Weekend Check-In - Be Kind To Yourself

Find Some Time for Yourself This Weekend

When did you last do something purely for yourself? Not to recover so you can work better. Not to be a better partner or parent or friend. Just because you wanted to.

For a lot of people that question produces either a blank or a memory that is further back than it should be.

In this weekend check-in, Kit Mann talks to the givers — the people who show up reliably for everyone around them and have quietly stopped including themselves in the circle of people they take care of. The ones who have two standards: a generous one for the people they love, and a conditional one for themselves that requires everything else to be done first.

The Tao Te Ching has a lot to say about this. Chapter 28 describes the two modes available to a person — the outward, productive, doing mode and the inward, receptive, restorative one. The modern world has nearly eliminated the second. Rest is only acceptable as a means to more output. There is no category for the day that belongs to you not because you earned it but because you are alive.

You are not required to run on nothing. This weekend, don't.

Follow The Modern Taoist so you don't miss the full Tuesday episodes. And if you know someone who gives everything away and keeps nothing, send this one their way.