Self-Care and Daily Life

Self-Care is everywhere these days, and for good reason! It’s so important to take care of ourselves, much like those safety warnings before a flight takes off; secure your own oxygen mask before helping anyone else with theirs. We can’t pour from an empty cup, and having a solid self-care practice helps to ensure that we’re looking out for our own needs first.

It can be so hard to build self-care practices into a busy schedule, but certainly not impossible. It can feel like taking time out to look after ourselves takes away from time spent doing other tasks, but making sure that our needs are met can reduce stress, increase productivity and cultivate a better work-life balance.

This image from Stephanie Harrison (author of New Happy) illustrates this point beautifully

It’s tempting to brush off self-care, thinking that it’s selfish, time consuming or a luxury that others can afford, but not you. The truth is, without self-care your mental, emotional and even physical health can suffer. Self-care can be anything that nourishes your body, mind and soul. It can be as small as remembering to floss every time you brush your teeth, to something bigger like finally taking that art class you’ve been dreaming of taking “one day”. Your self-care will be unique to you, your needs, and your desires. It’s not all dark chocolate and bubble baths either, sometimes self-care will look like tackling your finances that you’ve been avoiding because they’re stressing you out, or cleaning out that junk cupboard that gives you a sense of dread when you walk past.

Here are a few more practical strategies integrating self care into your daily life:

Prioritise and Plan

Make a list of 2 - 3 daily self-care tasks that you’d like to add into your day. Make sure they’re meaningful to you, and also doable. For these, smaller tasks are maybe easier, like integrating mindful breathing into your morning routine or packing your morning bag the night before.

Habit Stacking

Sometimes the hardest part of building a routine is remembering to do the new thing! To help with this, pair your new self-care task with something you already do daily. If you’re wanting to add mindful breathing, plan to do this while the kettle boils in the morning, or if you want to start taking nutritional supplements, take them after your morning or evening meal. Combining a new habit with something you’re already doing helps you to remember to add in the new task and maintain the habit.

Set Yourself Up For Success

If you’d like to start reading before bed instead of scrolling social media, have your phone charging away from your bed at night, and set out your book next to your bed so that it’s easily accessible when you tuck in for the night. Making it harder to engage in the less desirable task (scrolling) by having your phone away from your bed, while also making it easier to engage in the more desirable task (reading) by having what you need next to you makes it easier to follow through.

Use Technology To Your Advantage

Want to meditate more? There’s an app for that. Want to take a moment to check in with how you’re feeling? There’s also an app for that. Habit specific apps, notepads, and even regular alarms are all tools at your disposal to make taking care of your needs easier. A few of my personal favourites are:

Insight Timer - great for meditation practices
How We Feel - mood tracker
Digital Wellbeing - allows me to set a screen time goal which prevents me from sinking too much time into social media and other apps that don’t benefit my mental wellbeing

The best way to guarantee your success is to start small, and build on your practices as they become part of your daily or weekly routine.