Imagine life as a cup. This cup represents your emotional, mental, and physical well-being. Just as a cup can be filled to the brim, drained, or somewhere in between, so can your well-being. The concept of keeping your cup full is about nurturing yourself to ensure you have the resources and resilience to handle life‘s challenges. I’m going to explore the importance of keeping your metaphorical cup full, the strategies that I use, and the benefits it brings to the quality of not only my life, but my family's and my team's as well.
The Cup Analogy: Understanding Your Well-being
Imagine your well-being as a cup. When the cup is full, you’re at your best — energetic, resilient, creative, and ready to take on challenges. But as life happens, the cup may drain. Stress, responsibilities, and various demands can take their toll, leaving your feelings depleted, let alone your physical limitations. To maintain a healthy and fulfilling life, it’s essential to prioritize keeping your cup full. Life, disappointments, resentments, and even shame, can prevent you from keeping your cup full.One of the greatest lessons I have had is knowing when to extend grace and kindness. The insight with kindness; is that it’s never unending, you’ll never run out. . Even when there is a perceived slight against me, personally, or against my business, I choose how to respond. And thinking from a bird's eye view, I make the choice to not harbor disappointments. I’m not willing to carry these bowling balls around.
Why is Keeping Your Cup Full Important?
1. Resilience: a full cup acts as a buffer against life’s stressors. When your cup is filled with self-care, support, and positivity, you’re better equipped to bounce back from setbacks. And let me tell you the setbacks will come it’s a matter of when, not if.
2. Quality of Life: a full cup leads to a higher quality of life. It allows you to savor moments, experience, joy, and pursue your passions without constantly feeling drained. Pursuing your talents relentlessly is directly related to your quality of life.
3. Health: nurturing, your well-being is essential for physical health. It improves your immune system, reduces the risk of chronic illnesses, and improves longevity. Whether it’s 5 workouts, long walks in nature, or simply getting the first 10 minutes of vitamin D, naturally through morning sunshine, be intentional with putting your own health first.
4. Relationships: a full cup, enables you to be more present and engaged in your relationships. It fosters empathy, understanding, and stronger connections with others. When I meet new people I want to be able to extend to them being present. In times past, I wasn’t! And I was guilty of listening and reacting. If empathy is difficult for you, evaluate honestly how full your cup is.
Strategies for Keeping Your Cup Full:
My times past race car formula embodies prioritizing, self-care, quality sleep, nutrition, mindfulness, meditation, my faith practices, my relationships, and intimacy with my partner. Here are 6 steps for you to consider:
1. Self-care to me if we want to talk, beauty…. is Eyelash Extensions, hair extensions, and having two makeup bags, one at home, and one at work. Basically being high-maintenance so that on a daily basis, I can be low-maintenance.
2. Rest and quality sleep have taken me some time to figure out. My mind tends to race at night, and I have learned to ramble in a journal. Getting my thoughts out on paper releases them from my mind. A more restful sleep follows.
3. The quality of the food that I consume is extremely important. How can you eat processed food or fast food multiple days a week and have the audacity to expect yourself to perform optimally each day? Let alone achieving goals.
4. Mindfulness/meditation/spiritual practices: quiet time, reflecting on gratitude and sweet prayers bring me peace, knowing I am not in charge of all things and I’m happy for it.
5. Setting boundaries and learning to say no. I still remember when my daughter was in the fourth grade and I was hell-bent on making completely homemade horsey sugar cookies with homemade frosting and decorating them all myself. What was I thinking? I remember my husband coming out to the kitchen around 2:30 AM, squinting at the kitchen lights being on. He proceeded to put his hands up to add protection from the fire in my eyes. He had one thing to say, “martyrs, don’t win blue ribbons”. If you know you know. All I can say is he was right. The next day after school when I asked my fourth grader how much everybody loved the sugar cookies, she responded with a very vague "yeah, it was fine".
6. Physical activity, exercise! For most of my life, I have been athletic and fit. That is until I entered entrepreneurship, I’ve never abandoned myself so quickly as when I prioritized my employees above all else. Learn from my mistakes, you cannot want someone else to care as much as you do. Do the exercise, every single day its nonnegotiable.
The benefits of keeping your cup Strategically full is improved mental, physical, and spiritual health. Your productivity is better, your creativity in solving problems that arise is increased, you build even stronger relationships within your family, emotional balance for yourself, and extreme fulfillment. For the CEO, who earns millions a year, 75% of them are unhappy and unfulfilled. Keep your cup full, money will never fill a cup of sadness.
Know this. Keeping your metaphorical cup full is a work in progress of commitment to yourself. At times when you can’t take on a new project or finish your to-do list, instead of turning on yourself with disappointment, know that this is a sign that your cup of commitments might be full. If you desire to do more or create new things it is not because you are incapable, but that you may need to remove things in your life to make room for more fulfilling opportunities. Pursuing your passions, relentlessly in the right way will give you fulfillment unmeasurable.
I'm with you, cheering you on.
🤍Quinn