Self-Preservation: 4 Key Factors to Consider

What role does self-preservation play in our life, career, and relationships?

Your life can sometimes become overwhelming.

You have so many responsibilities and commitments that you feel busier than a beaver.

There is always:

• something to do
• someone to see
• somewhere to go

You get consumed with work, family, chores, activities, and events.

Then the hours, days, and weeks run together.

After a while, you find yourself physically tired, mentally drained, and emotionally frazzled.

You hit rock bottom, and there is no quick fix.

But protecting yourself from harm and preventing self-destruction is essential to your drive for success.

So, you must build and execute a personal self-preservation plan to aid in combating anything that comes against you in your quest to achieve.

When you set out to create and implement such an agenda, include these important factors.

Key Factors for Self-Preservation

Nurture – Develop, use, and care for your talents, gifts, and skills.

Monitor – Check your progress and verify that you are on track.

Re-evaluate – Continuously re-assess your whole being and goals, paying close attention to the changes in your life, desires, and surroundings.

Lifeline – Willingly seek support, covering, and help without fear or shame.

Nurture

Nurturing your whole being and pre-empting fallout relies on carefully selecting your commitments.

You must take the time to soul search and identify the true calling in your life.

You cannot fulfill every role that comes your way, but you can excel by using your gifts and talents.

And there is no need to compare and get caught up in what someone else is doing.

Focus on your skills to develop and use what is available to create the best you.

You will reveal your strengths and weaknesses and be better equipped to harness both as you strive to achieve your calling.

Believe in yourself!

If you don’t believe, it doesn’t matter if everyone else does.

It begins and ends with you.

Never be afraid to express and reach for that thing, that goal, that calling that exists only in you.

Monitor

Perform a self-check.

Stay in tune with your physical, mental, and emotional needs, goals, and commitments.

Monitor your gas tank and refuel long before it hits E (empty).

Otherwise, you may be broken down, stalled, and off track.

Monitoring can be as detailed as a daily diary/checklist or as simple as a morning meditation.

Either way, it should allow you to acknowledge your stress level and the degree of comfort or enjoyment you are experiencing.

Monitoring will also help you identify the results of your actions (e.g., what you have accomplished) and your progress on meeting milestones and finishing the tasks you took on.

This allows you to recognize when your plate is getting too full, or a task cannot be completed as expected.

Re-evaluate

When you properly nurture and monitor, you gain inputs for re-evaluation.

You give yourself the chance to re-assess your plans, goals, commitments, and expectations.

Life is ever-changing.

What you outlined a year ago may no longer be relevant based on new advances, developments, personal life events (planned and unplanned), or even a change in power (people in charge or who have the ability and resources to contribute to your development).

Through re-evaluation, you may find an easier path, identify a new idea, or realize that a new contact has the necessary connections to help you succeed.

Re-evaluation is not a license to throw your hands up and give up, it is an opportunity to adjust, re-tool, redefine and even improve your plan.

Conduct this evaluation as a full self-assessment, not as a negative activity where you bash your plans, activities, and dreams.

Instead, it should be a positive pursuit where you can improve your proposal and refine your objectives or simply confirm your original strategy so you can forge ahead.

Lifeline

Recognizing you need help and seeking it is commendable.

If, after nurturing, monitoring, and re-evaluating, you find yourself confused about your direction, depressingly behind schedule, upset at failures, over-committed and fearful of a fast-approaching avalanche; or you just find it difficult to find joy in your activities, then you need help outside of yourself to preserve your being.

It’s time to reach for your lifeline.

Proactively engaging your lifeline can stop the escalation of situations and prevent the need for emergency resuscitation.

Your lifeline can come in various shapes and forms:

• A person
  • A spiritual or faith leader who you are comfortable opening up to, knowing they will not only comfort you but provide honest feedback and direction.
  • A close friend or family member who understands and is familiar with your goals and dreams and your social/professional/familial roles and responsibilities will give you a frank and direct appraisal.
  • A professional counselor/therapist with no personal attachment can give you unbiased wisdom from which you make considerations and draw conclusions.

• Purpose-filled and inspirational media (e.g., writings, music, and video). These resources can give you a lift and aid you in sorting out your concerns to see clearly, so you can get past obstacles and thrive.

• Relaxation activities are a great way to ease your mind, rejuvenate your body and invigorate your emotional health. For some, relaxation can be as simple as taking a regular yoga class. For others, it requires a complete get-a-way (a vacation away from the regular crowd and setting). You can choose one of these or something in between. It doesn’t matter. What matters is finding an activity that invokes tranquility and removes tension or anxiety, allowing you to begin again – refreshed, recharged, and refocused.

Your Success Requires Self-Preservation

Although you know difficulties will occasionally come, your life should be filled with fulfilling experiences.

You should not simply aim to survive.

You should expect to live to your highest and truest level. 

Presume that your life will be prosperous.

Gaining and maintaining this peak life experience is an act of self-preservation.

Self-preservation requires you to stay vigilant and protect your mental, physical and emotional being by nurturing, monitoring, re-evaluating, and reaching for your lifeline without fear or shame.

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