10. Self Care

A leader who can be characterized as exhibiting little self-care would be Georgina.  She let the difficult times get the best of her, to the point where she may not have been caring for herself in the way that she should have.  Instead of balancing her time between herself and the people she was leading, she spent too much time worrying about the problems and the people involved than herself.  Her spiritual life went downhill; she just wasn't setting aside time daily to be with God because it seemed like there was just too much to do and think about. This really caused her to stumble, but it took her a while to realize why that was. She also become too involved emotionally in the trials going on in other people's lives, that it was affecting her daily life. She began to worry too much what people were thinking of her and began to be discouraged.  She saw herself as a failure and began to become burnt out.  She wasn't able to give much because she didn't have much left.

An example of a leader who has exhibited good self-care would be Susana.  At the beginning of her leadership position things were going great.  She felt like she was really growing and learning a lot.  Then things started happening and soon there was more difficulty than she could have ever expected.  However, she knew that being in leadership would be a sacrifice, so she continued to press on and do her best.  She also knew that her time with God each day was vital, so she made sure that was a priority.  She did have times where things frustrated her and discouraged her, but she always had a peace that surrounded her.  She was always positive and striving to be better, and didn't dwell on the things she messed up on.  She continued to grow, even in the time of hardship.

Bad self-care is when the problems become self-centered and begin to affect how a leader sees themselves. It is when they lose focus of the goal and of the task on hand.  It is when they dwell on the bad and pass up the good moments.  These people are negative and down on themselves, thinking they are failures and spending too much time blaming rather than fixing.

Good self-care is exhibited by people who are consistent, even when life situations are not.  They are resilient and continue to have a good attitude even when times are hard.  They do not dwell on their mistakes, but strive to be better. They keep up on the things that are important to them and do not let their emotions get the best of them.

I can definitely learn from these examples. I think I posses qualities from both sides. I need to continue to grow in the consistency area and striving towards being better rather than things I can't fix.