Share. Share your time. Share your contacts. Your thoughts. Your drink. A sip here, a sip there. What’s the matter with being someone who shares?

What’s the problem with someone who says yes? Who wants to help. Who goes with the flow. Who seeks to be amenable. Who wants it to work for everyone.

It’s the shadow. The one that you can’t see until the setting sun dips close to the horizon line. The shadow that’s hard to move from until darkness sets in and you’ll have to wait for a new day. In all of the darkness, something major gets lost. You.

The creeping shadow of your unselfish ways wasn’t a problem at first. You were the one that was always to the rescue. You were the one anyone could call for help. You’d find a way. You’d find the time. You’d make sure no one was let down in the process.

But in all of the helping. rescuing. solving. Did you ever stop to ask: “But am I letting myself down?”

It’s funny how you don’t think to ask that until it’s too late. You’ve already put yourself last…for far too long. So long that you didn’t even realize you were at the end of your runway until you crash into a wall of tears. Shut down. Don’t have any energy. Feel uninspired and uncreative. And can’t figure out why everything, and I mean everything, is going completely wrong (or so you think).

It’s a shit cycle that begins, the letting yourself down one. You put everyone else first. Thus, nothing you need to stay sane. To stay you. To stay grounded. To stay zen. is done. So you don’t feel like your best self. Then you judge yourself for all of it. You’re out of the orbit of self love and into the vortex of judgement. Your energy is in cracks. Everything is a big deal. Nothing is going right. And you don’t know why. You have no clue as to why.

Halt.

It’s your only choice. Halt the process. Stop the cycle. Take a breath or 10. And realize what’s going on. Take sweet inventory on where your star power is and why – shining on someone else? Or taking care of the only thing that really matters. You are the center of your universe. You’re the sun to a lot of people’s skies. If you don’t keep that energy in check, there will be no power for you, and no heat for anyone else.

Start listing all the times today you shared your time when you should have kept it in a treasure box with a bolt. Think about the next week and how many meetings, calls, or moments are scheduled for others. What about for you? Is it proportional, favoring the y o u ? The cycle you’re in will bend you until you break. You’ll be so much for so many that you’ll eventually end up with nothing for anyone. Unless you stop. Your gift to the masses is the positively guarded time given to yourself.