dressed for the day. This led to me spending countless days putting myself down and not getting my day off to a good start. I used to wait until I felt better before attempting to resolve conflict. Therefore, I kept quiet, shut down, and felt defeated. Waiting until I felt better created more space for negative self-talk, self-doubt, and feelings of unworthiness. It created more opportunities for others to take advantage of my weakness. Denying myself of the many blessings that come from putting in work to feel better became, I'm sorry, denying myself of the many blessings that come from putting in work to feel better became a way of life for me. I do believe that this mentality stemmed from early childhood trauma. It's not that I don't believe that there's a time for everything, but my thinking and actions have just shifted to realizing that in order to feel better, I had to do better. So that was one of my journal entries. And I had to be honest and ask myself, why is it that I was convincing myself to wait? So you may ask yourself, why do I convince myself to wait to take care of myself? For me, a lot of mom guilt set in. I felt like if I didn't put the needs of others ahead of my own, um, my children and and whatnot, and my my family, my husband, and others, not just them, but I felt like it was wrong. And I know I talk about this a lot on my episodes about self-care, you know, and how I had to convince, I was convincing myself that it was wrong to take care of myself. But waiting, how it affected my health and my well-being. It affected me mentally, spiritually, and physically. And that wasn't good. And you know, maybe you find yourself in that same predicament because I had to be like, what am I waiting on? Like, what are we waiting for? And this is a personal question that you have to ask yourself, and I think that's why I really love journaling because I like to see things written down, I like to write things down, and so that I can go back and look at it. It's my why. I always put my why. Why am I now taking care of myself? Why do I want to um take care of my health now? Why did I want to make these changes? So, yeah, it was affecting my health and well-being by just waiting. Um, I saw this little picture on Pinterest, and you may have run across it too. I wish I could um, this is not a visual podcast, but one day I will get there with the video podcast. But for right now, um, I saw something on Pinterest, and it was a woman, and she every stage, she first she was not pregnant, the next one she was pregnant, and then she had the baby, and then she um the baby grew up and she got older, and then they showed her as a skeleton, and at the top it said something to the effect of I'll wait until. And I was like, oh my goodness, that was so powerful because what I was starting to see, certain things I wanted to do, that would make me happy. I what what was I waiting on? I was waiting until I get so sick to where I couldn't enjoy it, and that did happen with some things, um, you know, but I just thought that was powerful, you know. Um, it's a myth that there's a perfect time, and I found with myself there's never a perfect time. You have to create the time, you have to take small steps if you want to create the lasting changes, but it'll never be a perfect time, not in this world that we live in. World conditions are only getting worse. Um, some of us are dealing with something so heavy we don't even want to talk about it. But there will never be a perfect time to take care of your health, and this is not me coming off as a know-it-all. I'm not trying to come off that way, but it won't. It'll never be a perfect time because as my children was were growing up, I thought, okay, when they get this age, this is when I'll do this for me. But guess what happened? Something in their life came up, and then I had to um, I chose to help, and then what happens to me? I get pushed to the back once again. I'm gonna wait until, you know, and this is not to be so gloom and doom, but people are dying, people are not waking up. Our loved ones, some people are burying loved ones as I speak, they're making funeral arrangements, and I don't know if it's I don't know what it is, but I I just know that for me, I've seen how my creator has taken care of my family, he's taken care of me, and he I serve a happy God, and he does not want me to be miserable, he doesn't want any of us to be miserable. So if it's something that I can do that's not going against his will, and that won't affect me negatively and won't harm me or anyone else, then I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it to better myself. So that perfect time, like I just realized it doesn't exist anymore. You know, it never did exist. But building wellness for myself, what that looks like for me right now, because it didn't always look this way, is moving slower in the mornings. Um, and what I mean by that is like giving myself a little extra time. If I have a client that I had it's a I have a client, and usually um, and this is on my hair side of things, and they come to my home, my in-home salon, I get up like two hours in advance. Like if I have a morning client, just to give myself time, I wake up, let's put it that way. And my process of waking up may be getting up, praying, doing my um doing some personal um studying, reflecting, stretching, drinking my water because I keep water right beside my bed. Um, and then just just moving slowly throughout the morning. Everything does not require such urgency, and it took me going through something to under to really understand that the rushing all the time was detrimental to my health, it didn't give me time to process things, my nervous system was under attack, and I think that a lot of us deal with that. A lot of us are going through things that could attack that are attacking our nervous system, and so I had to learn how to slow down. Even now, when I'm with my clients, I always tell them, you know, I'm sorry, it's taking me a little bit longer to do your hair today. Um I'm moving slower, you know. Um, especially when I get that diffuser going and that little I got a fountain that I added to my salon, and it's a small fountain, and just hearing that, and then a little jazz music playing in the background, and me and my clients are having a good conversation. I notice I'm going slower, but you know, what does that have to do with this conversation? It has a lot to do with it for me. So let me get back on topic, and this is why I have to have brief notes because I'll be all over the place. But hey, it's holistic life, it's a holistic life diaries. It's it's not scripted, like my conversations are not scripted on here. So, moving on to the next key point. Um, giving myself permission to start imperfectly. I had to do that, I had to give myself permission, and I hope that you can do the same. As we said, no perfect time, there's no perfect time to take care of yourself. There's not a perfect time to look in the mirror and say, you know what, you're beautiful. You are beautiful. Look at your eyes, your eyes can see. You have eyes that are bright and they're open and you can see. You have hands that move. You know, I'm telling myself this. You you may tell yourself different things, but looking into the mirror and just saying, Wow, you had another chance at life today. Some people didn't have that. You had another day to spend with your family, you're a beautiful person. Um, and I do understand self-affirmations, it can be hard to do, depending on it, could be culture, it could be dependent on what area you grew up in, how you were treated as a child. So it, yeah, or as an adult, but it doesn't, you know, I learned not to go by when I lose a certain amount of weight, that's when I'm gonna look in the mirror and tell myself I'm beautiful. Like I don't even care anymore. And what I mean by that, not saying I don't care about weight, um, but I really don't. I get dressed now according to whatever size my body is. I exercise for mental clarity, and it also brings me closer to my creator. Walking outside, I had a good walk today. I didn't have any music. I was just walking and looking around and hearing the sounds, and at one point I was like, okay, is something gonna come out of those woods on me? But it was still a nice walk. Um, just breathing in the fresh air. And as I'm walking, not once did I think about, oh yeah, this is really gonna be, um I'm gonna really lose some weight doing this. It was it was not on my mind, it was not on my mind, and before I knew it, I had hit four miles, and I was like, wow, and it just felt good taking that the deep breaths, and yeah, yeah. So I gave myself permission to start in perfectly in order to get to where I want to be, I have to move. And if you have a goal in mind, it's not going to just pop up and everything is gonna fall in place. You have to put the work in, and then I've also realized I've come to realize that I have to put the work in, no one can do it for me. I say it all the time, I know I say it so much. No one can do it for you, they can encourage you, they may be inspiration when you look at them or when you talk to them, they may inspire you, but no one can do the work for you. So why wait? You know, why wait? So if you take care of yourself now, your future self isn't asking you to be perfect, she's simply hoping that you'll start. So why wait? So I hope that I have shared some things that can be of encouragement because we all need it. I'm thankful for when I see others, and you know, watching them is motivating and encouraging to me. But, you know, I just remember people telling me when my children were younger, like, you know, just just be can I calm down, things are gonna be okay, you know. And I couldn't see it. Sometimes I just couldn't see it because when you're sitting in the middle of it, when you're in the midst of something, it's hard to see it. So I get it, I get it, I get it. But small steps, baby steps, and find something for you, find something for you because your children will grow up. Your loved one that you're taking care of, one day, sadly, they won't need you to take care of them anymore. And that's a sad reality. And then when that time comes, it's like, what do I have left for me? And I've known so many to get lost in that, in being so wrapped up in someone else's life that they don't see the beauty in their own life, their personal life, they don't see the beauty in it. So that's my little take on the importance of not waiting to take care of you however that looks, whatever that looks like. I hope that you can do something for yourself today. Take care of you, do some self-care, drink your water, don't forget to add a plant to your meals, stretch, take deep breath, get you a coloring book. The list goes on. Some puzzles, it can go on and on. But whatever side of the world that you are on, I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. Hasta luego.