Self care is often recommended as the way to feel better, happier, and healthier. Yet it can all too often seem confusing about where to start and what to commit to for the most benefit.
In this article, I provide the top 6 tips I give my clients who want a simple, easy way to self-care. These tips naturally help you feel more emotionally regulated, soothed, happier and more at ease in life. This, of course, helps every aspect of your life including your relationships.
Why is it important to take care of yourself
Before I dive in, I want to highlight why self-care is so important. Of course, if you practice self-care you will immediately feel more emotionally balanced, and refreshed.
Furthermore, your body will have more energy so you can be more present and productive than before.
Finally, self-care is also incredibly important for relationships. In fact, it’s one of the least selfish things you can do. This is because a self-care practice allows you to:
- Regulate your emotions with more balance and skill,
- Have a soothed, grounded nervous system,
- The presence to truly listen to your loved ones which deepens intimacy,
- Feel more empowered which takes the pressure off of waiting for someone else to take care of you,
- Less resentment because you are prioritizing time and space for you, and
- Reduced conflict because you are more grounded, less resentful, and able to be more patient because you’re body is being nurtured
Self-Care Tip #1: Start with Baby Steps
To benefit from self-care, it’s essential to maintain your plan. We know that one walk, or one healthy meal, cannot sustain us in feeling lighter, energized, and more balanced long-term.
The simple self-care that you can commit to is infinitely more helpful than an ambitious plan that doesn’t meet your lifestyle or personality. Before my clients find the self-care practices they can sustain, they often are stuck in the common all-or-nothing cycle around self-care.
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make when it comes to starting self-care is being overly ambitious. For example, they may commit to going to the gym 5 days a week when they’re not in the practice of moving regularly. Of course, naturally, this change is too demanding and they lose motivation over time.
Instead it is recommended they start with a baby step around movement. For example, instead of going to the gym 5 days a week, maybe try walking for 10 minutes 3 days a week. When you can meet this baby step goal for a few weeks, you feel more confident and motivated. At this point, maybe you extend this to a 15 minute walk 4 days a week.
Building off baby steps is an essential part of building a sustainable self-care practice.
Self-Care Tip #2: Start with your basic needs
Your basic physical needs are the best place to begin for a self-care practice.
All human bodies have non-negotiable needs in order to be truly healthy and happy. These needs are for:
- Nourishing food,
- Adequate hydration,
- Movement which includes stretching,
- Sleep, and
- Rest
It can be very challeging to honor these needs though in a productivity obsessed culture. Yet, these needs remain and neglecting these leave us feeling much more run down, anxious, depressed and irritable than we would be otherwise.
The average adult needs between 7 and 9 hours of sleep. It is a top recommendation that you explore your personal sleep needs. Each body is different so please give yourself time to identify, and accept, your needed amount of sleep. You will know you have found your right amount of sleep when you wake up rested.
For a baby step change, try adding 15 minute increments of sleep a few weeks at a time. For instance, if you sleep 6 hours a night, go to bed 15 minutes earlier. That’s all that needed for now.
Self-Care Tip #3: Schedule time for yourself
If you’re anything like the clients I’ve known, you may in the practice of putting yourself on the bottom of your to-do list.
To break this, plan your self-care and put it in your schedule. Treat this time as if it’s an appointment with another person you can’t break. This is an essential step as a self-care practice is actually a self-care routine. You want to schedule the self-care activities which fill your cup daily. But remember, these don’t have to be time consuming. You can start as small and simply as taking a break to walk to the mailbox every day.
To start, schedule your baby step self-care in your planner, or the calendar on your phone. It may feel odd at first but this is a step that people often want to overlook, because it seems so simple, but then, they notice it’s not happening as regularly as they’d like. To support sustainable change, it’s helpful to plan for this self-care until it’s a natural habit.
Self-Care Tip #4: Do what works
When you are developing a self-care practice, some of the activities you do will really work for you and your schedule while others will not. That’s ok. You are in the process of experimenting to find your personal, and authentic, best self-care plan.
To identify what works for your self-care and what’s truly restorative for you, pay attention to what you naturally can maintain without a ton of mental effort. For instance, maybe no matter how much you’ve tried, you don’t like running but you do like taking long walks. Great, do what works to sustain your self-care plan.
If you are having a hard time committing to any practice, notice what barriers you have right now. For instance, maybe you have tried to meal prep a million times but this doesn’t work for you. Maybe instead you simply prep snacks like cut celery, a bag of nuts, or strawberries to grab when you need to stave off hunger so you can focus on cooking what you want each night.
Self-Care Tip #5: Be consistent yet flexible
Some days you won’t sleep well, or unexpected events will interrupt your self-care routine. That’s going to happen with even the best self-care plan in place. It’s important to give yourself grace and be understanding when this arises.
At the same time, your self-care practice is a routine which involves consistency. Try your best to show yourself love and attention daily. Yet be flexible. On days you have too much going on or are too tired, try to still do something kind for yourself even if it’s just going to bed early!
Some days you may be overwhelmed, or even upset with yourself, and want to avoid self-care. This is the time that you have to fight your urge to do nothing, and still do something small for yourself. For example, perhaps you have the commitment to meditate every day but you don’t have time for this. Instead, you can still be mindful and take four deep breaths before bed.
Self-Care Tip #6: Allow yourself to have authentic fun
Sometimes, when it comes to self-care, it’s common to feel pressure to do things “right.” You may feel like taking a walk, which you love doing, isn’t glamorous enough so you push yourself to do cross fit. Yet, the only self-care plan you can truly commit to is the plan that you authentically enjoy. Self-care is something that you find relaxing, and/or fun, regardless of what other people may think.
You may not be as new to self-care as it seems. There are probably already things you do for yourself that are caring, and enjoyable, just maybe it hasn’t been very consistent lately. Think about a passion of yours that you either infrequently do, or stopped doing, or an activity you want to try that seems relaxing or fun and schedule in a time in the next month to do this. For example, maybe you love painting but have stopped since you started dating your current boyfriend. You may make a plan to schedule time to paint on Tuesdays in this case.
Consider an activity you authentically love doing even if it’s been awhile. It could be dancing or crafting, for example. Once a week (or month), block off some time to nurture your authentic joys as this is what fills your cup up the most!
Just try your best
Congratulations – by reading this article you have already started to self-care!
Right now, please identify just one baby step that this article inspired you to take. Please ensure this baby steps honors the process of change and that you can incrementally add more to this plan in time.
If you feel inspired, please leave a comment about the baby step self-care you are implementing. I want to cheer you on!
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At Confidently Authentic, we are committed to genuine human connection. These articles are always written by a human being.
