Lightworker is one of those new age terms with many different definitions, but one thing we can agree upon is that a lightworker is someone who wishes to make a positive impact on the world.
Often, they have knowledge generally beyond their years and are very intuitive. All while this desire to impact the world is noble in many ways, many lightworkers are overburdened by life in one way or another because of it.
Ironic as that may seem to some, this creates a need for someone with this predisposition to need a robust self-care routine. And with that in mind, here are seven essential self-care tips for lightworkers.
It’s Okay Not to Fit In
If you’re a lightworker, you’ve likely discovered that you don’t quite fit in. In most cases, you’re likely a loner and may feel aimless or that you don’t quite belong. You may even have points in your life where you feel frustrated that other people don’t get you.
So, if you feel as if you’re on this path, then feel good about your odd nature. Embrace that you don’t really fit in with others. It’s part of why you can see worlds and possibilities they cannot. While frustrating at times, it’s a big part of your gift.
Alone Time is Sacrosanct
Most lightworkers are what I call “faux-extroverts”. We find ourselves generally being able to interact well with others, people want to talk to us, we have an uncanny ability to read people, and we help people often without thinking about it or the cost of our time, well-being, or other responsibilities.
And sometimes, strangers divulge their deepest, darkest secrets whether or not you want to hear them. So, others are often drawn to us and people call us for help.
But we need to make sure that we take the time we need to recoup from this. This way of being can be very draining and often leads us away from the things that would bring us fiscal rewards and encourages us to avoid our own well-being.
We must keep in mind that self-care is one of the places that we need to work on ourselves. Opening ourselves up like this for other people is an amazing thing, but we must make sure that we can pay our bills and that we eat.
It’s important to find a balance. Generally, that entails turning off the phone, getting off social media, and just finding joy in a passion. People can always call you later. And if you don’t recharge, you’ll find yourself eventually becoming unhelpful. I know if I start to get snappy, depressive, and grumpy if I don’t have this time.
So, it’s become sacrosanct for me to take time for myself weekly—and it should be for you too.
It’s Important to Study Your Craft
While a lot of the work of a lightworker is somewhat intuitive or based on personal experience, it’s actually very important to study how to work with others, spirituality, philosophy, and any craft or art you specialize in. While you can work solely from your personal knowledge, you’ll excel so much more quickly and deeply if you master some of these topics.
In my case, I’ve studied meditation, hypnosis, NLP, coaching, philosophy, music theory, the law of attraction, esotericism, spirituality, the occult, psychology, psychological theory, marketing/advertising, copywriting, web design, sociology, political science, law, the humanities in general, writing, rhetoric, persuasion and consciousness.
While I don’t subscribe to all of the ideas in each of the disciplines above or even whole disciplines (e.g. I think law of attraction is misguided), each adds to my repertoire and understanding of the world. Plus, they gave me skills I didn’t have before and greatly improved my natural abilities.
Hypnosis and NLP, for instance, radically changed how I look at myself and others and gave me a toolkit to simplify and empower the changework I do on myself and others.
You don’t need to go that far, but I think you should delve into the things you’re passionate about because study and experience together aid you in your own self-discovery, understanding the world, becoming who you are, and give you valuable insights to help others and yourself.
Plus, many who walk this path find themselves in situations where running a business is one of the best options for making a good income and this entails quite a bit of expertise you will need to learn unless you have a good amount of money you can spend to hire people to do it for you.
Not Everything is About Study or the Mission
You must keep in mind that not everything is about your personal mission, study, or personal growth. Sometimes, it’s okay to do seemingly silly things or just embrace something without expectations. Embrace your weirdness. And embrace personal time: remember that it’s okay to have a life outside of personal development, study, and helping people.
It’s really easy to burn out if that’s all you focus on. And a burned out person is little help to anyone, including yourself. Refresh and recharge—and revel in it! And if you must feel guilty, only feel guilty for feeling guilty about this because it’s essential. Ironically, you’ve probably given more than one person this advice.
Nurture Your Artistic Side
Art is often a big part of the life of a lightworker. Not all of us are artistic, but if you are, embrace it. The artistic side is often one of our most potent and valuable gifts. So, make sure to nurture it. Plus, art often is a good activity to do for self-care.
Focus on Self as Much as Other
This may seem counter-intuitive to the idea of being a lightworker, but your life is as much about you as it is about others. A lot of us get so wrapped up in others that we forget ourselves.
And while this is an incredible advantage to us when we’re working with others, this is a rather detrimental way to live our lives because it always puts us in a reaction-based state of mind.
Many personal development teachers recommend turning off push notifications and having set times to respond to emails, text messages, private messages, etc. All of these distractions separate us from our ability to focus and spread our awareness in many directions at once.
It can be very easy to get so wrapped up in reacting to the problems of others or helping other people with their problems that we forget about ourselves. How many times have you let dinner get cold talking to someone about their problems?
Sometimes, it may seem like you have friends that need you more than you need them—and that’s okay. In some situations it’s true: people are attracted to lightworkers because we can help them in their personal journeys.
Yet, if our lives are about helping others and our own growth as a person and healer, then we are actually getting quite a lot out of these interactions: we’re learning more about the human condition, honing our craft, and getting the chance to see the other as a mirror into ourselves.
Not always, but a fair amount of the time, people ask for our help with situations we’re currently going through, have gone through, or will go through. So, there are actually a lot of things to learn from others—especially if they are mirroring us in some way.
And sometimes, it’s just an ego fantasy or a shadow issue to think that other people need us more than we need or want them in our lives. Sometimes, we lose sight of the fact that others help us or they offer companionship, an interesting perspective, mutual interests, and pure enjoyment. Getting lost in the idea of a quid pro quo or perfect balance in a friendship can be an ego trap.
So, be careful of this. It can also lead to resentment if we believe someone is taking advantage of us or if we feel we are constantly giving, but not receiving back. It’s important to look objectively at the situation and to recognize that we can pull ourselves out of situations that are one-sided or where others are taking advantage of us.
Likewise, don’t get caught in the ego trap of thinking that everyone needs your help. You don’t need to help everyone and sometimes people don’t need or want your help. One of the beautiful things about the experience of living is that we are all on our own personal journey.
Sometimes, we want a guide, other times, our experience is our own guide. This goes for us and for others. If people want our help, they’ll let it be known or we can ask. If people don’t want our help, we don’t need to help them. In fact, doing so may be detrimental to them or us.
Find Meaning in Your Trauma, Trials and Tribulations
To be a lightworker is in many ways to shine a light into the darkness. This often has a clearing effect, but sometimes only after shining a light on a whole lot of nasty, ugly, and hidden things. In the same way that flashing a light under the fridge shows us what’s there and allows us to clean it up, lightwork can show us the hidden and the ugly parts of life.
It’s kind of an odd metaphor, I know, but think about this for a moment. If you’re on this path, you’ve likely had your fair share of traumas, trials, and tribulations. And even if you’re not, life has a way of throwing obstacles in our way. Part of our journey may very well be to clear our own traumas and problems by shining a light on them, seeing them for what they are, and making peace with them.
One very straightforward way to this is to explore the pains we’ve had in our lives and make peace with them by accepting that they happened and to explore what lessons we’ve learned from them.
And this work will inform our ability to help transform others because we’ll have firsthand knowledge of how to overcome traumas. While this process will be different for everyone, there are similar elements that can relate to what others are going through.
With all that in mind, I hope you can still see that being a lightworker actually is quite a blessing, but we need to be more cognizant than others of our own emotional wellbeing because many of us will give far beyond our capacity to do so and maintain our own lives well. This is a boundary issue and something we must work on in this life.
Not figuring this out can keep us from achieving our goals and even lead to resentment, anger, or frustration at others and turn us away from who we believe we are. However, if we keep ourselves in mind and coach ourselves, we will often find that our lives can be joyous, wonderful experiences.
But if we don’t put the time and energy into self-care, our lives may be much harder than they need to be and we’ll ultimately be less help to ourselves or others.
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