How is your self-care bank balance?

Dr John M. Gottman coined the idea of an emotional bank account. 

Similar to our financial bank accounts where our goal is to have a positive balance and to build our savings, the same principle applies for an emotional bank account. I think using money and bank accounts, which are very tangible, can really help people make sense of what can be a vague idea, and help to ground people.

Let’s imagine you only have $300 emotional energy dollars to spend on any given day, you must be considerate of how you distribute them.

To begin with, you are encouraged to spend at least $100 on self-care.

The remaining $200 must be distributed amongst the rest of your day’s activities. Let’s say you have organised to meet an old friend from high school, you could allocate $100 into this activity. If the lunch goes exceptionally well, and you leave feeling rejuvenated, you might make a profit to go into savings, however, if your friend spends the entire time whinging and whining, you might end up spending $200 on your friend instead of $100. Was that a good investment of your precious time?

The idea is that if you let self-care fall by the wayside, everything else might begin to seem a whole lot more difficult! How are you spending your time….. maybe you need some boundaries in place?

Think of burnout as a consistently $0 balance bank account and nobody wants that.

How are you spending your time & self-care dollars this week?