Y’all. I gave up a book this week. Earth-shattering news, right?

No?

Not for you? For me, it was HUGE. Like, I NEVER do that. It felt so weird and like I was cheating (at what? Who’s checking?), but also oddly liberating!

What does this have to do with self-care? Stick with me on this one for a sec – I promise you, it does. What sort of personality tendencies* do you have? I’ve got some high points for being an Obliger, with a little Rebel thrown in the mix. So, I’ve discovered it can be hard to not finish something that I’ve started, apparently. Which is where the giving up a book thing comes in…

(*This link is to Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies Quiz. It’s interesting and quick, and I don’t know her at all, nor does she know me – I just think it’s a cool thing to know about yourself! (kinda like the enneagram and all of that) I don’t feel like this locks anyone into a “personality type” or anything, but I feel that knowing these kind of things can be tools in our toolboxes of how we navigate the world and I use them for times just like this!)

You guys know I’m a reader for sure – and read daily. Usually in the mornings, it’s a nonfiction book on business or something related to patient care or growth or something like that and then later in the day, I’m reading what we affectionately call brain candy on my kindle. If I’ve got a few spare minutes, it’s highly likely that there’s a book of some sort in my hands. I think you get it, right? So starting a book – on my kindle or a real hold-in-my-hands-and-turn-pages kind – and then NOT finishing it can be tough for me. I’m not totally sure why, but it just is.

I have the coolest and most interesting patients in the world who teach me so much, y’all. I love when you recommend books to me (yup, keep those coming, please!), and one day, chatting with one of my amazing families, we started talking about struggling through books and they reassured me that it was totally ok and even good to just give it up if I wasn’t feeling a book a few chapters in. Cue shock and awe, you guys. Seriously. It was like a light turning on!

So, after reading 4 chapters in a certain book and just feeling blah and uninterested in it, I decided to delete it from my kindle! Whoa! All of a sudden, I was excited to read again – and back to reading at my normal zippy speed! This sweet little bit of permission changed my life, y’all , as crazy as that sounds! I honestly felt like a weight had been lifted for whatever reason!

To circle all the way around now… For me, reading is a daily act of self care. I start my day with it (most days!) and end my day with it (nearly always, even if it’s just a page). It is just part of my routine and life and requires almost no thought to just pick up a book and dive in. So, this permission to give up a book was HUGE for me. And, in actually doing so, was a lightening of a load that was basically invisible and (let’s be totally honest) didn’t actually matter in the grand scheme of anything, and so very freeing. So, yeah, in an odd way, giving up a book was a giant act of self care – it took away a small load on my brain! Crazy, right?! Well, there you have it.

What is one small thing you could give up or stop that would free your mental load a tiny bit?

xoxox,

Dr. Jamie