In 2019, the self‐care industry surpassed $10 billion in revenue and is still growing steadily. Since the COVID‐19 pandemic, online searches for self‐care‐related topics and products have increased by 250 percent. The market is booming and apps, hacks, snacks, creams, bath salts, diets, juices and a mountain of other products and services entice people looking for help. Most of us are looking for answers to help us survive our lives a little better, avoid the burnout and exhaustion we feel, or discover diet options to lose the COVID‐15 we put on during lockdown. As conversations about mental health have increased, there's been a rallying cry to care for our physical, emotional, and mental well‐being.

But it's not working, is it?

Instead, we have an entire population feeling burned out, frazzled, and thinking spa treatments, bubble baths, and aromatic candles will somehow make our problems go away. Prior to COVID, we were already experiencing a public health epidemic. We have to ask if taking time off to pamper ourselves to recover from work is really sustainable and how we really want to live. After all, many of us feel like nothing has changed after taking a few days off; within a day or two of returning to work, our vacation often feels like a distant memory.

It took me two burnouts and losing both of my parents within a year to cancer before I realized that self‐care is a daily mindset, not something we do only on weekends to recover from a stressful week. Socrates introduced us to self‐care in ancient Greece as knowing ourselves so that caring for ourselves is how we can care for loved ones. The sense that self‐care is not just about us has been part of the human condition since we appeared on earth. Buddhism speaks about compassion for ourselves so that we can have compassion for others. We are all interconnected.

Self‐care is not just about self. It's about care.

When searching for self‐care online, millions of results come up. If you look for the official definition, we see self‐care mentioned in relation to healthcare, and as such, it's no longer preventive but rather sick care. Baths didn't cure my worries or ease the pain of losing my parents. Lighting candles never helped me forget looming deadlines either. Does that work for you?

I used to believe being overly stressed at work came with the job and wore it as a badge of honor. I never once questioned sacrificing my personal life to be successful. Nor did I question sacrificing my health to reach my professional goals. Like a lot of people, I accepted that work hurts. But after my parents passed, and I was warned that it was only a matter of time before I'd get cancer too. I decided it was time to reclaim agency over my health, my life, and my career.

Around the globe, we're seeing this played out in real‐time with the Great Resignation. People are fed up and tired, and they're leaving their workplaces in droves, thinking a career change is going to fix the problem or to simply rethink what matters most. Sure, money is one factor, but for most, it's because they feel overworked and undervalued. They're burned out and realizing there are more important aspects to life besides a paycheck. They want to reclaim their health and nourish personal relationships every day, not just from time to time. While this crisis seems to be a major issue, it's actually a positive thing that we're talking about it because that means we can do something about it.

Leaving work and reinventing ourselves shouldn't be the solution to preventing burnout and taking back our joy. We have to change the way we work. We have to rethink self‐care and what it means to be resilient so we are no longer forced to choose between our health, well‐being, relationships, or our careers.

The challenge we face today is not finding work‐life balance but cultivating work‐life quality. This is why we need to demystify self‐care so we no longer have to choose between work and life.

Are Our Beliefs About Self‐Care Getting in the Way of Self‐Care?

The world has changed, our lives have changed, and in recent years, our work has changed. Despite the disruption, our relationship and understanding of self‐care have remained the same.

• We think of self‐care as a retreat or something fluffy. But what if instead, we thought self‐care was for focused and committed individuals who want to perform consistently at their peak without burning out?
• We think of self‐care as a side‐hustle—something we do after work to recover. But what if instead, we thought of self‐care as how we work better, so we don't have to recover?
• We think of self‐care as something we do when we have time. But what if instead, we thought of self‐care as giving us time back because we spend it better?
• We think of self‐care as a list of perfect habits to do. But what if instead, we thought of self‐care as a mindset that helps us better navigate stress?
• We think of self‐care as something we do alone. But what if instead, we thought of self‐care as the key to building a better and healthier culture?

On and on these paradoxes go. On top of this, we think the cure for burnout is taking time off and our emotions should be hidden or suppressed. But we don't just burn out from working too much, we burn out from worrying too much and our emotions are the last thing we should ignore as they are what defines us as human beings and are the doorway to cultivating connection, communication, and collaboration.

When you look at these paradoxes and misconceptions surrounding self‐care and burnout, isn't it clear why self‐care isn't working for us? In fact, people think of self‐care as a luxury for those with money and time to spare, so no wonder it doesn't help us during stressful events. Or we assume self‐care is selfish. In reality, self‐care is about asking better questions so that we can know ourselves better, which is something we all need because we are all human beings, and we don't come with a one‐size‐fits‐all manual.

Consider that we haven't rethought how we work since the Industrial Revolution. Back then, people began working feverishly to compete with machines. Not much has changed, has it? We're still trying to keep up with the speed of technology and hack time by abandoning our humanity while leaving behind our self‐care the moment we get busy. Even when we're not working, we live in a culture that praises constant activity in our quest to do more, be more, and achieve more.

It's no surprise that we think of self‐care as something we do. But it's not something we do. It's who we are. Self‐care is not about fixing ourselves; it's about finding our way back home to ourselves.

Rethinking Our Three Core Relationships

We have three core relationships—the one we have with ourselves, the one we have with others, and the one we have with work. Traditionally, we separate these three relationships, juggle them, and do our best to prioritize them. But in our new world, the lines between these relationships have evaporated and are bleeding into each other like never before.

No matter how we spin it, when times get tough, most of us put our work first, personal relationships second, and if we're lucky, lastly, maybe spend some time on ourselves. By continually placing ourselves last though, we won't solve the current burnout crisis. Think about it. While we may like, clap, or leave supportive comments on LinkedIn when someone says, “I'm taking a self‐care day,” the reality remains that nothing is changing and it certainly won't improve if we keep thinking of self‐care as time off.

What's happening here? How did we end up this way? Of course, it's a step forward that we claim time for self‐care. But we're still operating from an old mindset about what self‐care is and seeing it as an escape from our day‐to‐day lives to recharge instead of taking charge and treating self‐care as the foundation for achieving our goals.

What we need to recognize is that no matter how hard we try to separate ourselves from our tasks and relationships, we are not separate. We—as individuals—are at the core of all our relationships, and this affects all aspects of our interactions in work and life.

Going back to when I was told it was only a matter of time before I got cancer after my parents passed, I knew I had to get in tune with myself. For several years, I had utterly abandoned my self‐care in pursuit of a career. So I set out to learn what my body needed so I could challenge the verdict and change my prognosis. I returned to school, learned integrative nutrition therapy, studied different healing modalities, went back to my mindfulness practice, and continued my Buddhist studies. More than anything, I wanted to understand not just what makes us sick, but also how we can reclaim agency over our health.

I need my body to take care of me as much as my body needs me to take care of it. We have an interactive relationship. We need to be a team. You and your body do too.

One pattern I saw emerge in my previous actions came from my Danish culture. I grew up learning that I was weak if I had needs or emotions. Besides learned behavior, I developed a mindset of people‐pleasing—always saying yes, never saying no—and constantly being of service while I ignored my own needs. Sometimes it made me feel like a martyr, sometimes the hero, and sometimes just fried because I still didn't feel like I belonged or really mattered at work.

There's a lot of buzz around servant leadership these days, which entails decentralized leadership, encouraging diversity of input, supporting people in growing their self‐leadership, and cultivating a culture of trust because people feel they matter. Many people I hear talking about it, though, interpret it as being selfless and doing everything for their people. This viewpoint, however, just leads to burnout and probably not a healthy culture either as opposed to the selflessness that comes from recognizing success is a team effort. When we have the mindset that being of service means doing everything, anytime for others, we are missing the point of what it means to be of service. It's not about who comes first; it is about recognizing how relationships work interactively.

Looking back, I could see how my lack of self‐care not only wore me out, but it also affected the people around me, my family and friends, my team, and even my quality of work. I saw how I cut corners to save time, how I had been short‐tempered and irritable, impatient, and unkind. This was more evident when I was tired, thirsty, and hangry (hungry and angry), and working in survival mode.

Back then, I had self‐care all wrong, and most of us still do because as a society we still have the mindset that to be of service, we must sacrifice ourselves. We must rethink self‐care in relation to work so that we no longer have to choose between being busy and healthy or having a career and a life. Fortunately, companies and other workplaces are now realizing they must also take responsibility for their part in changing the narrative so we can survive the future of work and build a better culture together.

Consider this: What could change if your goal is to have a healthy career and a successful personal life? How would you change your perspective and therefore, the way you choose to work and live?

It's time for us to reclaim choice so that we can make self‐care at work, work better for us.

Demystifying Self‐Care

By now, it's clear that we have to have our basic needs met. Let's stop debating in society whether or not we need fuel and support for our minds and bodies—we do. As we move along in this book, you'll also discover why even our most basic needs are essential to help us manage stress. The important point to remember is that we need to stop thinking of self‐care as something we have to do, but rather embrace self‐care as who we are and how we care better about ourselves, each other, and our work. After all, a healthy relationship with ourselves affects and cultivates meaningful relationships with others and establishes how we show up for work. The cause and effect of self‐care isn't just about looking or feeling better, either. It affects how we think, engage with ourselves and each other, and the decisions we make—and with that—how we live and work as whole human beings.

Left unchecked, we'll continue to take our bodies for granted and ignore the nudges and prompts it gives us throughout the day until something horrific happens, which isn't surprising. We don't grow up learning how amazing our bodies are, and we don't comprehend their self‐healing power or that they run entirely in the background all day long to help us function.

Our bodies want us to succeed and are a system that's more complex, intelligent, and faster than any computer. And they don't ask for much. As long as we feed it, give it water, take it for walks, perhaps a run, and make sure it gets some breaks, rest, and sleep, it shows up day after day for us. When you give it some love and care, it works like a loyal companion.

For this to happen, we need to recognize that self‐care is both the most intimate and personal relationship we have with ourselves and also the most interesting and amazing possibility we have to harness change and growth and build a better culture together.

But in order to tap into our human advantage, the first thing we need to do is learn to pause more.