Spoiler Alert: You Do Have Time For You — How to Get Guilt-Free Me-Time in 4 Steps

When you’re stumped about how to get more me-time, it can be hard to: 

• have a sense of control over your life, 
• feel connected to yourself
• Give yourself permission to rest without the guilt

Instead, you might find you constantly have issues with feeling disconnected from yourself and feeling overwhelmed by your all-encompassing schedule. 

Look no further, you’re in the right place! I created E.A.S.E., my tried & true, 4-step process to help you give yourself much-needed me-time based on my research and experience over the past decade.

We’ll cover everything from how to get a real look at the thoughts and beliefs keeping you away from reframing those beliefs in a healthy way. I’ll also share some things to look out for along the way, mistakes I made as I was figuring this all out, and ones I still see other creatives making.

Just follow the steps, and by the time you finish Step 4, you’ll finally enjoy the me-time you never knew you had without all the guilt and worry. 

Let’s do this!

Step #1: Explore the Story You’re Telling Yourself 

9 times out of 10, you’re feeling you can’t get any meaningful time to yourself because of all the other commitments and responsibilities that get in the way every single day. So let’s talk about it. What exactly is in the way? 

Before you can even dare to decide how valid all the things that keep you busy are,  you’ll want to take your time with this critical first step. You can take this step at any time, but I find it works most effectively in the heat of the moment — right at that moment you feel you need an escape from #allthethings and a little chill time to yourself.

So, the first thing you need to do is get clear on the things that are keeping you from a little relaxing me time.

•  List the activities that are in the way. These can be those pesky daily responsibilities that don’t let up or even the acutely stressful tasks related to project work. Which one(s) are you telling yourself that they’re keeping you from taking those self-care breaks just for you. 
•  List out the habits that also keep you stuck in doing. Maybe, for example, you tend to work right through the time allotted for your breaks. Maybe you feel pushing through fatigue is a badge of honor. Maybe you weaken your boundaries so you don’t feel like you’re letting others down. 
•  Reflect on how you feel when you do give yourself a break for me-time. It’s important to be honest here — noting both the positive and negative feelings associated with me-time when you do actually take it. 

For example:

A busy brand designer’s need to write the perfect copy for her website that everyone will effing love is constantly right smack in the way of her me time. 

Activity: Her goal is to write the perfect copy for her very first website that will attract her ideal client effortlessly.  

Habit: The habit that’s negatively affecting her me-time is that she continues to perfect and perfect her work and it’s hard to get out of that cycle and complete projects (especially her own). 

Feelings: She’s feeling lots of anxiety and overwhelm and the need to feel like normal again thus the desire for me-time. And in reflecting she also knows that she’ll probably feel so guilty for taking time to herself instead of focusing on her website project so she might as well not bother.

You can see here that although at first, it simply seems like the website project is in her way, there’s some deeper stuff at play like perfectionism and pushing through anxiety because of the guilt feeling.

What to look out for:

People want their happiness and they want it fast (with a side of fries). So many people skip this foundational step and then wonder why they’re not able to get out of worrying and stressing about all the “shoulds”. Don’t let that be you!

This foundational step is what will set you up for success later on as you move through the E.A.S.E. process to get your me-time—hold the guilt. And each step is a building block for the next, so yes, we’re gonna take things one at a time and in order!

Did you identify some of your blocks? Awesome sauce! Let’s move on to Step 2.

Step #2: Assess Validity & Truth in the Story 

At this point, you’re probably thinking ok, it’s not that deep. If I want time to myself, I just take it. Not a prob. 

You might even be wondering, “Why do we even need to get into the whole “feelings” thing if we’re just talking about taking a few self-care breaks here and there?”

LIsten up buttercup, it’ll all totally make sense—promise. What we’re doing is pulling this all together to create a profound mindset shift that’ll help you find that sense of ease you’ve been searching for but haven’t quite yet captured.

One thing that may help is to write it all down instead of trying to think through the stories at play in your mind and remember them.

Now it’s time to assess whether or not what you feel is in the way of your me-time is actually and factually in the way of your me-time. 

See, we get used to telling ourselves these convenient truths day in and day out and many times, when we explore them, they’re straw men on a windy day—they just disperse, poof. They’re made out of nothing but the habit itself of telling ourselves the same thing over and over. 

Let's assess exactly how that activity, habit, or other thing is actually in the way of your me-time. You can assess with questions like the following:

• How exactly is [this thing] keeping me from taking care of myself?
• Am I working towards a realistic goal that I can actually achieve in a reasonable amount of time? 
• Do I have realistic expectations here?

With our brand designer example, we can start to see how that big, in-the-way website task is not necessarily the issue. It’s more about how they’re going about accomplishing that task. There’s plenty of room to make the task more achievable without sacrificing their wellbeing. 

The reason this step is important is that it will help you break free from thoughts and beliefs that keep you stuck & frustrated with not being able to achieve goals you know you’re more than capable of achieving. It makes it easier to create goals that you will succeed at completing. 

Plus, you’ll have a method to track and pivot those pesky goals you can’t seem to complete that will increase your confidence and trust in yourself. 

Here are some tips to help you move through this step quickly:

•  Write or type out the answers to those questions. We often think that we don’t have to write things down but this keeps you from not only remembering the details but also from seeing those aha moments about the story running in your mind that might not be quite accurate.
•  Let go of the “shoulds” for a moment. Look at your goal/activity from that uniquely creative perspective of yours instead of how you’ve been told that things should be. With the website copy issue, for example, what is that person conjuring up as their idea of “perfect?” And where did that idea come from? What, instead, would feel right for them and the people they’re trying to reach?

What to look out for:

When I first started looking at the stories I was telling myself about what I needed to prioritize over my own wellbeing, I found myself trying to convince myself that it was okay to prioritize those things because they just really needed to get done before all else and completing them would make me feel good about myself.

I’ve also had the opportunity to understand first-hand other people’s limiting beliefs around the struggle to prioritize themselves over the things they need to do. And in the process, I’ve seen common mistakes people make that hold them back from giving themselves much-needed time to care for themselves. 

Many of them relate to this step:

• Instead of approaching assessing the stories behind those activities/habits/feelings in the way of your me-time as if they’re the enemy, try to approach them with compassion and understanding.
• You’ll be able to go a little deeper and gain more insight and understanding with genuine curiosity as opposed to trying to “fix” this part of yourself.
• If you find it difficult to tease out what’s going on behind what you consider to be blocking you from self-care, try taking a walk or doing some stretching—get into a self-care activity that releases the pressure to get things right. The E.A.S.E. method isn’t about “doing it right.”

Just keep approaching this with compassion, patience and kindness and you’ll be on the right track.

Step #3: Select A Realistic Me-Time Option 

Are you starting to get excited? I hope so. We’re getting to the good stuff. 

You may be feeling a bit frustrated, and that’s perfectly normal. Any time you’re trying something new, it takes a minute to process it. Try to be patient and stay with it. 

Next, now that you’ve unraveled some mental blocks, it’s time to take advantage of that fresh, open perspective and shift your focus to choosing a self-care activity that’s realistic for what you have going on in your day.

While you’re doing this, make a note of:

•  how your energy feels, 
•  how much time you want to dedicate to yourself, and 
•  exactly what time your me-time will take place. 

The clearer you are on what you’re going to do during your me-time and when you’re going to do it, the better chance you have at succeeding in making it happen. You’ve built the habit over years and years of ignoring that me-time for the various reasons you uncovered in Steps 1 & 2, and now it’s time to ease out of that habit. 

It takes gentleness, patience, time, and this bit of strategy.  

For example:

It took me try after try after try to get used to giving myself those me-time pauses throughout the day. And over that time, I discovered that the more gentle I was with myself when I didn’t make it happen how I planned, the easier it was to give it another try the next time…until those tries became habit.

And when you ponder our Brand Designer who’s website copy is blocking their me-time:

They can take some self-care time for themselves and put fresh eyes on the copy the next day or even declare it good enough as-is so they can make forward progress on their project after a nice ‘me time’ break.

If you want, you can download Savor The Moment. I created it to help you carve out those moments of calm and actually enjoy them no matter how busy life gets.

Click here to download Savor The Moment so you can get started. 

What to look out for:

It may be hard to zero in on the exact me-time activity that’ll be the antidote to feeling like life is running you ragged.  

What you can do is take a peek at Savor the Moment where I provide you with 16 fun and relaxing me-time/ self-care options to give you some ideas on where to start. 

Step #4: Enable Yourself To Reframe & Release the Guilt

This is the last step. Let’s go!

Now for the key step that turns it all around so you’ll actually prioritize yourself and enjoy the me-time you need. 

It’s so important to reframe me-time as something that is absolutely worthy of being a top priority so that when 2:15pm comes around and it’s time for your nature walk, you actually do it instead of working through the fatigue over and over until you find yourself deep in burnout and dissatisfaction. 

Here’s a few reframe options to help you start to release guilt and other feelings and beliefs keeping you from taking better care of you:

• “My needs are just as valid as the tasks on my to-do list.”
•  “Taking care of myself isn’t a luxury—it’s how I show up better for everything else.”
•  “Me time isn’t selfish—it’s how I stay connected to who I am.”

What to look out for:

Okay, the first time I did this to get out of constantly doing and never resting, I ended up singing one of the reframes as a song. My firstborn was a toddler and I turned everything into a song at that time to entertain him. Next thing I knew, one day, I turn around and he’s singing “meeeeee time isn’t seeelllllfiiiiiiish!” 🎶I laughed so hard! 

And you know what? It actually worked out.

Hearing it from my little one’s mouth did something to me. It made the reframe really hit home in the best way possible.  The biggest lesson I took from this was to not take it all so seriously—in playfulness, some real magic can happen.  

It just shows you there’s more than one way to release the guilt of taking care of yourself more often. So more than anything else, do what works for you.

Key Takeaways

Congratulations! You just learned how to get that much-needed me-time without sabotaging it. Follow the steps above to feel that sense of autonomy, of control over your own life and your ability to recharge and reconnect with yourself, instead of pushing through fatigue, hustling your whole life away.  

I’ve given you all my best tips, tools, and techniques to help ensure your success. Just knowing them isn’t enough, though. It’s time to act and get the results you’ve been dreaming about!

Click here to download Savor The Moment now so you can get started.