As the new year begins, I’m convinced that 2025 is bound to be one of the best, if we allow past years’ events—good and bad—to remain memories and not barriers to a good new year. I’m sure everyone who serves also puts themselves last, but let’s allow 2025 to be the year we start to take care of ourselves.
People throw around the term self-care, but often we don’t understand the importance of caring for ourselves. Self-care is not selfish! Self-care is essential to being able to continue serving at a capacity we are comfortable with each day. I heard the best analogy recently. A speaker explained that others are supposed to receive what runs out of your cup, but for them to get the best, your cup must first be full. If your cup is not full, then you are not capable of giving other people anything. So, the goal is not to just fill your cup, the goal is to make sure your cup is overflowing so others can have their cup filled as well.
In order to keep your cup overflowing, there are some essential things you have to do. First, you need to understand that you are important! You must speak those positive affirmations to yourself each and every day, all day long. One technique I use is a positive affirmation sticky note activity. I purchase a package of sticky notes (and depending on my mood it may need to be a large number of sticky notes). I write positive affirmations and I stick them everywhere. When I look around, I am reminded that I am enough, I am beautiful, I am worthy and I am going to be successful. I say those things out loud because I have learned that what we speak is what our mind believes.
At one point in my life, you might have called me a “Negative Nancy.” I was always looking at the cup as half-empty. Sometimes I joked that I didn’t even have a cup. When I changed the way I thought, I began to look for the positive in every situation. No longer was I exhausted, I just needed to refuel for battle tomorrow. No longer was I unworthy, but I had worked hard on this journey of life and if the door closed another would soon open in its place. No longer was I undeserving of God’s gifts, but I was deserving of every gift He put inside me to help others.
This new year, we are also not going to overwork. Most of us have a 40-hour-a-week job; however, we find ourselves working 55 to 60 hours a week, neglecting those things that are most important to us. I tell my employees to take care of themselves and their families first. We discuss the importance of showing up for their loved ones. You might be replaceable at work, but your family can never replace you. So, use your vacation time, sleep in, have coffee in your pajamas, enjoy breakfast with friends or just do something you enjoy.
Having a servant’s heart in 2025 does not mean that you neglect yourself. Two years ago, I began serving on seven different nonprofit boards. I truly believed I could be the glue that held everything together. I went to meetings every evening, Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. I missed out on so many important things with my child—things I’ll never be able to get back. I don’t have regrets because I learned lessons that allowed me to bless others during that season. But seasons change, and 2025 stands to be one of the greatest years we’ve ever experienced because we have the opportunity to try new things. For me, 2024 was full of a plethora of feelings, experiences, victories, failures and thoughts of inadequacy, but in 2025 I am coming back. Coming back in a big way and I hope you will join me. We deserve to be with our families, watch our loved ones grow, and pour ourselves only into the things that feed our souls.
The Call in the new year is to determine 10 things that you deserve this year, give yourself those things, and then start another list of 10. You are deserving of all the great things you want. Let 2025 be the year you do things you have dreamed of for years. Take that cruise, write that book, go for that promotion. But more importantly, position yourself for an adventure you will never forget.
