My name is Erika – and I am a firm believer in self care. I never thought that I would be so into taking care of myself, since I’m pretty happy with who and how I am – until I hit a low point at work that made me uncomfortable and overall, unhappy.
As part of my self care journey, I’ve created this blog to tap into my creative side and give me another outlet of expressing myself. I’m hoping this is a space where you can come and read my stories, whether for entertainment or inspiration. And, nothing kicks off a blog then a good “well, how did I get here?” story. So, going back to that low point… what had happened was…
It was July 2017, and I was encouraged to do something new and challenging for my career – I took on client work. Now, coming from Operations, I’m very internal facing so I knew this was going to be a jolt to my normal day to day, and boy I was NOT wrong!
Without getting into too many details of what actually happened, there were key moments that stuck out to me that made me think: I cannot do this to myself anymore!
I was receiving negative attitudes: Granted work is work, and you should never let anyone else determine how you feel about it. But, I was doing my best (considering I was learning AND doing) and was receiving not nice vibes from the client, on top of inheriting an already tense client relationship. It was trying to put bandaids (me) on a gash that deserved stitches (someone else more experienced than me). It made me dread every email and meeting with those clients; I’ve never felt like that about anyone I worked with. It affected how responsive I was and how much I cared about the work I was doing.
I questioned every move I made: I was so used to being confident in my job and being responsive because I knew most of the answers people had questions to. And, if I didn’t know the answers, I knew who to go to to solve problems or create a new way of solving it. But, when a client is paying you, you’re ability to problem solve on your own time in the way that you want to doesn’t exist, and I had to constantly check in with superiors to make sure I was doing the right thing. Not feeling confident in my job lowered my self esteem.
Negative vibes + lowered self esteem = poor quality of work: As the two points I highlighted above carried on, I felt so much weight on my shoulders to do a good job, that I did the opposite of doing a good job! I slacked on my normal responsibilities, I waited full days to respond to client emails and I had no desire to do ANYTHING. I felt like a blob at work; going through the motions and barely getting by, which carried into my personal life. I made excuses of how busy I was and how tired I was that I slacked on cooking and cleaning and TAKING CARE OF MYSELF (and yes I do care about cooking and cleaning enough to not be happy about not doing it)!
This lasted for a full year! How I survived… I’m not sure, a lot of crying happened. And till this day, it feels like a dream. It took one final conversation with my mentor in August 2018 that turned things around for me. I was not the same person – my attitude was horrible and my work was lackluster. I had to be honest with myself to get to the root of my issue and find a way to turn things around.
That’s when I discovered self care. I watch a lot of beauty and lifestyle gurus on Youtube, and I started noticing a lot of Morning/Night Routines being posted. Naturally, I watched them all because who doesn’t love a good routine video? The more videos like this I watched, other video suggestions popped up about self care and self love. I became so into it, I started subscribing to Youtubers whose channels primarily focused on this topic. I was enlightened; and started my self care journey immediately.
A few Youtubers who I started to follow were: Carrie Rad, Sam Ozkural and recently Erin May Henry (I also was reading a lot of blogs on pinterest). I’ve gained bits and pieces of inspiration from those three Youtubers to figure out what were the self care activities that were going to work for me. You can click here to see my full Self Care Routine 🙂
It’s been about 4 months since I’ve been on my self care journey and it has made a difference in how I feel about my work and how I am at home. I’ve taken on a more positive mindset, which has allowed me to be more responsible, more confident and overall HAPPY. Even when things are challenging (and more challenges will come up), as long as I am putting myself first, I can tackle anything that comes my way!
I do want to mention that while work was affecting how I was feeling in my personal life, my personal life was extremely exciting at the time. I was traveling, went to a few weddings, I moved in with my boyfriend and got a puppy! But, what I’ve learned is that when you don’t take care of yourself and feel good about yourself, that mindset will cloud your mood on all the amazing things happening to you.
I look forward to sharing more of my stories like this and peppering some life advice along the way!