Day 26: If You Want to Love Your Customers, Love YOU First

Shawna R. B. Atteberry

I feel like a hypocrite writing this post. I fully intended to take part in the Customer Love Challenge, show my customers how much I love them, and I had big plans of releasing my first product: What You Didn’t Learn in Sunday School: Women Who Didn’t Shut Up and Sit Down. But it didn’t happen. None of it happened.

What happened was depression (I have clinical depression).  And it was one big, fire-breathing dragon. For two weeks I was doing good just to function, much less anything else. It got to the point where putting a load of laundry in the washing machine was an overwhelming thought.

When love doesn’t happen.

Loving my customers? Literally scared me stiff on the couch (where I watched TV and mindlessly surfed the internet). How could I love my customers when I couldn’t love me? And I couldn’t love me. After a couple of weeks, it was obvious no amount of self-care, chocolate, and TV watching (even the hunky CSI:NY TV-watching) was going to help. It was time to call my psychiatrist. We decided my body had adjusted to the anti-depressant I was taking, and we’re starting me a new one.

The next day I was reminded that depression doesn’t define who I am. We had a family emergency. Yes, I still felt lousy and depressed but a loved one needed me, and I was there. Even in the midst of that crappy, hopeless, apathetic state, I had resources I could call on and deliver the support and love that was called on. I also made sure my loved one was not forgotten. You don’t want to mess with me on this: I turn into a mother bear on the kill when I feel someone I love is short-changed and ignored.

Later it hit me that this is the way I need to feel about my customers.

What I want to do — free women from the religious crap that tells them they were created solely to serve men and be subordinate to men all their lives — need what I have to offer. I need to be their mother bear and advocate for them. I need to have the same protective fierceness for them that I have for the people I love.

This means I need to give myself a break. Although I tried to take care of myself while the depression ruled my world, I wasn’t very nice to myself. The internal self-talk was very negative and not loving at all. Which brings us back to the title of this post: in order to love your customers you have to love yourself. Growing up in Christian churches, I heard a lot about “love your neighbor as yourself.” A lot of times we forget those last two words. We can only love our neighbors, our customers, anyone as much we love ourselves. I’ve spent this month working on loving myself.

Next month I will be able to love my customers.

I doubt I’m the only one who had big plans for this month that didn’t happen. Maybe you or your kids got sick.  Or a pipe froze in your house. There are just times when something we didn’t plan on upstages everything else.

Each new day is a new beginning

This month I’ve been reminding myself of a life truth I learned from some incredible Benedictine nuns. The Benedictines believe in conversatio. Conversatio means a daily conversion: each day is a new beginning. At night during evening prayers, both accomplishments and failures are acknowledged. Thanksgiving is given for accomplishments and forgiveness is asked for failures. Then both accomplishments and failures are put to bed.

Tomorrow is a new day, a new beginning. We can start again.

If this month’s Customer Love Challenge did not go as you planned, let go of whatever threw you off track. Acknowledge it. Then put it bed. Stop beating yourself up: tomorrow is a new day; you can start again. You can love yourself, and you can love your customers.

What do you need to let go of and put to bed? Do one thing to love yourself today so you can love your customers tomorrow. Share what you will do in the comments below.