Today, I planned to write about practical examples of organizing your time and being better at time management.

This would be continuing of the last article What is time management.

But something else inspired me today, and I want to give you a practical example of self-care.

Last year I met Chantelle. She lives in the UK, a mother of 4 beautiful children. One of them is a special child. She runs her own business, and we crossed paths. 

Like me, she is also working with special parents and their children. She is doing an amazing job helping parents move through all the phases of special parenting.

Five months ago, we lost connection. I couldn’t find her anywhere, and I sent her a couple of messages. There was no response.

She called me two weeks ago and told me her social media profile was hacked, and she had lost all of her contacts and messages. Finally, the situation was fixed, and she saw my messages.

We had a casual conversation this morning, and it was amazing to catch up on what is new in our lives. 

I told her about my Kickstart to be in control of your live groups, Coffee with Maya, about my one-on-one clients, and about the Abraham Hickes’s workshop in Amsterdam, which I attended.

And when she started telling me about her, her business, her children, and what is new, I was thinking the whole time: wow, she looks so balanced, content, calm and happy.

I really enjoyed hearing about her progress and expansion in every way.

I mean, I respect her so much.

Being a mother of a special child is hard. And she has three other beautiful children too. They are young, and they all go to school. She is successfully organizing her life between giving so much to her family and developing a successful business. And at the same time, I can see how happy, calm and balanced she is.

I acknowledged her, and I told her that. I said she was the calmest and most balanced person I had seen in the last seven days.

Do you know what she answered?

She said: Maya, it’s because of the self-care. I really take proper care of myself and my needs, and that’s why you see what you see.

Bam – right on the spot.

Of course it’s because of the self-care. I agree with her that this is the reason for her amazing result.

I know this from my experience as well.

I’ve mastered the skill of proper self-care, and I have been practicing it for the last 4 years. I was great at self-care, even when Joana was with us.

Those were some challenging, stressful, and hectic times when I had both my hands full of work and care around Joana 24/7.

Without self-care, I couldn’t get to where I am.

And it is true for Chantelle as well. Between her four children, her beautiful partner, her business, and many other things, she takes the time daily to do something for herself. She is taking the time to deliberately balance herself to give the best of her to everybody else.

This is something you can learn. You can learn how to be wise enough to know when to stop, slow down and turn to yourself.

Because there are so many women out there who have less than 4 children, who don’t deal with the challenge of special needs, who don’t own a business, and are double more stressed and overwhelmed than Chantelle.

I’ve asked more than 500 women in my work -when I see how stressed, overwhelmed, and tired they are: What do you do for self-care?

And mostly, the answer is. Nothing. I don’t do anything about my self-care. I can’t find the time to do that.

And you know what I am also noticing? They say this with a sense of pride. I hear glimpses of pride for not allowing themselves to take care of their needs.

They are proud to say: I don’t have 10 minutes for myself.

What happens after 10 years? The challenges will grow, and there will be even more health challenges and mental and emotional challenges.

You should not be proud that you are so busy giving your all to your family and your job at the expense of taking a little self-care.

Self-care is not selfish.

Self-care is something you need.

Do you charge your phone every day? Yes

And how do you charge yourself? 

Today, I am writing this to tell you that a lady called Chantelle (her Instagram) lives in the UK. She has 4 beautiful children and deals with special needs of one of them, a partner and a successful business, dealing with family, and school, seeing clients in person – I mean it when I say she is doing a lot. At the same time, she is balanced, not tired, calm, with a clear mind, clear vision, following her goals, and to the question “how?” she just smiles and says: Well, it’s because of the self-care.

This self-care doesn’t have to be something that takes a great amount of time. It’s not like shutting down everything and being away half of the day. I am talking about one hour daily. Or a few hours a week.

This is why I created the Coffee with Maya group. The coffee it’s not the point. It’s a group where women support women, and they have the opportunity of one-hour self-care. Once a month, they get to come to space on Zoom for a one-hour self-care where they can just sit back and relax and enjoy the subject I prepared for them.

This is one hour once a month, and many women are messaging me; they want to attend the meetings so much but just can’t find the time. I repeat, one hour – monthly.

And it’s possible to learn how to organize your days and your life, so you create space for self-care.

I will talk in the following article about how you can do that.