Self Care

When was the last time you engaged in self-care?

Self-care is when we engage in an activity that promotes our own wellbeing. This might be promoting our mental health, physical health or spirituality.

For many people, we may go a long time having not engaged in self-care. This may be due to an overwhelming schedule or other priorities seeming more pressing. We may also take a week off a self-care activity due to a deadline, only to realise that its now been months that we have not engaged in self care.

When we neglect self-care, we might begin to notice an increase in experiences such as irritability, anxiety, anger, sadness, intolerance, rumination, guilt, emptiness, lack of motivation and feeling burnt out.

There are things that we can do in the face of these experiences in order to promote our physical, mental and spiritual well-being.

Self-care includes activities where afterwards we find ourselves feeling that little bit more relaxed, present, content or even joyful. This might include:

Listening to music
Being in nature
Exercise
Reading a book
Cooking/eating a balanced meal
Mindfulness activities
Writing in a journal
Having a tea
Playing with pets
Cleaning up a space
Taking a walk
Deep breathing
Spiritual activities

As a way to help maintain our engagement in self-care activities to maintain our wellbeing, it can be helpful to find a way to incorporate them into the daily routine. This may look like a block of time each day assigned to self-care or it may look like self-care scattered throughout the day such as taking 5 minutes between meetings to do some deep breathing and play some relaxing music. For the busy schedule, activities such as eating meals which might ordinarily be spent doing work or scrolling through the phone can become self care by eating the meal mindfully.

With the implementation of self-care into the daily schedule we often begin to find we have that little bit more tolerance to handle challenges of the day as they arise & find ourselves feeling more peaceful. We may feel more connected and content in our mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing. How might you be able to incorporate self-care into your daily routine?