The new buzzword is “self-care” and how it is an important skill to practice. But do we really understand what self-care is and why it’s personally important?
The concept is pretty simple; take time for yourself. Yeah, I know that it’s easier said than done but when you take time for yourself, you’re happier, more willing to show up as your authentic self, and ready to take on the world. You can start with my 3 easy steps to conquer self-care.
1. Schedule it. Period. Full stop.
We often hear people tell us to put it on our calendar, time block, set aside a day, yet we never do that. Why? The process of adding it to our calendars isn’t actually hard; we do the same for meetings, doctor’s appointments, kid’s activities, date nights, and the like but for some reason, we don’t prioritize time for ourselves. Schedule self-care/down time and don’t accept other events to hijack your time; you wouldn’t move one client to put someone else in that spot, you’d suggest alternative times. Do the same for your self-care time. Put it in. Leave it in. Do it.
2. Self-care looks different for everyone.
It’s going to take some introspection to discover what it is you enjoy doing, what makes you feel good, or what you want to explore more of about or by yourself. Think of what you would do for yourself if you had more time. As adults with busy schedules, businesses, families, responsibilities, adnauseam, we forget to have hobbies for ourselves. What makes you happy and how can you incorporate that into your schedule?
Self-care is not all bubble baths and 10-minute adult time-outs but it can be. Self-care is doing something FOR YOU because you want to and following through by MAKING TIME to do so.
Once you have discovered what self-care looks like for you and scheduled it, the endless lists of “should-do’s” and “ought-to’s” will inevitably creep into your brain and make you feel like you’re lazy, undeserving, or whatever other anxiety you carry throughout the day (and night). But this is not true self-care—you need to tune it out and take a mental break from all of the above.
That brings us to the last step… drumroll please…
3. Mindset and gratitude. In order to enjoy this much needed time, you have to be practicing a positive mindset and measuring backwards. The easiest way to do this is a practice of gratitude where you reflect on how amazing you are as a person/sibling/friend/parent/business owner, etc and recognize how far you’ve journeyed. We always have our eyes on where we’re going or who we’re striving to be that we can be hard on ourselves when we feel we’ve fallen short. With a gratitude mindset, we can look at the where we are, how far we’ve come and be grateful. This powerful realization will quiet your mind. In taking each step of our journey and being grateful in it, we’re able to embrace and enjoy the process of becoming.
Do you have any self-care tips to add?
What does self-care mean to you?
Does your team need this reminder? If so, pour love into them by opening their eyes to a different perspective and practice. Help them implement self-care into their lives so that they can be reminded of the importance of taking care of ourselves. Not only does prioritizing oneself lead to increased happiness, it also leads to increased productivity and creativity.
Need help? Send me a message and we can schedule something!