Self-care is the art of holistically taking care of all the parts of our whole. It’s caring for our emotional self, our physical self, our spiritual self, our mental self and our social self. Self-care is so much more than just looking our best or eating nutritiously. Self-care at its highest is being in tune with ourselves and being cognizant of our needs, desires, and aspirations. It’s making a conscious choice every day to do things that have a direct impact on the life we are seeking after.
Here are nine self-care strategies that are proven and work!
- PLAY
To play is to get in touch with our innate self–the person we were before we adopted strategies to protect ourselves. Play will never feel forced, like work or uncomfortable. Play should always feel spontaneous and make time stand still. Play should make us forget that we are an adult and have adulting things to do. When we play, we immerse ourselves in activities that bring us joy and pleasure. When we are playing, we are present and fully connected to our true self. And in that place, we have enormous power to get to know our true selves and begin the process of learning to listen and receive the messages of our inner child! The more we integrate play into our lives, the more energized and motivated we will feel. Play also has the potential to open new doors of possibilities!
2. PRIORITIES & BOUNDARIES
We all have limits. There is only so much any one person can do each day. Still, so many of us find ourselves trying to push ourselves to do a little more, a little more, a little more, to the point of burnout because we possess a belief inside of us that what we are currently doing is not enough. Before we combat the task of setting priorities and boundaries in our life, it is essential that we become self-aware of our own belief system. Before we can effectively set priorities and boundaries in our life, we must understand what we believe about the tasks and responsibilities currently on our plate. For example, if I hold the belief that mothers never take time for themselves, when it comes time to investigate my plate of “priorities” what I’ll end up taking off my plate will be the very life giving things that actually need to stay on my plate! Once we understand our beliefs and where they come from and how to change them, it becomes a lot easier to look at my priorities and boundaries and assess what needs to change!
RECHARGE
Each of us has an energy system that works very similarly to a cell phone battery. That system can always be charged, so once we understand how it works, we have the power to achieve everything we want to put on our plate. However, what is essential to understand is that there will be a learning curve as we meander the battery usage of our energy system. If we have four hours of battery use on our morning routine before our three year old gets home from preschool, then we will have to use our prioritization strategies to decide how to spend that energy. We’ll have to budget our energy like we budget our time. We’ll have to learn how to strategize our day so that we can maximize our energy battery to our advantage. Only we can know how to strategize our energy battery. What’s important here is understanding that we have an energy battery system and being mindful that when it gets low, it must be charged. The difference between people and phones is that when a phone gets close to dying, it is not plagued with pending responsibilities. When it runs out of juice, it just stops working. If you’re a parent like me, you know that we do not have the option to just say “My battery is dead, I’m unavailable,” so to avoid toxic behaviors creeping up like passive-aggression, projection, etc., it is essential that we learn how to budge our energy. We must understand that our behaviors are linked to our energy. And if too many days the behaviors are creeping up, it is time to pause for thought and assess how we are budgeting our time and energy and create a recharging strategy that works for us!
3. FEEL
Part of tuning in to ourselves is gaining insight and understanding into our emotions and feelings. Are you able to identify your emotions? Are you good at managing your emotions? Can you process your emotions? The better we are at identifying, managing and processing our emotions, the more in tuned we will be with ourselves and the more clarity we will have on our life’s trajectory and the goals and objectives we must set to achieve those goals and objectives. If we want personal power over our lives, then we must have dominion over our emotions! We need to understand what the sensations happening in our body mean and are trying to tell us. When we are emotionally aware, we tend to feel more emotionally stable and are better equipped to manage our emotions. When we are emotionally unaware, we tend to experience more instability in our lives. Spending quiet time with ourselves tuning in to our emotional system, getting acquainted with the sensations and inner promptings will go along way in gaining insight into ourselves.
4. UNMASK
It takes a lot of energy to pretend to be someone we are not. And, if after a day of masking you feel super drained, then you understand what I am talking about. It’s utterly exhausting playing a part all day. To find the courage to unmask, we must first discover why we mask in the first place. What is it about ourselves that we find so terrible that we believe we must hide it? And if we are hiding it, WHY are we hiding it? What is it that we don’t want others to find out about us? What do we think would happen if they found out about it?
Unmasking is best begun in solitude. When we take our mask off in our aloneness we have the opportunity to acclimate ourselves with ourselves. As we pause and study ourselves we can gain insight into our authentic selves. Authentic self is not perfect self. Authentic self is just what is. Authentic self is constantly evolving and changing as we gain new insight and wisdom. The authentic self has strengths and weaknesses, perfection and flaws, big emotions and small emotions, desires, aspirations, needs, beliefs, conditioning, and on and on. As we sit with ourselves we begin to connect with ourselves and feel our inner worlds. We sense things about ourselves. We gain insight into why we behave the way we behave, feel the way we feel, and think the way we think. As we gain this insight without judgment, we begin to understand why we choose masking over unmasking. To unmask, we must first find the courage and confidence to unmask and that begins with discovering ourselves and then having the courage to take the self-discovery journey! Only after we know who we truly are and what we actually need can we rightly self-care!
5. PAY YOURSELF FIRST
We cannot give what we don’t have. It is not selfish to self-care. Self-caring is actually investing in ourselves to make our energy grow which will lead to us being able to serve more people. The more physical money that I have, the more people I am able to serve. It is no different with emotional energy. By paying myself first with self-care, I will gain valuable insight into how I work which will lend itself to understanding how others work which will lead to more effective relationships. And this goes for money in self-care as well! If I do not pay myself first with retirement, with paying off debt, with getting my financial affairs in order so that I can take care of myself, then later I will need someone else to take care of me. Often times, in the moment, especially with parenting, we believe the best choice is to put off saving for retirement or paying off debt in order to take care of our children first. We drain our retirement accounts to set our children up for life so they can start their lives without financial aid debt, for example. In the moment, it feels noble and like the right thing to do, but after, we feel an incredible imbalance when our needs cannot be met. If we want to be good caretakers of our children, we must first be good caretakers of ourselves. A good self caretaker is a good role model and what children need more than anything else is a good role model on how to self-care. Consider the elite’s children. I do not think there has ever been a destitute elite child. Why? Because elite children grow up learning how money works and how to manage it. They don’t have any scarcity mindset about money because they’ve never learned that. When we pay ourselves first, we teach our children how to self-care and then they will automatically know how to self-care.
6. PURPOSE
Some people think that purpose and direction are the same, but I believe that they are two separate things. I believe that purpose is our why for doing something while direction is the plan we follow to achieve the purpose. When we have purpose in our lives, we have meaning and an opportunity for fulfillment. The why in our lives enables us to wake up each day and work on priority lists and daily tasks knowing that our efforts are leading us somewhere. When we don’t have purpose or a why for daily living, we tend to lose momentum and motivation. Life becomes monotonous and we begin to feel like a servant in our own life. Sometimes we might feel like we are living solely to serve someone else. If serving someone else is part of our passion and desire, that is one thing, but if it is not and every day feelings arise that are causing us to notice that we are not fulfilled in our own life, it is time to investigate our why for our life. Everything in life can be changed. Despite everything we believe about change, our feelings on any given subject can change. But all of it starts with identifying why we do what we do. Once we are clear on why we are doing what we are doing, we have incredible power to make changes.
7. DIRECTION
I often ask the following questions to friends and family when they are struggling with decision making and come to me for support and advice. I ask them: Who are you? Where are you going? How are you going to get there? When we know the answer to these three questions with great conviction and confidence, we have enormous personal power and can achieve whatever goals we set for ourselves. When we are reminded of who we are and where we are going and remember how we plan to get there, the right choice often surfaces automatically. When we do not know the answer to these questions, we often feel aimless, lost, unmotivated and discouraged.
I have come to understand that when we have direction in our lives as well as a vision strategy with clear goals and objectives we can achieve dreams pretty quickly. Clarity of direction enables us to see best decisions easier. When we know where we are going, we can narrow down how we are going to get there. If I know I’m going to travel the world after college for two years, I can now establish the goals and objectives I need to put in place to achieve my plan to travel the world. My direction also assists me with realistic time lines. Direction also hones our self-discovery and self-care journey because as we seek to achieve our goals and objectives, obstacles will arise and 9 out of 10 times, there’s an emotional link between meandering the obstacle and moving the block standing in the way of overcoming the obstacle. Direction, essentially, sets us on a journey and to achieve the goals and objectives of our plan, we must simultaneously overcome the obstacles! This is why I feel so passionate about answering the three questions: Who are you? Where are you going? How are you going to get there? Once we know the answers to these questions, we are set on a path and all we have to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and figuring out how to overcome obstacles as they arise along the way.
8. FORGIVENESS
What we hold onto and resist letting go of often acts like its own block to achieving our goals and objectives. Forgiveness is often misunderstood because we often associate forgiveness with letting someone who hurt us off the hook. Forgiveness does not mean that we forget what happened, forgiveness is simply the act of no longer giving energy to something. Forgiveness is the choice to let go of giving energy to something we have no control over. We cannot control if someone changes their behavior or not. But we can control our own actions and choices we make for our own life.
Forgiveness is making the conscious choice to radically accept what I have no control over and choosing to take personal responsibility for my own self-care. If we have unmet emotional needs, forgiveness means we take personal responsibility to meet those needs. Whatever the unmet needs are, we consciously choose to meet those needs. We radically accept that for whatever reason, the parent who was supposed to meet our needs was unable to do it. And we accept the healing journey to come to understand why they were unable to do it. Whatever the reason, forgiveness empowers us to move forward!
9. GRATITUDE & ABUNDANCE
Gratitude is the acknowledgment and expressed appreciation for a noted gift. As we take notice of the gifts we receive and feel their impact, we develop a grateful heart. Gratitude is the natural response when we feel the impact another has on our lives. The more we notice the gifts we receive and the love behind those gifts, the more abundant we will begin to feel. With an abundant and grateful heart, we will be able to attract more of the things we seek after in our lives. With gratitude comes more faith and more belief in the goodness of others. With gratitude comes more humility and willingness to be vulnerable. As we travel along our own self-care journey and we will become more and more sensitive to the teachings of the universe and more aware of how everything is interconnected and the importance of each other and the universe at large. With greater awareness and understanding comes greater gratitude and abundance and with greater gratitude and abundance we inch closer and closer to realizing the dreams we have for our lives!
FINAL THOUGHTS
Self-care is the process of nurturing all the parts of ourselves so we have the energy and strength we need to manage our lives and our life pursuits and responsibilities. With self-care, we have the ability to thrive in our lives. Without it, we run the risk of getting stuck in survival mode. The more that we self-care each day, the more confidence we will have in the self-discovery process and in our own ability to manifest the life we want to be living!
Much Love!
Self Discoverly 