It can be hard to take care of yourself when you’re super busy and overwhelmed with work and with life. That’s why it is the most important thing for your health to engage in self-care activities.
Now self-care – as many other things in our society – has become a means to spend money and to get ‘stuff’ in order to care for yourself which that is great! If it works for you.
But self-care at its core is about YOU. 💖
Not about the purchase of bath bombs, candles, and expensive skincare treatments.
Those are all valid methods of decompressing and can be your personal way of self-care. However, I wanted to share non-monetary yet effective ways to show yourself self-care.
Here are my 6 genuine self-care tips that actually will help you and that don’t require you to spend a ton of money or to buy into these newly packaged capitalistic ideas of self-care.
1. Schedule a Daily Self-Care Routine
My first tip is to schedule a daily self-care routine.
Self-care is not about the once in a blue moon where you do a skincare and whatnot. It’s mostly about how you take care of yourself every single day.
If you set that time for yourself every single day, it will greatly greatly benefit your life, your health, your mental health, your physical health, just your overall well-being because you take the time you know anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour a day to precisely take care of you of yourself and only of you.
It’s a lot like sleep you cannot bank on sleep on one day or after three four days you bank on one night’s rest. You’re not gonna feel rested, you’re not gonna feel rejuvenated like that. You need to sleep every day your seven to eight hours in order to have to be a full functioning healthy individual mind, body, and being.
Therefore, self-care is actually the same concept. You need to take these actions towards yourself that will better yourself and that will take care of yourself every little day because you can’t just bank on self-care.
You need to build it every single day. I personally know of people that do not participate in any self-care ever and they never engage in daily self-care activities for themselves.
That’s really really sad and it’s really really heartbreaking. Honestly, I am one of those people still but I am m trying to make an effort. But with everything that I do, it also actually escapes me too. Thus, I need to be mindful and set the time every day for half an hour to just do self-care activities for myself.
In that matter, self-care is all about your inner reflection and how you can better your body and better your mind.
Here are some healthy and helpful daily self-care activities:
- Journaling
- Meditating
- Relaxing
- Stretching
- Exercising
- Reading
There are practices that will benefit to your own care and well-being.
2. Meal Prep
The second self-care tip is to meal prep!
Have you ever heard of that saying that says, “You are what you eat”?
I am sure you have heard of it!
So, excuse me when I say that if you eat shit you become shit and you feel like shit.
It’s simply a reality.
If you eat out every day you’ll have less energy, you won’t feel good, you will break out a lot on your skin, you just won’t feel good about yourself.
Consequently, you’ll be less inclined to take care of yourself when you already establish these habits that actually go against taking care of yourself.
The beauty about meal prepping is that you don’t have to worry about food and what junk foods you’re consuming throughout the week because you already have food set aside for you. All you have to do is warm it up, serve it, and eat it and you will feel so much better because you’re eating healthy intentional food.
You also know that you’re saving money as well as you are saving yourself time so at the end of the day. You actually start to feel more fulfilled as you have taken care of yourself every day by just doing that one action on the weekend which is to spend an hour or two meal prepping for the week.
We also all know that junk food is not good for our mental and physical health so therefore if you’re a busy person – I am too! – the best alternative is to meal prep ahead of time.
3. Read Before Bed
My third self-care tip is to read before bed.
Why should you read before bed?
Because reading allows you to decompress. It allows you to take that time to just stop, pause, read, and escape. And then, you can finally drift to sleep peacefully.
According to healthline.com, reading aids you to sleep better and if you sleep better with lesser interruptions, then you will have a better quality of life. You are taking care of yourself, you are feeling refreshed, and you actually get that time that you need to rest.
Not only does it reduce your stress and lower your blood pressure as well as your heart rate, reading also fights depression symptoms and it prevents from cognitive decline such as Alzheimer and dementia as you age.
That’s why I read a lot.
That’s why I need to read every single day.
It’s part of my self-care routine. If I read half an hour a day, I’m the happiest person ever because I can feel my depression subduing. I feel much calmer. I don’t feel as stressed and I sleep much much better.
So that’s why reading is always always going to be a tip of mine for your self-care routine.
4. Daily Affirmations
My fourth self-care tip is daily affirmations.
Before you say anything… I know a lot of people don’t like these daily affirmations or manifesting your life talks and I understand it because I used to be like that.
Although now I do believe in positive and daily affirmations and in some kind of manifestation, I still do believe that, at the end of the day, it’s from the work that you put in. It’s not just a haphazard thing that happens. It is not wishful thinking simply coming true.
In fact, it’s actually because you spent that time to positively shift your mindset that you actually end up doing more and still feeling better as you do it. In doing so, you don’t feel those feelings of burnout because you actually feel positive towards the goals that you’re trying to achieve and attain in your life.
Honestly, daily affirmation is more about being mindful and about being more positive
not that fake positivity stuff and you can do this by writing things down.
You can write the things that you’re grateful for.
You can write the three best things that have happened today.
You can write three nice things about yourself.
All these little things that actually help you to feel more confident and more fulfilled every single day.
5. Set Realistic Goals
My fifth self-care tip is to set realistic goals!
Nothing stresses me out more when I set these big unrealistic goals within the month and do not accomplish them because I feel a sense of failure and a crushing sense of ‘I should be doing more,’ ‘Why can’t I do more? Why am I not like this? Why am I not programmed like this?’…
And iIm like wait a minute… uh… I just use the word programmed!
I’m a person I’m a human being!
I have a limited amount of time in a day. I’m doing the best I can. I’m already feeling burnout so that’s why I realized that I need to set realistic goals.
Maybe I might not achieve something within the next month or within the next few days. But if I want to accomplish something, I will set the time to get there. I will set goals throughout the days, weeks, months, and even years to get to that place that I want to be.
With setting goals it’s all about prioritizing what is more important.
But one thing for sure: NOTHING is more important than your HEALTH.
And therefore; your self-care. You need to take care of yourself first if you ever want to achieve all of your goals. When we set these big unrealistic goals, what we end up doing is actually stressing ourselves out more. It’s actually so detrimental to our well-being so to prevent further burnout and stress, we need to set these realistic goals and pace ourselves accordingly.
6. Reach Out
My sixth and final self-care tip is to reach out.
It’s so very important to reach out, to talk about what is stressing you and what’s on your mind, what’s preventing you from taking care of yourself.
There’s no shame in it.
Every one of us needs to reach out. Every one of us needs to talk to people. Every one of us needs to feel some support.
Sometimes it’s a matter of establishing boundaries for yourself and other times it’s a matter of establishing boundaries with other people. It’s by talking through and working through your stressors that you will determine what is best for you. Maybe someone will be able to tell you that you’re spending too much time stressing or doing X amount of things, and that you actually should start prioritizing your health.
It can be very eye-opening to open up about your struggles.
That’s why it’s always good to also speak to a professional and to loved ones. It’s important to come to a place where you feel a balance in your life again so that you can actually take care of yourself without self-sabotaging or without making yourself feel worse and worse and worse.
Reach out!
It matters. You matter.
Please, reach out. ❤️
I hope you found this post helpful!
Please do let me know what your self-care routine looks like! Do you feel like you can’t take care of yourself? Have you tried any of these tips? 💕
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