 I wanted to take a moment to talk to you about how we give ourselves permission to be kind to ourselves and make time for the activities that help to promote our self-care. So I just finished teaching a session with carers about looking after their own well-being and this was a really good question that was put at the end saying I've got all these different hobbies that I would love to spend more time doing and I kind of get that they would be good for me but I find it really hard to give myself permission to invest that time in myself and I don't have a perfect answer to this but when we very much identify ourselves as someone who cares for others whether that's as a teacher, a parent, a carer and our time is often spent thinking about the needs of others before ourselves then I have found that one thing that can help with giving ourselves permission to invest time in ourselves and our own self-care is by cheating a little bit and reframing that time invested in ourselves as being of benefit to those that we care about so the example that I gave and I'll give again now is that having just spent the last couple of hours teaching my brain will be quite busy and I need to practice a bit of self-care create a bit of space for myself and I know I will be a better mum to my girls if instead of going straight up and being mum for them in the house I give myself half an hour and I go and play the piano or do some knitting or walk the dog or whatever else it is I need to do in order to create a little bit of space a little bit of separation a little bit of time to rest and reset before I engage with family life if I barrel straight into family life in this moment I'll probably be shouty mum I'll probably be irritable mum I probably won't be very patient or very good at listening or any of those things that I pride myself on doing well in my good moments so I have to give myself permission to care for myself first so that I can be the adult that my children at my husband my mother-in-law needs in their life right now so that's my hack is if you find it hard to give yourself permission to exercise self-care reframe it as how it's an investment in the people who you are better at dedicating your time your effort and your energy to and hopefully it will help you to give yourself a bit of a break