Take time for yourself this week.

Life is too short for you to miss it while you’re busy being busy.

I’m entirely serious right now: take time for yourself this week. Throughout the week. At least once each day.

Maybe it’s an hour each day to nap, or exercise, or listen to a podcast, or do something creative.

Maybe it’s only five to ten minutes taking a walk, or drinking a cup of coffee or tea, or meditating, or reading something.

Preferably this is time spent doing something that truly nurtures your soul, and not on basic self-care like, say, showering. Or grabbing something to eat.

Bonus points if screens are not involved, but if you’ve truly been wanting to watch an episode of something or spend 15 minutes uninterrupted scrolling social media and that feels like it would feed your soul, then I say go for it!

If you are about to protest that you can’t spare 5-10 minutes each day, then my friend, you are in dire need of scheduling daily breaks for yourself so that you don’t burn out.

Burnout is no fun at all.

And five to ten minutes of time to spend how you wish each day isn’t going to prevent burnout, but it’s at least a start toward you making other changes that might support or nourish your spirit.

Heck, maybe consider using those five to ten minutes (if that’s all you’ve got) to figure out how to claw back more time for yourself so that you don’t end up burned out—which can result in mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion. In some cases, it can be bad enough to result in adrenal fatigue, a compromised immune system, or another illness.

One question to ask yourself is is this a short-term or long-term situation?

For instance, if you are a student going into finals, then you might have to burn the candle at both ends and stress yourself, but it’s not a long-term situation. Or if a loved one is in the hospital for a period of time, necessitating you doing more at home and/or spending time at the hospital, that is probably a short-term or temporary situation.

If it turns out to be something else—where your loved on is in a long-term care facility, for example—it makes sense to reassess your visitation schedule so that you aren’t essentially performing a second (unpaid) full-time job on top of what you usually do.

And if you are, say, a worker who is putting in 60-hour weeks on repeat with no end in sight? Yeah . . . that’s a long-term situation. It’s not something you can do week after week without some sort of harm to yourself. And no, crashing for an entire day each weekend doesn’t equal things out in any way.

We are here on Earth to live our best and fullest lives.

I firmly believe that if you have a dream or goal for yourself or your life, it’s possible for you to achieve it. Maybe it won’t look exactly the way you think it will, or maybe it will take a long time to come to fruition, but let’s be honest: Most of us don’t even try to go after it. We just stuff it in a closet somewhere in our minds, convinced we can’t have whatever it is.

If you are thinking there are things you wanted that you haven’t been pursuing, then I am here to tell you that taking some time for yourself each day this week is one small step you can take toward that dream or goal. Because claiming time and space for yourself is the start of something much, much bigger.

If Future You has time to read each day, but you won’t even take five minutes a day now to start . . . then how do you expect Future You to have developed the habit? If Future You has a different job than you, and it requires a skill you need to acquire, but you don’t do anything about acquiring that skill . . . well, you can see how that would prevent forward progress on your goals.

If you think you’ll just wait until next week, or next month, or after this particular job is done to take some time to yourself, then I guarantee that you’re in for a rude awakening.

If you cannot make yourself and your well-being a priority for a few minutes today, what makes you think you will do it tomorrow? Or next week? Or next month?

Notice that I’m not even asking you to get into WHY you think you can’t spare that time.

Likely you don’t believe the world will stop turning if you take a few minutes, or an hour, or a day or week to yourself. And it’s likely that there is familial, societal and/or patriarchal conditioning behind why you don’t believe you can take time just for yourself. (If you want to explore it with me, hit me up for a 1:1 coaching session.)

Ask yourself: who does this serve?

If the answer is anyone other than you—your spouse, your child, your boss, your friend, your mother, the PTA—then maybe you aren’t living your best life.

The good news is that you can fix that. And it starts with you taking at least a little time each day for yourself.