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Golden Hour
Finding Special Time for You
By Carol Sjostrom Miller
Your spouse. Your children. Your parents. Your job. Have you ever felt as though you have no time for yourself?
What if you had a "golden hour" – just one hour – once a day or even once a week, in which you do nothing but nurture yourself? Sound impossible? Read on to discover why you need to carve out this special time.
With all their other obligations, too many women simply don't take the time to nurture themselves. "Women are taught that their first priority is to take care of others before they take care of themselves," says Dr. Venetta Campbell, professor of psychology at Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles, Calif. "We don't give ourselves permission to be number one."
Leslie Levine, author of Ice Cream for Breakfast: If You Follow All the Rules, You Miss Half the Fun (McGraw-Hill, 2001), agrees. "A lot of people think that because they are so busy, they can't take time for themselves," she says. But it's because we're so busy that we need a golden hour. "It's one easy way of practicing self-care."
Of course, as any busy woman knows, finding a golden hour isn't always easy. You need to be aggressive in carving out some special time for yourself. "I don't find time," says Colleen McGargal of Detroit, Mich., a stay-at-home mom of an infant and a toddler. "I make the time."
McGargal has the right idea, says Campbell, who advises making an appointment with yourself. "And don't put it off until tomorrow," she says. Pretend you're going to the dentist. After all, if you had a dental checkup scheduled, you wouldn't decide five minutes before that you couldn't spare the time until the next day. "Treat your appointment with yourself just as you would treat an appointment with someone else."
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