Don’t Be an Empty Coffee Pot!

Do you ever feel like you’re so busy doing things for other people that you don’t have time for yourself? That you live to take care of others, and there’s not enough time for them and you so you always choose them? Maybe you feel burnt out but fear that the world will stop spinning if you stop giving… and so you just keep on keepin’ on?

I can definitely relate. A lot of us probably can. Having a servant heart is a beautiful blessing, but the cost is huge when it means we neglect ourselves. I recently saw this picture, and it hit home: “You can’t pour from an empty cup. Take care of yourself first.”

On the surface, this sounds selfish, but I’ve been learning a lot about why it’s so important. The reality is that in order to pour ourselves out, we must also be filled up because there is simply nothing left to give in a cup that is empty. We’re called to love others as we love ourselves… not more than ourselves but as ourselves… so how can we love others well if we aren’t loving ourselves? 

As we take the time to care for ourselves, we actually prepare to better serve others. But how do we do this when there are always so many things to do, places to be, and people counting on us? We often say, “I just need to learn to manage my time better.” However, time is something totally out of our control: we can’t speed it up, we can’t slow it down, we can’t repeat it. We cannot manage time; we can only manage ourselves. Doing this involves three steps.

1. Figure out what fills you up. Is it taking walks? Running? Reading a book? Hanging out with a certain friend? Finding twenty minutes a day when you can totally disconnect from the world?
2. Make these things a priority in your life. Realize how important they are and make a commitment to choose them, even when you don’t have time.
3. Create boundaries to protect these priorities. When we try to do everything, these priorities get pushed aside; we need limits to protect them. How do we do this when someone needs this and another needs that, when there are so many fun things happening and we don’t want to miss out, when “overcommitting” is our middle name? It involves learning to say no. This is not easy, but an author named Stephen Covey teaches us how: “You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically to say ‘no’ to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside. The enemy of the ‘best’ is often the ‘good’.”

What is the “bigger yes” burning inside of you? What is your “good” that’s keeping you from your “best”?

Creating boundaries and making space to occasionally choose myself before others are things I am not yet good at. But I’m on the journey because I know that it’s worth it, and I’m inviting you to take this same journey in your own life.

A coffee pot that is empty cannot do what it was created to do; one that has been filled back up can. Be the coffee pot that is full!