Long tenure

# Chapter 284

You can’t help other people if you don’t help yourself. - Masterminds

This is so true in the health, development, and learning areas. As Greg McKewon writes, you have to protect the asset and you are the asset. Its just like when you are on the airplane and they are doing the safety demonstration before takeoff, and they always tell you to put on your oxygen mask before you put your kids mask on. In other words this a standard principle pretty much across the board. No martyrs needed or wanted. Take care of yourself! Develop yourself!

So here is the non-intuitive part, the best way to help other people is to help yourself first. This is why it is non-intuitive, those who want to help other people, generally don’t think about themselves. They are like my wife, who thinks of herself last, not first. That is her personality and her posture on life in general. I have had to encourage her self-care very subtly over the years, so that she is not a vegetable destroyed from investing so much in others and so little in herself. “But this axiom sounds so selfish” my wife would say, yet it is not. If you want to be a lavish spring that bless other people for decades, then you gotta invest some serious mojo in yourself so that you have a reservoir in order to do so.

As we used to say in my little niche of the non-profit world, “you can become a medical doctor more quickly than you can reach in the field in our profession.” The preparation was intense. Unfortunately many didn’t continue investing in themselves and they just gave and gave until they had no more and then they quit. Now they aren’t helping anyone. Decide - you want to help and keep helping? Then take care of yourself.