Edel Coffey: In a world of so many non-negotiables, the first thing many of us sacrifice is ourselves

A lot of the specified non-negotiables harked back to the state of childhood, where we allowed ourselves the simple joy of noticing things like yellow doors or red cars or birds or the pleasure of reading for pleasure alone

Edel Coffey. Picture: Ray Ryan

What are your non-negotiables? That was the question The New York Times posed to readers of its ‘Wellness’ section a few weeks ago, hoping to discover the varying ways in which we implement self-care in our lives, and how we look after ourselves, or make our days a little more pleasant. What are the little things you do to give yourself a little boost, they asked?

The results were published in an article soon after and the range of answers was as wide and varied as people themselves. One man said he ate a Danish pastry every morning to honour his grandfather who had fought in the Second World War and who used to eat a pastry every morning too. (I liked the sound of this one.) Another swam for an hour every day before 7am. Doing things before work seemed to give people a great sense of satisfaction, feeling like they had achieved something before the working day had even begun. Others said that early-morning time to themselves gave them the headspace they needed to plan their day and start it off on the right foot.