If You Don’t Take Care Of Yourself, Who Will
Over working and working long hours has become a norm for Nigerians, where the work schedule for a normal working class individual in Nigeria, is Monday — Friday, from 8am — 5pm and Saturday 9am — 12pm or 1pm. S/he goes to church or some family event on Sunday, and by the time s/he is back home, the day is gone and so is the week.
“We push away fun and keep sleep aside, feeling we need to do that so we can make more money” a friend of mine said, “but at the end of the day, we end up spending the extra money we made trying to make up for the fun and sleep we missed, by buying expensive treats to put our mind off the fun, and paying avoidable medical bills because our missed sleep has weakened our body.” I added a bit to that.
Most companies and people think longer work hours mean more productivity, but in fact it means more stress, high levels of depression, loneliness and a lot more.
So in essence, we need to care for ourselves, we need to create time for every part of our lives; we need to create time for fun, for love and for rest. Because all that rush to make money or to complete that project will mean nothing if we can’t enjoy it.
If one falls ill or things get bad, the story will be along the lines of “he’s sick because he didn’t have enough time to eat” or “she’s hospitalized because she hasn’t been sleeping these past few days”.
Funny as it may sound, it happens. People get all kinds of illnesses because they haven’t been eating right. Illnesses like obesity and overweight are a result from eating too much and not working out.
Whenever I think of this topic, I remember this quote from one of my mentors:
“Even if you are living a nine-to-five life, you can make it an adventure. We owe it to ourselves to live life to its fullest in whatever we do. And the motivation to do this must come from within.”
Funny enough, I always remember the quote like this “Even if we live a nine-to-five life, we owe it to ourselves to live life to the fullest.”
If we don’t take care of ourselves, nobody will.
Originally published at spracks.com on March 7, 2016.
