If there’s one thing I learned about myself this week, it’s that I’d rather fulfill my obligations to everyone else before even thinking about my needs.

It’s Friday morning, and I feel like crap. I did not go to yoga once this week, I had a fair share of ice cream and fat in my diet and spent my days hunched over my desk cranking out deliverables. Yep, I feel like crap.

And I have no one to blame but myself.

If I had just taken the time each day to say to myself, “Chelsea, you’ve done enough for today. Now, it’s time to give yourself a break,” I’m confident I would be feeling much better today. But, in my epic quest to complete everything thrown my way, I just pushed through anyway. And now I’m cranky!

Last night I had a thought: What if I did something for myself every day? What if, instead of beating myself up and pushing myself to the limit, I actually gave myself license to walk away from whatever I was trying to push through to prove my super powers and just said, “Now, I think that’s enough for today. Sure, you have more you could do, but BLANK is is more important.” And that could be anything I want — spending time with a good book, Andrew, my dog Dexter — whatever it is, it has to be deliberate. If it’s not time deliberately carved out in these crazy busy days, then I just feel distracted from whatever I “should” be doing.

What I’ve come to find out moving from undergrad to “the real world” is that people aren’t going to tell you to stop whatever you’re doing — and you shouldn’t fault them for that either.

Can anyone say they genuinely make themselves a priority? That they do something for themselves everyday? If so — and if not, why?