If you truly want to live an Excelerated Life™, self-care is necessary. When you nurture your body, replenish your reserves, and treat yourself with selffulness, you lay the groundwork for achieving your biggest dreams and offering your highest gifts
Maintenance – Care For Your Most Valuable Asset
“An empty lantern provides no light. Self-care is the fuel that allows your light to shine brightly.” ~ Source Unknown
Imagine trying to run a marathon without training, or operating a machine without ever stopping for maintenance. It might work . . . for a little while. But eventually, the body breaks down, and the machine grinds to a halt. In much the same way, if you want to live an Excelerated Life™, a life of flourishing and well-being, and a life of meaning, purpose, and Service, you must tend to your most important asset: yourself.
Maintenance is the third essential element of the Excelerated Life™ model, alongside Foundation and Framework. It involves intentionally caring for yourself so you have the energy, vitality, and resilience to pursue your biggest goals and make your highest contribution.
Once you have your foundation for self-growth in place and are actively building on it by setting BIG goals, making detailed plans, and taking daily action, you are beginning to live an Excelerated Life™.
The third part of the process is to care for the asset – your most important asset . . . you. If you run a machine in a factory without taking downtime for maintenance, you get a high return for a short while. Eventually, though, the machine breaks down, and now you face downtime as well as costly repairs.
In the Excelerated Life™ model, Maintenance incorporates the principles of Self-Care and Life Management.
Self-Care focuses on perfecting the basic self-care practices with Excelerated Fundamentals™, building Excelerated Reserves™ to allow you to move up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, from basic physical and safety needs to self-actualization, and practicing Excelerated Selffulness™ to take excellent care of yourself so you can give your best in Service to the world.
Life Management, which we’ll look at later, frees you from unnecessary complexity through the practice of Excelerated Simplicity™, helps you keep track of things so you have what you need when you need it through Excelerated Organization™, and enables you to tap into the power of Excelerated Habits™ to automate many of your Excelerated Life™ practices.
Self-Care
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs teaches that, to reach the higher realms of self-actualization, what we call the Excelerated Life™, you must first meet your more basic physical and psychological needs.
Self-Care ensures that you have a solid foundation from which to grow.
It begins by tending to the Excelerated Fundamentals™ of eating, moving, and sleeping. It continues by deliberately building reserves of time, money, health, and energy. And it culminates in living with Excelerated Selffulness™, the idea that taking excellent care of yourself enables you to give your best gifts to the world.
The Three Practices
In the coming weeks, we’ll explore the three practices of Self-Care in detail. For now, here’s a brief introduction.
(You can also dive deeper into related blog posts here:
Excelerated Fundamentals™,
[Excelerated Reserves™], and
Excelerated Selffulness™.)
Excelerated Fundamentals™ — Perfecting Basic Self-Care Practices
Good health is the cornerstone of a flourishing life. The fundamentals of well-being are simple but powerful:
- Adequate rest
- Regular movement
- Proper nutrition
Think of these as three columns supporting your life.
When you focus on improving all three, even in small, daily, incremental steps, you create a positive synergy. Sleep a little better, move a little more, eat a little healthier, and soon you’re spiraling upward into greater energy and well-being.
Don’t aim for perfection; aim for consistency across all three fundamentals. Step by step, these small improvements create massive long-term change.
Excelerated Reserves™ — Building Your Reserves in All Areas
Have you ever let your car’s gas tank run nearly empty and felt that quiet panic? Or faced an unexpected expense without enough savings to cover it?
When your reserves are low, whether time, money, health, or energy, your focus shifts from creating and thriving to merely surviving.
Building reserves frees you from the constant mental drain of scarcity. It gives you space to live creatively and intentionally.
A reserve doesn’t mean stockpiling excess. It means having enough: enough money to cover emergencies, enough time to handle life’s surprises, enough energy to give fully to what matters.
Building reserves is a daily way of honoring the abundance already present in your life.
Excelerated Selffulness™ — Taking Excellent Care of Yourself
“I don’t have time to sharpen the saw — I’m too busy sawing!” ~ Stephen Covey
Excelerated Selffulness™ is the practice of sharpening the saw, of caring for yourself in all areas: physical, emotional, financial, relational, intellectual, and spiritual.
You are your most important asset. Everything you do, everything you create, everything you offer flows through your physical, mental, and emotional energy.
Selffulness isn’t selfishness; it’s stewardship. By tending to your own needs and vitality, you expand your capacity to give, to serve, and to thrive.
Self-Care Is Non-Negotiable
If you truly want to live an Excelerated Life™, self-care is not optional. It’s essential.
When you nurture your body, replenish your reserves, and treat yourself with selffulness, you lay the groundwork for achieving your biggest dreams and offering your highest gifts.
Remember: an empty lantern can light no path. Fill your lantern daily. Protect your greatest asset. Shine your light brightly. Our world needs it; our world needs you. It’s how you embrace your Excelerated Life™!
Which Maintenance practice would give you the biggest boost? Could you improve your fundamentals? Build your reserves in one or more areas? Become more selfful?
What is one step you could take today?
Share your comments by leaving a post below.
Self-Care is the first Maintenance principle 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™.
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.