05 Mar Self care lessons from … my coffee machine!
If that headline caught your attention then … good : )
It might sound a bit strange but … stick with me because I learned a few very important lessons from my coffee machine recently that I very much believe can provide benefits for all of us (even if you don’t enjoy coffee!).
But let me step back a bit to begin with …
I love my coffee. And I really enjoy making a good coffee at home. After my previous machine’s life came to an end after about a decade of solid service, I invested in a new coffee maker about 5 years ago and it’s put in a big effort, with almost daily use (often several times each day), with few problems.
But lately it had been showing a few signs and symptoms of wear and tear, or some sort of coffee machine unhappiness!
I knew (or hoped) it still had life left in it so I did some research, found a business that serviced and repaired machines like mine just 20 minutes away, and proceeded to book in for a check up and treatment.
To cut a long story short, my machine returned home a week or so later and … it’s now much happier. And I’m much happier. It’s performing so much better than it was which brings me to the point of this article.
Because those aforementioned signs and symptoms of poor health had crept up, slowly, over years, I’d unknowingly become used to them. We don’t always recognise indications of unhappiness or poor health because they don’t always appear suddenly but rather, gradually build up giving us time to just accept them.
Secondly, a good check up and service, with the accompanying treatment or fixes, can massively affect happiness and / or health in situations we didn’t even think required treatment or remedies!
What does all this have to do with happiness and wellbeing?
Just like my coffee machine we, too, can benefit from regular check ups and from “treatments” to remedy our illnesses and boost our performance. We might not always even know we’re struggling but an assessment from an expert can help identify where change / fixes might be beneficial.
Many of us already do something like this when we go for an annual check up to the dentist, or when we take our car in for a service.
What if we were also to do something similar for our mental health?