After battling breast cancer I have found emotional self care is a must. I have 5 tips and some great DIYs to share with you.
Emotional Self-care is an extremely important thing in all sorts of different ways, and there is a growing recognition of the fact that having regular routines and habits that help you to feel your best, to thrive, and to express the best version of yourself, is vitally important.
Nonetheless, there is often a big gap between knowing that self-care is important on the one hand, and actually coming up with manageable practices and approaches that lead to an enhanced sense of well-being and balance in life, on a consistent basis.
As with so much else in life, good self-care often depends to a very high degree on getting the right habits in place and ensuring that the small things that you do consistently, on a day-to-day basis, all help to lead to an enhanced overall sense of well-being, rather than a reduced one.
1. Start off your day with a positive self-care habit before anything else
In order to establish good self-care habits, and to ensure that you are in a position to consistently feel at your best, one of the best things to do is to start off each day with a positive self-care habit of your choice, before anything else, that helps set the stage for the rest of your day and to generate some positive energy and momentum.
The kinds of habits you establish might range from using some products from The Ordinary skincare to start your day right to help you to look at feeling your best (you can find more of the products I use here), or it might involve a particular workout, 10 minutes of quiet meditation and contemplation, or stepping outside to breathe in the fresh air and enjoying your morning cup of coffee.
2. Don’t be too ambitious at first
Any time you’re trying to get a new habit established – regardless of whatever that habit might be – there is a real risk that you will try to do too much too soon, and end up losing momentum in a hurry.
Instead of trying to implement self-care habits such as doing an intense hour-long workout each morning, or diving into a morning makeup routine that takes up a lot of time and energy, start small and work to enhance and increase your habits over time.
Self-care is the kind of thing that you should aim to make a consistent and ongoing part of your life, as its effects will rely largely on consistency. It’s not about getting everything right, instead, it’s about making sure enough of the pieces of your daily routine fall into place so that you can consistently move in the direction of having a good level of well-being.
For many people striving to establish new habits, using habit tracker apps and systems can be very useful, and can allow you to more easily keep on track with what you’re trying to manage on a given day, without simultaneously getting too sidetracked.
With most of these habit trackers, the aim is to achieve consistency and to help you to get a good “streak” up of a given habit.
For self-care routines, in particular, consistency counts for a lot.
3. Emphasise getting the key parts of your daily routine right and consistent
The kind of self-care habits that are likely to have the most powerful overall impact on your sense of well-being, will tend to be those that focus on your core day routines.
In particular, working to get your core daily routines right, and to ensure they are consistent, can frequently work wonders when it comes to helping you to feel your best, and to better manage the assorted stresses of everyday life as they come your way.
So, what are those key parts of your everyday routine? Generally speaking, these will be things like the time you wake up and go to sleep, the times you eat meals – and how you approach your meals – and other core routines or “keystone habits” in your day that make up a key component of how you structure your life. Like having your morning coffee and brushing your teeth, for example.
To a very significant degree, we all rely on our daily routines in order to give us a sense of balance, stability, and direction. Especially when there’s a lot going on in your life that you need to deal with and to stay on top of, those routines can be a major “anchor” that could help to keep you balanced.
Among other things, make sure that you go to sleep each night with enough time so that you can wind down, get enough rest, and be up at a reasonable hour. Then, make sure to eat your meals at regular times and to make sure that your meals help you to feel nourished and satiated.
These two steps alone can make a big difference.
4. View your self-care habits as vitally important parts of your routine, not as fun optional extras
One big reason why good self-care habits often fall by the wayside or are overlooked altogether is that people frequently end up viewing these self-care habits as fun, optional extras that they can add into the day if they have time – as opposed to genuinely important things that should be prioritized.
Ultimately, though, when you feel your best and are more emotionally balanced and resilient, you will tend to be more productive, better company for your loved ones, and will just have an altogether more positive experience of life as a whole.
To get good self-care habits established in your life, begin by viewing those self-care habits as a vitally important part of your routine, as opposed to just something that you do to treat yourself when you’re not busy with other things.
5. Focus on things that make you feel energised and positive in some way, not just things that you feel like you “should be doing”
If the self-care habits that you focus on aren’t really things that you enjoy but are just things that you feel like you “should be doing”, it’s very likely you will not stick with them, or benefit from them fully.
Aim instead to implement self-care habits that make you feel energized and positive in some way, as opposed to just trying to force yourself to go through a checklist of habits that “sound like a good idea.”
DIYs to to treat your emotional self care
- How To Make Bath Bombs
- Lemon Salt Scrub
- Upcycled Candle Holder to Zen Garden
- Posture Correcting Chair Makeover
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Chas,
I ran across this post and felt it would good to share with my readers at this time. I’d like to share a link to your post on Sunday’s Dirt Road Adventures. I hope that’s OK.