Are you doing too much and still feeling like it’s not enough? Midlife is the perfect moment to pause, reflect, and turn your energy inward. Excelerated Selffulness™ invites you to stop over-functioning, embrace all parts of yourself, especially the ones you’ve pushed aside, and reclaim rest as sacred. This isn’t self-indulgence. It’s intentional self-care for midlife professionals ready to live with greater peace, purpose, and authenticity.
In our modern world, we sometimes equate a person’s worth with how productive they are. And we do it to ourselves as well. It takes courage and intention to choose something different. Instead of asking “What should I do next?”, what if we started asking, “What part of myself needs attention right now?” Or even more radically: “Can I be at peace with simply being, without needing to prove anything?”
That’s at the heart of Excelerated Selffulness™: the practice of caring for yourself deeply and without guilt, because you are the only you this world gets, and you are worth the effort.
Let’s look at what selffulness really means and how to practice it, drawing from the insights of four powerful books: The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford, The Science of Being Great by Wallace Wattles, and Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Their combined wisdom leads us to a deeper understanding of what it means to live a selfful life, one filled with presence, peace, and purpose.
Let Them: Releasing What You Can’t Control
We often expend enormous energy trying to shape the world around us. We want our partners to be more supportive, our children to take our advice, our coworkers to meet our expectations. But Mel Robbins reminds us of a simple yet revolutionary practice: Let them.
You can let them make their own decisions. Let them disagree. Let them live their lives.
Because “let them” is not passive resignation. It is emotional self-care. It’s choosing to stop draining your energy on things you can’t control and redirecting it to what you can: your own growth, your needs, your goals.
Practicing selffulness begins with boundaries, internal ones. You protect your emotional space not by building walls, but by letting go of your need to manage how others show up. As Robbins puts it, “Let them” is a daily practice in preserving peace.
When you practice letting others be who they are, without resistance, you free yourself to be fully you.
Shadow Work: Embracing All of Yourself
It’s one thing to accept others as they are. It’s another to extend that same grace to ourselves.
Debbie Ford’s The Dark Side of the Light Chasers invites us into what she calls shadow work, the practice of acknowledging and integrating those parts of ourselves we usually try to avoid: our insecurities, our guilt, our envy, our fear.
But here’s the surprising truth: this is self-care. It’s not always pretty, but it is profoundly healing.
We all have parts of ourselves we’ve hidden because we’ve been taught they’re unlovable or unacceptable. Selffulness calls us to open the door and let them in, not to let them take over, but to listen, understand, and love them into wholeness.
Ford offers a gentle, powerful question:
“What part of myself needs love and acceptance today?”
It’s worth asking every morning. Maybe it’s the part of you that still feels behind. Or the part that feels too tired to care. Or the part that’s angry about something no one else sees.
Selffulness is not about becoming someone new. It’s about becoming whole. When you welcome back your disowned parts, you stop fighting yourself. That’s when true peace begins.
You Are Sacred: Seeing Your Life as Divine Expression
Long before “self-care” became a buzzword, Wallace Wattles wrote The Science of Being Great, in which he offered a deeply spiritual view of human worth:
“Care for yourself as a sacred expression of the Infinite.”
That’s not a motivational slogan. That’s a worldview.
You are not just a mind to sharpen or a body to maintain or a schedule to optimize. You are a sacred expression of something vast and beautiful. The Infinite expresses itself through you: your kindness, your creativity, your laughter, your compassion.
Selffulness means we treat our lives, our whole lives, with reverence. That includes how we eat, how we rest, how we speak to ourselves, and how we move through the world. It doesn’t mean we become selfish or self-centered. It means we remember that caring for ourselves is a form of devotion, not indulgence.
Ask yourself:
What would it look like to treat my time, my energy, and my well-being as sacred?
It might look like choosing rest before burnout. Saying no without guilt. Giving yourself permission to be human.
Redefining Time, Rest, and Value
We come now to Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks, which offers a hard truth: most of us live with a pathological relationship to time. We’ve been conditioned to believe that unless time is being used productively, it’s being wasted.
Burkeman reminds us that leisure doesn’t need to be useful. We don’t have to treat our hobbies like side hustles or our downtime like personal development projects. Rest, joy, and play are not detours from life. They are a part of life.
He introduces the idea of “atelic activities”, things done for their own sake, not for any goal or outcome. A walk. A good book. Singing in the car. Sitting quietly with someone you love.
We live in a culture that can seem obsessed with goals and growth. And while those are valuable, selffulness asks us to hold space for being, and not always doing.
To be truly at leisure is to stop treating time like a transaction. Stop. Really hear this: Stop treating time like a transaction. Stop measuring moments by their productivity. And begin living them, fully and freely.
Selffulness Is Not Selfish
So let’s be clear: selffulness is not selfishness. In fact, it’s the antidote to burnout, bitterness, and martyrdom. When you fill your own cup, you show up more fully for others. When you care for yourself in a sacred, honest way, you teach others to do the same.
Excelerated Selffulness™ is not a luxury; it’s a necessity for anyone who wants to live with meaning, joy, and impact. And it’s a practice. You won’t get it “right” every day. That’s not the point.
The point is to come back to yourself again and again. With kindness. With honesty. And with curiosity.
Practicing Excelerated Selffulness™
If you’re wondering where to begin, here are a few small ways to start:
- Let go of what you can’t control. When you find yourself frustrated by someone’s behavior, ask: “Can I let them be who they are?” Then redirect your energy toward your own well-being.
- Check in with your shadow. Each day, ask: “What part of me needs love and acceptance today?” Write about it. Reflect on it. Let it be seen.
- Treat yourself as sacred. How would your day change if you believed you were a sacred expression of the Infinite? Try living that way, even for an hour.
- Do something for no reason. Take a walk with no destination. Sit outside and listen to the birds. Play a game. Laugh. Waste time on purpose; which isn’t a waste.
- Redefine value. Give yourself permission to rest without needing to earn it. Your worth is not measured by your output.
This Is the Excelerated Life™!
To live an Excelerated Life™ is to live with intention and vitality, not by doing more, but by being more aligned with what matters most.
Selffulness helps us return to center. To live with peace. To act from wholeness, not depletion. And to experience joy, not just achieve it. So let this be your invitation: Come home to yourself. Start today. Start now. And start to embrace your Excelerated Life™!
Take a moment to reflect. What is one thing you i-know you need to do to take better care of yourself?
Now, what step could you take to begin that today?
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Excelerated Selffulness™ — taking excellent care of yourself — is one practice for creating your Excelerated Life™, a life of flourishing and well-being, and a life of meaning, purpose, and service.
Read more about the Excelerated Life™.
Resources:
Burkeman, Oliver. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
Ford, Debbie. The Dark Side of the Light Chasers. New York: Riverhead Books/The Berkeley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998.
Robbins, Mel. The Let Them Theory. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, LLC, 2024.
Wattles, Wallace D. The Science Of Being Great. Holyoke, MA: Elizabeth Towne, 1910.
This blog post includes research information and suggestions provided by ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI. The content was generated with AI assistance and is intended to provide information and guidance. Please note that the suggestions are not official statements from OpenAI. To learn more about ChatGPT and its capabilities, you can visit the OpenAI website.