Self-Care Series: Part 1

What is Self-Care Anyway?

Self-care is HUGE these days. You see all kinds of articles on mom burnout and making sure to set aside time for yourself. But what most people don’t realize is that self-care is necessary for ALL ASPECTS of yourself. In other words – you can’t just exercise and think that does the trick for your self-care. You can’t just give yourself a manicure or spend some time reading in the bathtub and think you’ve checked the self-care box. So we wanted to put together this series on the various types of self-care that every person (especially every mama) should be diligent about or, at the very least, considering. After all, you can’t take care of someone else if you can’t take care of YOURSELF.  

Self-care is anything you deliberately do to take care of yourself, improve your personal well-being and/or improve your relationship with yourself (which subsequently improves your relationship with others). It’s something that we use to refuel our tank, so to speak. And this involves understanding when your own resources are running low and thus, need to be replenished. We’ll discuss some of the signs that indicate you’re running low – as it relates to each of the different types of self-care noted below.

 

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Self-care is NOT selfish!

Although it can often be perceived as such from people who constantly need things from you. In fact, it is the exact opposite. In taking care of yourself, you’re increasing your capacity to care for others. Explaining and discussing this with your family and loved ones is essential if they don’t understand or respond well to you setting aside uninterrupted time for yourself.

Self-care is NOT forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do!

Although it can often be difficult to justify taking the time for it in this world of constantly needing to accomplish something tangible – or shall I say, this world of instant gratification and busyness. (For more on beating busyness checkout this post on 3 Steps to Conquer the Busyness Curse). Self-care doesn’t always yield a visible, immediate reward (but sometimes it does), and often you don’t know how much you need or miss it – until it’s not there.

The Benefits of Self-Care

As noted on The Law of Attraction, the top 5 benefits of consistent, thorough self-care are as follows:

1. Increased Productivity – this includes enhanced focus and better concentration.
2. Improved immunity & resistance to disease – as your body enters a deliberate resting, rejuvenating or non-stressful state your parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) is activated & your immune system is fortified.
3. Enhanced Self-Esteem – demonstrating how important you are to yourself by setting aside time for self-care sends positive messages to your subconscious, validating your self-worth and intrinsic value.
4. Improved relationship with yourself – Understanding how your mind, body & spirit works is essential to continual self-improvement and feelings of satisfaction. In spending time with yourself, you give yourself more opportunities to foster this understanding.
5. Increased capacity to give to others – Like we mentioned above, you can’t give if you don’t have. Filling your own tank is necessary in order to pour into something or someone else.

The Different Types of Self-Care

The different types of self-care we’ll be going through are the following (in no particular order):

• Physical: anything that engages your 5 senses – smell, touch, taste, hear, andsee and/or addresses your physical well-being
  

  Photo by Chinh Le Duc on Unsplash

• Psychological: processing your thoughts and practicing the art of controlling what you think about
• Emotional: activities that allow you to engage fully with your emotions, i.e. identifying, evaluating and processing them.
• Professional: anything that directly improves your ability to be at peace in your workplace
• Spiritual: engaging your purpose and making room for questions or topics outside of yourself.
• Relational: any activity that increases your ability to relate to others

It’s All Connected

As you’ll notice, each type of self-care isn’t it’s own island. The reason for this is that it all comes back to your mental health and well-being. Why?

“Whatever you hold in your mind on a consistent basis is exactly what you will experience in your life.” – Tony Robbins

This means:

1. You determine what is in your mind and what is not.
2. Taking care of your mind should be of the utmost importance to you.
3. You are not always able to control your circumstances, but you are able to control your experience of those circumstances based off what you allow and don’t allow in your mind.
4. The health of your mental life is directly influenced by the self-care you engage in each area of your life.

Stay tuned for more in our healthcare series where we will dive into each of the self-care categories.

Be well!

Right there with ya,