When it feels like the world is crumbling around you, and so many people need help, how do you know who to help first? Who is the most important person to take care of? 

You might be surprised to find out it's not anyone out there.  Nope. The most important person for you to take care of is the person reading this blog post.

  *Hear this topic much more in depth by pressing the triangle play button near the top of this post!*

My inbox has seen a lot of emails lately from well meaning folks asking how to figure out how to help all the people, and also how to deal with the overwhelming sadness and frustration that comes with not being able to help everyone who is currently struggling.

A word of caution before you go out and try to save all the people: the most important person for you to take care of is yourself. 

Self-care is different for everyone...

Taking a break to drink some tea and relax in a bubble bath might be your thing, but that's not necessarily what we're talking about. Self care means a lot of things and it's different for everyone. Tea and bubble baths make really good graphics for social media, but those aren't things I would choose if I need to take care of me. Maybe self-care looks like dancing in the kitchen to swing music, planning a bigger garden, stepping away from social media, walking on the banks of a river, or deciding to remove yourself from certain commitments, conversations, or obligations.

...but "taking care of you" doesn't just refer to popular self-care methods

Self care has become quite a buzz phrase, but it really should refer to taking care of yourself in all the ways—physically, mentally, financially, spiritually—your whole person. While bubble baths, a glass of wine, or good music might be helpful in some ways, we need our entire being to be filled up in order to help others best.

The truth is, we can't always help....

I have had so many people ask me for flour and yeast in the last couple weeks. People know I do a lot of baking and probably have some flour and yeast on hand, and they want some of what I have.

Listen. There is nothing I want more than to give everyone in the world flour and yeast—or at the very least, spin myself into overdrive and bake for them. But if I gave flour and yeast to everyone who has asked me for it in the last couple weeks, I wouldn’t have any left here to use for my own family.

In a from scratch family, flour doesn't last that long. 25 pounds of flour lasts my family about 2 weeks. And if I baked for everyone who has asked me to bake for them (which I would love to do) I would use up the resources I have here—and then be in the same situation as everyone else who is looking for flour and yeast.

That doesn't fix the problem at all. It just changes who is dealing with it.

It's hard to want to help everyone. We're taught from an early age that we should help whenever we can, and when we can't, we're just being selfish. However, the current situation many of us find ourselves in has us questioning what is the best way to help in such an overwhelming situation when resources are short.

I have friends whose small businesses will probably not recover from this. That's not being dramatic—that's a level headed assessment they've made. I have friends who own businesses who are currently trying to figure out how long they can pay their employees, and what to do when they get to the point they can't anymore: do they let them go and hire them back? And will there even be an opportunity to hire them back?

You and I hear these things and want to help everyone. We want to send them scads of money that we might not even have. It's hard to want to help everyone and not know how to move forward. We just see there is a problem and know we want to fix it and overwhelm ourselves in the process.

...but we are most helpful to others if we help ourselves first.

So what can we do?

Put on your own oxygen mask first.