500 Words a Week - Help yourself before you can help others

I’ve been lucky enough to have gone on a few flights recently. Flying home for my wedding, and then flying out for my honeymoon. Something that we frequently ignore before take-off, either by reading, listening to music or sleeping in uncomfortable positions, is the safety demonstration. On the most recent flight I was on, unable to find a less torturous position for my neck, I decided to pay attention. When describing how to put on the oxygen masks in case of emergency the flight crew explain how you must first put yours on before helping those around you. Why this is, is that in a sudden loss in air pressure, if you try to help someone else put on their mask, you run a chance of you potentially becoming unconscious, then you are of no use to those around you or those dependent on you. You apply your oxygen mask first, then you have time to help those dependent on you without fear of you going unconscious.

I think we can learn something from this — help yourself before you can help others. The above act of applying your own oxygen mask before helping others doesn’t seem selfish. So why do we view sometimes putting ourselves first sometimes or ensuring we are ok.

As the saying goes you can’t pour from an empty cup. We can be guilty of pouring from our cup too much and too frequently at times. Never allowing ourselves the time and space to replenish our stores.

Over time I think I’ve started to understand this message. I’ve started to be more thoughtful about how I spend my time. I know for me, time alone replenishes my cup. That might be through reading, training or watching something. For me it just needs to be sometime when I can let my mind wander a little. For others this may be completely different. It might be having a drink with friends, it might be going outdoors, we each have our own little routines that make us feel better. We need to be unapologetic about them. We need to understand that we need this time for us to function at our best.

This is also a reminder to look in the mirror at times and evaluate how you are feeling. We can easily get caught up in the day-to-day motions. Before we know it a week, a month, half a year has flown by, and we can find ourselves just trudging along. We need to be aware of how we are so we can help ourselves. That might be just taking a little bit more time to do the things we enjoy or depending on the situation actively getting help.