How to Put Yourself First: 3 Simple Steps
As a grown-up adult, I now know that putting myself last is a way to get attention for what I think has happened to me.
For as long as I can remember, I have put myself last. I always thought that I had a hard life and nobody cared about me. I wanted everyone to feel sorry for me that my life was so “hard”, so I acted out to get attention.
When I put myself last, I feel like a piece of s***. I feel like I just give myself the scraps. I want to prove that I am worthless and don’t deserve anything. I feel like I should just give up on myself – that I am a hopeless case.
I just want to play the “poor me” card and pull others in to feel sorry for me – that’s why I put myself last.
So, today I want to show you how simple it is to squash the behavior pattern of putting yourself last and start putting yourself first.
What Does it Mean to Put Yourself First?
Let’s be honest. As women, we are terrible at putting ourselves first.
We are masters of putting ourselves last by putting everyone and everything else before us.
When we put ourselves last, we feel drained, burned out, and like we have nothing left to give.
Ultimately, we make ourselves unhappy.
Part of the reason we’re not good at putting ourselves first is we don’t understand what it means. We don't know how to do it or why it’s important to make ourselves a priority.
So, what does it mean to put yourself first?
Putting yourself first is the process of becoming happy by making yourself a priority to feel good about who you are.
By changing your behaviors from putting yourself last to putting yourself first, you become happy – feeling good about who you are and only wanting to be you.
You feel connected, vibrant, and alive when you put yourself first. You slow down to consider what you need and what will make you feel good about yourself.
Putting yourself first allows you to be in control of your experience and feel deeply cared for like you are your own best friend.
Why is it Important to Put Yourself First?
We live in a culture and society that reinforces our human nature and how we are wired – we blame our external world like marriage, relationships, career, and children for why we feel drained, exhausted, and overwhelmed in our lives.
It's not our external world that causes us to feel so burned out and drained.
As long as it's our external world causing our experience, we have no control to change it.
We have to look at it in a new way.
It's our behaviors of putting ourselves last that cause us to feel so drained and overwhelmed:
Putting everyone else before us
Powering our way through life
Blowing through our never-ending to-do list
Never slowing down
Never checking in with ourselves what we need
It’s these things that make us unhappy, not our external world, which means we have control to change our experience. We have the power to put ourselves first so that we feel slowed down, supported, and cared for.
Putting ourselves first puts us back in control of our experience of life.
Now that we've covered what it means to put yourself first and why it's so important let's dive into the three steps to put yourself first.
Step 1: Acknowledge that You Don’t Know How to Put Yourself First
First, you need to acknowledge that you are not putting yourself first – that actually, you put yourself last.
The only way to change is to admit where you are – you can't heal or change the things you deny and suppress about yourself. This profound realization was one of the biggest catalysts for transformational change in my own life.
I never knew shining the flashlight on what I denied about myself was a necessary step toward freedom and happiness.
The things I denied about myself, like knowingly making choices to put myself last, kept me stuck and going around in circles. When I learned to admit those things about myself and take responsibility, my life began to rapidly change.
You can also transform your life by taking the step to admit you knowingly put yourself last.
How to Know You Put Yourself Last
1) You beat yourself up and feel bad about yourself.
Beating yourself up is a result of being empty and drained from putting yourself last. When you don’t make yourself a priority, you don't feel good about who you are, which leads to being critical of yourself and beating yourself up.
2) You are externally focused on doing everything for everyone else.
Your kids and husband come before you. Work comes before you. Friends come before you. Family comes before you. Before you know it, your calendar and to-do list are full of commitments and “shoulds” that leave you feeling resentful, burdened, and overwhelmed. You are dead last on your list.
3) You say things like:
“I'm completely tapped.”
“I have nothing left to give.”
“I take care of everybody else; when is somebody going to take care of me?”
“If one more person asks me for something, I'm going to explode.”
I came up with these from my own experience. These are things that I say when I put myself last. If you say or think these things too, it's a clear sign you're not putting yourself first.
4) You play the martyr in your life.
You’re not alone; I am also guilty of martyrdom. Playing the martyr means you do everything for everybody else. Then, you feel sorry for yourself that you have so much to do, and no one is lifting a finger to help you out.
I used to see this in myself with my husband. He would try to do something like wash the dishes or take the trash out, and I would barrel over him and say, “I've got that. Don't worry about it.” Then, I'd secretly be resentful and pissed for what he wasn't doing. Sound familiar?
5) You're always on the go, super busy, and never have time for yourself.
Staying busy is a surefire way to ignore yourself and a clear sign of putting yourself last. I had to see that staying busy was something I did on purpose to avoid myself. It was a way to keep myself sped up and never have to know what was going on with me.
Now you know the signs to look for so you can recognize your behavior and change. It isn’t about beating yourself up or making yourself wrong. It’s about accepting yourself for your shortcomings, so you can change.
Let’s dive into step two.
Step 2: Realize That Everything You’ve Been Taught About Putting Yourself First is Wrong
Here's a straightforward way to know that what you’ve been taught on how to put yourself first is wrong:
You’re reading this article.
If what you’ve been taught worked, you wouldn't need to read an article on how to put yourself first. You would already know, and the things you've been taught would be working.
This realization was a big a-ha moment for me.
I was doing therapy, yoga, and meditation. I worked out and tried to eat right. I took workshops. I was reading tons of self-help books. I thought all of these things were putting myself first and would lead to happiness.
I realized that if even one of those things had worked, I would have been happy.
So, here’s what doesn’t work to put yourself first:
Yoga
Meditation
Reading self-help books
Working out
Clean eating
Spending time with friends
Binge-watching Netflix and vegging out
It doesn't mean you can't enjoy those things, but they're not activities that work to make yourself a priority to feel good about yourself. I know how counterintuitive that sounds. We’ve all thought these are the exact things we need to do to prioritize ourselves.
Let’s explore why these activities don’t work to put yourself first.
Why What You’ve Been Taught About How to Put Yourself First is Wrong
I used to do everything I just mentioned above, and I still felt empty and drained. I was always resentful of the relationships and the people who needed things from me in my life, and I still wasn't happy – I didn't feel good about who I was.
Here's what I learned about why these things don't work.
We do them for the wrong reasons. We're externally focused on what these activities will give us back in return – I call this external value.
External value is the unconscious need to find and create our value – how we feel about ourselves – in things and people. External value deprives us of our ability to develop internal self-value.
When you do things for external value, it doesn't work to put yourself first.
Putting yourself first is simply carving out intentional time to spend time with yourself so you feel good about who you are. For putting yourself first to work, the only thing you can get out of it is you.
The choice to make yourself important by spending time with yourself doing something you love is where you get the benefit.
I want to use two examples to highlight why these things don’t work to put yourself first – yoga and meditation. These are two things I went all-in on, trying to put myself first.
When I was doing yoga and meditation, I told myself I did them because they allowed me to feel grounded in myself – that they helped me feel balanced. That wasn't the case.
In hindsight and being honest with myself, I was doing yoga and meditation for all the wrong reasons – to get something back in return.
Why Yoga Didn’t Work to Put Myself First
I did yoga because I wanted to look good physically. I wanted to be thin, toned, and look cute in my yoga clothes. In other words, I was doing it to get attention and external value.
Truth be told, I also had crushes on my male yoga instructors, and I liked going to their classes.
I wasn't doing yoga for me. I wasn't doing it to spend time with myself and connect with myself, even though that's what I told myself I was doing.
Why Meditation Didn’t Work to Put Myself First
The second example I'd like to give is meditation. What I learned about meditation and why it wasn’t working to put myself first was eye-opening. I see it over and over and over again with my clients who come through my happiness course.
The ones that meditate just like I did have the most emotional turmoil and are the biggest messes. Here's why:
Meditation is a way for us to suppress our emotions and not deal with our issues.
Meditation is also a way to look like we're doing something to work on ourselves without actually working on ourselves.
There is no resolution to our emotional turmoil with meditation since it suppresses our emotional state.
As soon as I was done meditating and went back into my life, all the effects and benefits of meditation went out the window as soon as life came along. The results didn't last; if they did, I wouldn’t have gotten shaken up by life’s normal ups and downs because meditation would have resolved my emotional turmoil.
Now that you know what doesn’t work, here is the final step of how to put yourself first.
Step 3: Commit to Make a Lifestyle Change to Put Yourself First
Learning how to put yourself first so that you can be happy is a simple lifestyle change.
First, you have to decide you want to make this lifestyle change and then commit to following through with yourself.
Lifestyle changes are changes in your behavior that create healthy outcomes in your life.
By changing your behaviors from ones that put you last to behaviors that put you first, you can be happy.
It’s really simple.
You only need to do one thing to make the lifestyle change to put yourself first – rediscovering and reconnecting with the things you love to do.
The things you love to do are the things that you’ve buried and pushed away once you became an adult and life took over.
These are activities you do just for you to spend time with yourself. They are a way to intentionally make yourself a priority to feel good about who you are.
<<Learn more about the things you love to do in this article - 3 Simple Steps to Feel Comfortable in Your Own Skin>>
If you commit to making this lifestyle change, you will learn how to put yourself first and reap all the benefits.
The Benefits of Making the Lifestyle Change to Put Yourself First
You might be asking yourself or me, “Why make this lifestyle change? Is it really that important?”
Here are the most significant benefits of making the lifestyle change to put yourself first:
You build a healthy relationship with yourself. By slowing down and prioritizing yourself, you cultivate self-love.
Making yourself a priority in your life makes you feel cared for and important.
Putting yourself first is the foundation of being happy by making yourself feel good about who you are and developing self-worth.
Putting yourself first is the cure for burnout and overwhelm.
Putting yourself first is the antidote to a dull, boring life. It makes you feel energized, vibrant, and alive.
Case Study
How to Put Yourself First: Kristen, 41 - Denver, CO
Kristen’s Transformation Story:
Kristen is a graduate of my women’s happiness course. She is 41 and a newly single mom. When she came to me, she was on a hamster wheel of constantly putting herself last to please others.
When she started my happiness course, here’s how she described herself:
I nod along and always say yes. I morph into who I need to be for others. I go with the flow to not rock the boat. I go along with things even if it is hurting me. I want everyone to like me no matter what.
After only 10 weeks of my happiness course, this is how she feels now:
I am tapping into how I feel and doing what makes me happy. I am checking in with myself to know what is best for me. I give myself grace to do what needs to be done. I make time for me so that I am energized and relaxed. I am happy and confident about the person I am.
Final Thoughts: How to Put Yourself First
When you put yourself first, it leads to a rewarding experience of life.
From this place, you can navigate your relationships and responsibilities from a full tank instead of always running on empty.
Doesn’t that sound like a better way to show up for yourself and the people you love and care about the most?
I hope you can see why it's so important to learn how to put yourself first so you can be in the driver’s seat of your life and be the best version of yourself – it’s the only way to be happy.
I have learned that everyone in my life benefits from me putting myself first and being the best me I can be. It can be the same for you in your life.
Now, I would love to hear from you. What was your biggest ‘a-ha’ moment or takeaway from this article? What struggles have you had with putting yourself first? Do you have any questions or topics you would like me to cover next? Let me know in the comments section below.
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Interested in Working with Me?
If you're ready to learn how to put yourself first so you can be happy and vibrant in your life, schedule a free get-to-know-you call with me.
I'm passionate about teaching women how to be happy and know who they are in my happiness course called Awakened Grace.
I would love to get to know you and see if Awakened Grace is your next best step for where you are on your path.