Niko Skorick 11 has many areas in his life that he needs to uphold. Finding ways to balance is never an easy task, but he continues working at it every day.

Skorick likes to refer to these different areas of his life as his gardens. He believes that you need to keep all of your “gardens” watered and taken care of equally. 

“There’s like this metaphor that my dad would use sometimes, that your brain and your headspace are like a garden,” Skorick said. “One of the gardens might be family, one might be school, and another might be self-care. You need to make sure you have all of those gardens watered and not paying too much attention to just one of them and disregarding the other.” 

Skorick has many different areas of his life, family, friends, self-care, and physical health, that pull his attention in different directions. He still has to remind himself not to overly focus on any one area.

“I just try to keep in mind everything that’s going on. Some people might want to write stuff down or make a checklist, but I just don’t work that way,”  Skorick said.

If Skorick does accidentally ignore a “garden,” or hyperfocus on one too much, he does his best to put it back into place as soon as possible. 

“Once I realize I’m doing that one thing, or someone else tells me, then I let go of other things for a little bit and then I pay a little more attention to that one thing, and making sure that I’m keeping that garden watered properly,” Skorick said.

Skorick has realized that self-care is the hardest garden for him to upkeep. He always wants to make sure that others around him are happy before he takes care of himself. 

“Self-care is the hardest for me to maintain, just because I like to make sure that other people are happy and other people are taken care of, and I tend to take that focus away from myself sometimes,” Skorick said.

Despite having troubles upkeeping self-care, Skorick has no issues with family. It’s easy for him to be around them and spend time with them.

“I think family is the easiest because they’re easy. I love my family and we all need to stick together no matter what’s happening,” Skorick said. “We all have to make sure we’re taking care of each other and taking care of ourselves and that I’m being a good brother, and a good son.”