Motivational speaker Kim Stroebel addresses WCS staff at the Warsaw Community High School’s Performing Arts Center Monday, Aug. 12.

WARSAW — Educator-turned motivational speaker Kim Stroebel was in town Monday, Aug. 12, to provide insight into wellness for both Warsaw Community Schools staff members, as well as the general public.

Stroebel, a 2010 recipient of a Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship grant, stressed the importance of occasionally looking out for No.1 as it pertains to an individual’s mental health and well being.

“(We) are constantly choosing something else,” she told a gathering of WCS staffers in the Warsaw Community High School Performing Arts Center on Monday, one day before classes begin in the district.

“If you don’t have one hour in 24 hours to give to yourself, no wonder you’re stressed out. You’ve got to make time for yourself, whether it’s getting up an hour earlier in the morning and going out on your back deck and sitting down with a book and a cup of coffee or taking a walk or meeting up with a friend or going to a gym. You deserve that.”

Stroebel heads up her own company, Stroebel Education, which provides professional development for fellow educators. She said “alone time” makes everyone more effective in their personal and professional lives.

“When you give that to yourself, you are better for the people around you — 100 percent better,” she said, recalling the selflessness of women in the generations that came before. She said her mother and grandmother defined giving to everyone but themselves.

“They were raised in a generation where everybody else came first, all of the time,” she said. “They never knew that it was OK to choose themselves. For some of those women, it caused problems later on. They became angry and resentful and depressed because they never got to take care of themselves.”

In some ways, Stroebel said, today’s women have challenges that their counterparts generations ago didn’t have to experience.

“So many women are now working full-time jobs, and it used to not be like that,” said, pointing out that with traditional gender roles and full-time employment, it causes many to wear a large number of hats.

“You get to be still who you are on top of those roles,” she said. “When you do that, you are a better parent, you are a better spouse, you are a better version of yourself.”