Have you often wished that in the midst of your busy and stressful life, there could be someone who would take care of you?
Someone who knows your deepest secrets, yet doesn’t judge. Someone who understands you, knows your strengths and weaknesses, joys and sorrows, what makes you smile or tear up, can help you to relax, have fun, enjoy a hobby, a long walk or a piece of chocolate cake?
That someone is very much there in your life. Perhaps you haven’t noticed them, or paid attention to them lately. Maybe you’ve ignored them and chosen others instead?
That someone is YOU!
You are your own best friend, and till you acknowledge this, begin to love yourself and give yourself the permission to do so, you cannot care for yourself. It is a proven fact that people who cannot care for themselves can never truly care for another person.
What Is Self Care and Why Is It Important?
Just as your body needs proper attention and nutrition, your mind and your entire system require them too. Nutrition in this case would be the ways in which you find personal fulfillment. Once you discover this route, you will find yourself more motivated, energized and content.
Self care in short is making the time and effort to do things that improve your physical, emotional, spiritual, environmental, social and mental health. Most people assume that it’s an easy and logical thing to do, but often when you are in a relationship crisis, or going through life challenges, you tend to focus on other people more than yourself. Days, months and years go by without tending to your own needs, and unfortunately, you are setting yourself up for disaster.
You fail to realize that you have limits. Your mind and body give you strong signals – anxiety, depression, fears, worry, aches and pains, sleep disturbance, relationship breakdown, feeling overwhelmed, socially isolated, irritable, tired and lonely. You may experience memory loss, lack of focus and concentration, and difficulty in making decisions. Some people take comfort in excessive eating or drinking, smoking or substance abuse. They don’t enjoy the things they used to, and cut themselves off from friends and relatives.
Self care means you don’t wait for these signs and symptoms – instead you take proactive measures to ensure that you attend to yourself equally well.
You may feel that self care is selfishness. Putting yourself first is seen in most cultures and traditions as being self absorbed and self centered. However, self care is a completely different concept. It simply means consciously doing things that you know will relax you, eating the right foods, staying socially connected and avoiding negative influences.
Find more information here: https://restanddigest.com.au/blogs/self-care/self-care-ideas
5 Great Self Care Ideas
- Listen To Your Body: Pay attention to what your body tells you. It can signal that you’re hungry, thirsty, tired, anxious, worried, afraid and more. The body has its own wisdom, but you need to tune in to the signals to get the benefits. Eat the right food at the right times, stay hydrated, get enough exercise and sleep. Choose activities that you enjoy to get the serotonin and other good hormones flowing. Get organized and make a schedule so that you can fit these into your lifestyle.
- Reflect and Analyze: Make some Me-Time for yourself to figure out the things that matter. Taking stock of your life doesn’t mean that you focus on your failures or disappointments. List the things you achieved, no matter how trivial. Ask yourself important questions, and map out a “Circle of Support” that reminds you about how much help you can get when you need it. Who are the important people in your life and why? What are the things you need to do to maintain your peace of mind? Learn how to say “No” gracefully and firmly, and set boundaries in relationships. Work on your sense of self-esteem and recognize how and why people may not respect you.
- Practice Gratitude: Recognize and acknowledge the experiences and people that make you happy. Positive feelings towards nature, people or art can help you get over many negative thoughts. Don’t be afraid to take emotional risks, or try new things. Brush aside apprehensions about age, or that you may look foolish. Record your thoughts in a journal and express your deepest feelings in writing. Journaling is one of the ways to document what makes you feel good or bad, and something that affected you deeply at the time appears inconsequential when you read it later. This puts things in perspective and helps you to gain more confidence in yourself.
- Seek Professional Help: It is important to realize that you cannot solve every problem yourself. If you’re a caregiver, burnout is a real and imminent danger at some point in the journey. You may be going through a relationship breakdown, career problems, financial crisis or health issues. Talking to loved ones or a trusted friend is a great idea, but at some point, they may not be able to give you professional advice on how to cope. You need to accept that a trained and experienced counselor or psychologist can give you the right support, and this may include a short regimen of prescription medications.
- Goal Setting: Drifting through life may sound romantic, but it rarely works when you need a firm anchor. Once you become financially independent, set financial goals that will help you to tide over hard times, and get the things you want in life. Whether your goal is to purchase a home, travel, give to charity, buy jewelry or set up your own business, unless you organize your finances well, it results in anxiety and chaos. Similarly, you need to organize your time, declutter your environment and make the best of the 24 hours in the day that are allotted to you.
