When we hear the term ‘self-care’, often a specific picture comes to mind: rest, relaxation and indulgence. While long hot baths and mindful moments meditating with crystals may be the best form of self-care for some, for others, it could be something completely different.
What Is Self-Care?
We all live busy lives: managing work, family life, keeping everything running at home, catching up with friends. With so much to fit in, making time for ourselves just doesn’t feel like a priority. Yet self-care is an essential part of looking after our overall sense of mental and physical well-being.
Self-care is all about identifying what you need and taking proactive, conscious steps towards meeting these needs. Just as we understand we all have different needs when it comes to looking after, say, our health, or gaining a sense of achievement, we also have different self-care needs.
While we may recognise self-care is important, making time to actually look after ourselves can be tricky. How often do you put yourself last in your list of priorities? You may not realise it, but we each have self-imposed barriers that you need to take control of, change, and overcome.
Life coach Jenny Garret explains: “It’s often the case that when something does need to be sacrificed in life, women usually choose to sacrifice their own well-being and happiness. You may see ‘me time’ as selfish, a luxury that benefits you alone, but self-care and nurturing can benefit everyone around you.”
Taking the time to look after our own well-being can have a ripple effect. The calmer we are, the more ready and able we feel to support others. Discovering what kind of self-care works best for you is key to maximising your overall sense of well-being. We share 12 different ways you can explore incorporating self-care right now.
Give Yourself A Creative Outlet
Exploring your need for creativity can be a cathartic part of self-care. While many of us would love to feel creatively fulfilled as part of our day jobs, it just isn’t always possible to pay the bills.
Studies have found that participating in creative projects can lead to more healthy behaviours, with 79% of people eating more healthily after participating in group art projects, 77% engaging in more physical activities, and 82% seeing an improvement to their overall well-being.
Picking up a creative hobby can not only act as a positive outlet, but can also help you to develop further life skills, increase your confidence and self-esteem, all whilst meeting new people.
Get The Whole Family Involved
If making time for self-care is a concern, getting the whole family involved can be a positive way of incorporating well-being and relaxation-focused activities into your routine. This can set a great example for kids on how they can take better care of themselves, whilst still allowing you to make yourself a priority.
Embrace Boring (But Beneficial) Self-Care
Self-care isn’t all scented candles, relaxing bubble baths, and time for yoga. Sometimes, self-care is listening to a podcast whilst tackling that mountain of washing. Or taking time to clean out the car.
Life’s little annoyances can build up more than you realise. They can create an underlying level of stress and tension that can leave you feeling on-edge. Tackling these small (but significant) things head-on can help free up more emotional bandwidth. This enables us to take part in active relaxation. And allows us to truly sit back, rest and recharge once these tasks have been completed.
Hold Yourself Accountable
Making plans and deciding what we are going to do – later, tomorrow, in the future – is in many ways the easy part. Holding ourselves accountable can be much trickier. Life coach Nikki Emerton suggests:
“Once you’ve set your plan, the next step is to hold yourself accountable by measuring your success. For example, you could buy a physical calendar and give yourself a gold star every night you manage to sleep seven hours, or set yourself a goal to meditate/exercise for a set duration per day/week.
“Then, pick a date in the future and say, ‘I’m going to sleep seven hours a day until X date’ – try it out for the next seven, 30, 60 days, or whatever you think is achievable for yourself. When the date arrives, revisit your goal. Your self-care plan should always be evolving.”
By holding yourself accountable, you can track your progress, measure over time if your needs have remained the same or have evolved. This can help you continue to optimise your self-care routine.
Try Self-Care Podcasts
Podcasts can offer a great way to discover new methods of self-care without taking time out to spend hours reading or researching. Listening to a podcast can allow you to continue on with other mundane tasks, such as going about your morning commute or finishing off with meal prep, whilst still providing inspirational words of wisdom, encouragement, and enlightenment.
Try these 9 self-care podcasts to help you feel less stressed and overwhelmed. Or if you’re looking for a little boost of inspiration and motivation, these podcasts can help.
Get Back To Nature
Spending more time outside can help boost your mood, calm your mind, and increase your exercise. An impressive 88% of us head to the garden to improve our well-being according to one 2015 study, yet gardening could have a greater impact on our mental health than we may realise.
Nurturing and growing plants can help provide a sense of achievement. It can create new opportunities to meet others, all while allowing you to reconnect with nature and quieten your mind. If you don’t have an outdoor space of your own, caring for indoor plants can still help you to practice mindfulness, boost your productivity and increase your sense of well-being.
If gardening isn’t your thing, forest bathing could be the answer. Helping you to reconnect with nature in a relaxed, no-pressure way, spending time exploring your local forest can also help reduce feelings of stress, anxiety and depression.
Create Your Own Self-Care Toolkit
If you struggle to find self-care activities that consistently work for you, creating your own self-care toolkit can help prepare you with a variety of ideas, options, and simple go-tos whenever you need to decompress.
By pre-preparing a self-care toolkit for yourself, this can also save time and energy when you are feeling overwhelmed, as these options will be ready for you to choose from and get started with.
Consider What You Eat
Food can have a surprising impact on your overall sense of well-being, as well as your self-esteem and confidence. Reaching for fallback options for a temporary sugar boost can feel good in the moment, but can leave you with a sense of guilt or shame. As dietitian Jo Withers explains:
“When we are eating out of synchronisation with our bodies, some people find that feelings of guilt and shame follow and this self-judgement cycle can lead to food restriction, overeating or you-yo dieting which have shown to have a negative impact on well-being and health outcomes.”
Improving your relationship with food can help to boost your mood. It can reduce feelings of guilt or shame, as well as help improve your energy levels. Ensure you have enough unrefined carbohydrates (whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables) to sustain higher energy levels for longer. Eating at least one portion of oily fish or food that is rich in omega-3 fatty acids can help prevent low mood. And so can eating food rich in vitamin B (spinach, broccoli, dairy or eggs).
Try reducing your caffeine, alcohol, and sugar intake. This can help avoid spikes in your blood sugar and dehydration, as well as avoiding feelings of anxiety and irritability. If diet culture has you obsessing about what you can and can’t have, it could be worth exploring intuitive eating.
Get Active
Looking after our physical health can give a natural boost to our overall sense of mental and emotional health and well-being. It’s easy to find excuses to avoid going to the gym, yet the benefits of becoming more active are numerous. Scientists believe we can gain a greater sense of achievement, relieve stress, and decrease symptoms of mild depression by fitting in more physical activity each week.
If you struggle to fit exercise into your routine, these simple fitness inspirations can help fit around your day without taking time out to make big changes. Try finding methods of exercise that you enjoy or can be incorporated into other areas of your life. These can be two of the simplest ways to increase your activity levels. Plus will give yourself a much-needed boost.
Prioritise Sleep
Sleep can be an important part of a healthy self-care routine. It affects how we feel emotionally and physically. Making sure you get enough sleep can impact your ability to deal with stress and unexpected situations.
There are a number of apps that can help improve the quality and quantity of your sleep. Or if you are looking for some tech-free ways to improve your sleep, starting a sleep diary, decreasing your caffeine intake, and creating a mindful bedtime routine can all help.
Try Mindfulness
Many of us have a tendency to work on autopilot, completing tasks without giving them any thought. Mindfulness can help you to reconnect with yourself and the world around you. It can alleviate stress, helping you to become more attuned with your emotions, as well as your physical and mental well-being.
Does your commute cause you stress? Incorporating mindfulness can be a positive way of turning this stress-inducing time into an opportunity for self-care. Try these four simple ways to have a more mindful commute, or discover simple ways to fit mindfulness into your everyday life.
Set Boundaries
Learning to say no can feel daunting, but can in itself be an act of self-care. Through creating boundaries, we can protect our own well-being, better manage our workloads, and create a healthier work/life balance.
When we begin setting boundaries for ourselves and others, it can feel impossibly hard. No-one wants to be seen as negative. Learning to say no can help you to better value your own time and commitments. It can help to recognise limitations, and put your well-being first.
Bio
Bonnie Evie Gifford is a writer for Counselling Directory, Happiful Magazine, Life Coach Directory and Nutritionist Resource. We’re on a mission to create a healthier, happier, more sustainable society, breaking the stigma around mental health and promoting support for everyone, no matter what their situation.
Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash.
