The Hidden Benefits of Personal Time to Unlock Your Potential

Scheduling “me time” is crucial to your long-term health, well-being, and happiness.

Lorna Harvey
4 min readMay 21, 2024
Image by the author via Canva

Do you ever take time for yourself? How is your self-care? I needed to ask myself this question recently. At the beginning of March, I ended up in the hospital to repair an umbilical hernia. After the operation, I was in the hospital for six days. I did not watch TV, use a computer, or read books or magazines; I could only use my phone.

You see, I had gone to the emergency room because I couldn’t stop throwing up, only to find out the hernia was compromising my bowel. Because I thought I would only be there for a few hours, I didn’t take a change of underwear, a toothbrush, or a comb.

In my time in the hospital and the six weeks of recovery, I was confronted with the phrase “self-care.” Now, I had no choice but to take it easy. I couldn’t do very much of anything since I couldn’t lift anything over 10 pounds, and I needed to let my body heal.

The question I had to ask myself was, “How can I take better care of myself?” The answer, although easy, was confronting. So, I did a little research and discovered that taking “me time” is a reward and not a punishment.

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Lorna Harvey

I’m a blogger, writer, and interested in helping people find answers for living their best life. I also write on https://www.createthebestlife.com/.