Love yourself
Take time for you
Practice good self-care
These were all things I had people tell me or I saw people post about. I had no idea what they were talking about. So I searched the interwebs to figure out what the heck they were talking about. Turns out, self-care can be a heck of a lot of things. From checking things off your to-do list to yoga in the park, practically anything can count as self-care.
The key is that it is something that makes you feel better, more at peace, or relaxed.
Obviously, I wasn't about to turn down an excuse to spend a little time feeling just a little bit less stressed so I decided to try out self-care for myself.
The process
Initially, I had this grand daily plan to practice different aspects of self-care, such as social, physical, mental, emotional etc. But I quickly realized that I wasn't suddenly going to be able to fit everything in every day.
So I settled on drinking water as a physical/health goal, because I knew drinking water would help me feel less sluggish. I choose simple, easily accomplished tasks to put on my to-do list, knowing that accomplishing things would help me feel more in control. And for my evening goal, I chose to have a set bedtime.
Since Fridays are my light days, I chose to have that day be my focus on relaxation day. I would take some time to take a relaxing bath and little spa treatment.
The outcome
Did I truly feel better?
I think I did. It took me a little bit to figure out what helped me and what was just a pain for me to do. The thing that stuck was Friday relaxation time. It was so nice to take a step back from a long and stressful week and spend two hours guiltlessly letting go of the week's stress.
The biggest "life changing" aspect of self-care was not the actions themselves. It was the concept that you have to give yourself permission to feel less stressed, you had to give yourself permission to let go of everything for a little while. It wasn't easy to say yeah I'll take an hour out of my day to take a bath and ignore the world. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking about all the productive things I could have been doing during that time. It was really hard to push all that aside and say no.
At the end of the day, as hard as it is to say no to other people, it's even harder to say no yourself.
I'm glad I tried to out self-care and I will continue to experiment what activities help me the most and what activities are realistic for me. If self-care is something you've been thinking about, but keep saying you don't have the time for, you need to make the time now. DOn't wait, you won't regret it.
