This morning I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. June has been QUITE A MONTH.

Lots of good things have happened: my brother graduated from high school, my cousin got married, I’ve taken on a few new freelance clients, I’m participating in an online business course and I ran two 5Ks.

But a few bad things have happened, too: we’ve experienced some health scares in the family and we said goodbye to our beloved 12-year-old cat, Jasmine, earlier this month.

All that’s to say is that June has been way more intense than I ever expected and has left me, to be completely honest, exhausted and a bit dejected.

I knew things came to a head today when this happened: I woke up (thankfully) on my own without an alarm clock around 5 a.m. and realized that my laptop was laying on its side, half-open on the floor next to my bed. I must have fallen asleep with it on my lap and forgot to set my alarm.

I continued on with my morning, got ready and headed downstairs to enjoy my cup of coffee and write a blog post. It wasn’t happening. I felt completely uninspired, tired and annoyed with how my day had started. I looked at the clock and saw that I had more than an hour and a half until I needed to leave for work, so I went back upstairs, crawled into bed and fell asleep for an hour.

Totally unlike me.

But in this case, totally necessary.

As I was driving to work thinking about my weird morning, I came to an important realization: I haven’t been very kind to myself lately.

You see, sometimes we get so busy with our lives, careers, families and our passions that we forget about taking care of ourselves. We forget about the importance of getting a good night’s sleep or drinking enough water or even something as simple as scheduling time on our calendars to do absolutely nothing.

We put our wellbeing on the back burner. And that’s not cool.

You may be in a similar situation. Think about it this way…would you treat a friend the way you’ve been treating yourself lately? I know I certainly wouldn’t or I wouldn’t have many friends.

It’s time to start being nice to myself again. That means a few things:

• Getting back to my early bedtime- I have much better days when I get at least seven hours of sleep.
• Saying no to freelance projects and guest blogging opportunities that don’t excite me or move my business goals forward.
• Making time for things that make me happy- even silly things like sitting on the couch watching guilty-pleasure reality TV.
• Drinking more water and eating healthy food that makes me feel good.
• Not filling my calendar to the brim. Free nights and weekends are a good thing.

This weekend, I have big plans to be kind to myself by doing almost absolutely nothing. My agenda includes sleeping in without setting an alarm, quality time at the pool with an awesome book that was sent to me for review (101 Secrets for Your Twenties by Paul Angone), a relaxing pedicure and a first birthday celebration for my goddaughter.

Remember: you can only be your best self and accomplish your goals when you take care of yourself first. That’s a reminder I’m certainly planning to take to heart.

Are you guilty of being not-so-nice to yourself from time to time? Share your stories and thoughts in the comments below.

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