Self-care is an encompassing term that we are defining as:
- The practice of taking an active role in protecting and nourishing one’s own well-being and happiness.
Self-care is all about your daily well-being. It’s about your sense of wellness and inner equilibrium. Self-care rituals are personal – not all self-care is created equal and what you require at particular points in your life may differ from what you need at another point in your life, and from what others around you need for their self-care.
Whilst self-care can be engaged in at any time, including as a restorative to issues which have already arisen, self-care is often best when it’s used as a preventive measure. Those who engage in regular self-care say it’s something to do on a daily basis to keep your entire system — physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual — balanced and in shape.
Words of wisdom regarding the value of self-care:
“You cannot pour from an empty cup. You must first fill your own cup”.
“An empty lantern provides no light. Self-care is the fuel that allows your light to shine brightly”.
We especially like the lantern metaphor and following are ways you can replenish your lantern.
What Do You Need?
We have identified four types of self-care to explore and incorporate into your life, depending on what it is you most need right now:
- Sensing and connecting
- Resting and rejuvenating
- Exploring and inspiring
- Body and mind
Is your life feeling empty and flat? Self-care that brings you greater connection to others, your senses and the natural world are what you need.
Is your life so full now you are overwhelmed or simply can’t fit another high energy activity into it? Self-care that brings rest and rejuvenation into your life are what you need.
Is your life lacking stimulation and excitement? Self-care that inspires you to explore and introduce more variety and adventure into your life are what you need.
Is your body in pain or not working as well as it should? Self-care that inspires you to be active or do something to improve how your body feels and moves is what you need.
Sensing and Connecting
The first type of self-care we’re going to explore is sensing and connecting.
If your life is feeling empty, flat and lacking in texture, if you find yourself stuck in a rut and bored with the humdrum of must-do activities, daily self-care activities that bring you greater connection to others, your senses and the natural world are what you need. Sensing and connecting is about tuning into your five senses and to what connects you to others.
TAKE ACTION: In the following content you will find a number of low to no-cost activities that require the smallest investment of time. Pick one activity to do for 10 – 20 minutes a day. Notice the difference sensing and connecting make to your well-being.
Sight: Enjoy all there is to see and enjoy in your world. Everything from looking through old photographs that make you smile, to the wonder of sunsets and sunrises, to spirit-lifting television and podcasts. Don’t forget inspiring online video, gazing on fresh flowers in your garden, cloud gazing, people watching, the fruit and veggie section of your supermarket, and watching your pets while they snooze and snore. There’s so much to see!
Sound: Sound can be soothing or stimulating. Listen to a CD all the way through while lying on the couch and doing nothing else, play music while you cook, drive or exercise, attend a poetry reading or live musical event, listen to motivational talks (try TED.com), sing, really listen to a friend or family member when you talk to them on the phone. Tune into what you’re listening to and choose the things that make you feel great.
Taste and Smell: Our olfactory senses can ground and enliven us. Consider the allure of brewing tea or coffee, the taste and smell of favorite fruits and vegetables, the pleasure of combining new flavors, the heady whiff of perfume, scented candles, baking bread, a cool glass of water on a hot day or after exercising… Engage your olfactory senses!
Touch: In an increasingly physically isolated world (which we often don’t notice because our digital connections may still be quite high), it’s essential to literally touch and be touched. Use your hands to bake, bead, dig, knead, stitch, stick, stroke and strum. Get a massage, give a massage, hug someone.
Connecting: Connecting is one sure fire way to increase your self-care – pick the kind of connection you need right now. Host a dinner party, volunteer for a worthy cause, say thank you, do something unexpected and nice for someone else (without the expectation of a thank you), start a book club, join a choir, learn a new fun thing (stand up comedy, golf, bookbinding), go out in nature, eat outside, meditate, journal. There are endless ways to connect – with others, with nature, with yourself
Resting and Rejuvenating
The second type of self-care we’re going to explore is resting and rejuvenating.
If your life so full now you are overwhelmed or simply can’t fit another high energy activity into it, if you are so busy with life, with work, with family, busy with busyness that you’ve exhausted yourself, activities that bring, rest, reflection and rejuvenation are what you need. Sometimes self care means taking it down a notch and slowing down.
TAKE ACTION: None of the activities included in the following content cost a single cent, and most don’t take any longer than 20 minutes a day. Give at least one of these a try – do one every single day, even if you have to schedule it into your diary to make sure it happens. Notice the impact on your well-being.
Sleep: Sleep more, sleep better. Get rid of all technology (except a lamp and bedside clock) from your bedroom and make it a tranquil place for sleep and rest. Make your sleep routine at the end of the day a peaceful one, rather than falling into bed in a heap. Take a short afternoon nap if you need one – before 3pm and for about 15 – 20 minutes may be all you need to regenerate and revive.
Meditate and Journal: Meditating and journaling can introduce tranquillity and contentment into a busy, busy mind that can’t shut down. Buy a meditation CD if you need a guided experience, or use a candle to focus your attention on for 5 – 10 minutes every morning or afternoon (or both). For journaling, let go of any preconceptions you have about it, invest in a pretty journal and write in it every day.
Mindfulness: Develop your own mindfulness practise. Focusing on the present moment during simple daily activities, from washing the dishes or wiping down the kitchen, ironing, putting away the laundry, vacuuming, to driving, walking and even brushing your teeth. Ask yourself what is happening for you right now. Is your breath slow or fast? Are you tired? Are you hungry? How do you feel?
When you concentrate on what is happening for you, you are less likely to get caught up in an endless cycle of thoughts and/or feelings. What does the air feel like on your face, what sounds can you hear, what can you smell, do you feel hot or cold? These are a few of the questions you can ask yourself to bring yourself back to the current moment.
Try not to be judgmental about anything you notice. Don’t label any thought or feeling as good or bad. Just notice them and then let them float away. Your thoughts and feelings are hot air balloons that you are letting go of so they float away into the sky.
Practise mindful breathing is also helpful. Take a few minutes right now to focus on your breathing. You can do this with your eyes open or closed. What does your breathing feel like? What does it sound like? Where do you feel your breath in your body? Let any other thoughts that enter your mind just float away. Acknowledge and then let go of any thoughts, don’t judge or ‘attend’ to them in any way. Every time your thoughts wander, gently return your mind to focus on your breathing again.
Read: There’s nothing like an engaging book you can lose yourself in. Instead of watching television in the evenings or the weekends or losing time online, get into some great books and articles. Read up on inspirational people by reading biographies or autobiographies, get onto your local library for the latest must-read novel, be captivated by a non-fiction book on a new topic, or lose yourself in a gripping fiction book. Find quality online sources of topics that intrigue you. Read for the pleasure of it.
Unplug: Turn off the TV, your tablet, your computer, your phone, your handheld devices for the weekend or if you can, take a workweek day and turn off to tune in. Unplug and tune into you and yours – your life, your loved ones, your loves. Listen, notice, engage your senses, play au naturale. The world won’t end if you don’t check in, respond or post an update for a few days.
Just Be: Take 10 minutes in the afternoon when you’d normally be working and sit outside in nature. Just breathe and notice what’s going on. Luxuriate in being outside, doing nothing.
Exploring and Inspiring
The third type of self-care we’re going to explore is exploring and inspiring.
If your life lacks stimulation and excitement and you’ve lost interest in all that life can offer and have taken apathy to a whole new level, self-care activities that inspire you to explore and introduce more variety and adventure into your life are what you need. This type of self-care is at the other end of the spectrum to rest and rejuvenation and recommends more activity and movement to improve your self-care.
TAKE ACTION: These are very low-cost activities that can give you a boost and make you think and feel differently about everyday things. Sometimes self care means getting out of a self-imposed rut, turning things upside down as a way of shaking up your old thinking and stagnant feelings.
Experiment: Try a class you normally would never do – Mandarin, candle making, hip hop. Choose something radically different to your normal hobbies and interests, even if it’s just for one class. Don’t sign up for the purpose of learning as much as for exploring the exotic (at least to you).
Something Different: Plan a surprise party for someone. Pick a fun theme, perhaps a progressive dinner (where every course is held at someone else’s home or restaurant), or only serve food that starts with the letter F. Buy a magazine on a topic you’d normally never read about and read it all the way through, picking out the things that surprise you. Take every afternoon off for a week (if you can) and pick activities to do that you normally wouldn’t – do this on the weekend if during the workaday week isn’t possible.
Vision: Create a vision book or board – a poster-sized board filled with images of people and things that inspire you. Put this somewhere you can look at every day. Even if you don’t want to do a full vision board or book with multiple photos, choose 1 or 2 that inspire you and lift you up every time you look at them. Instead of a board, you can do this in a journal or using online boards such as Pinterest.
Photograph: Take a series of photographs around a particular theme or just randomly as it takes your fancy. Organize them into books or slideshows for sharing with others at home, or share with others online, or simply enjoy them yourself.
Up-Style: Try a new lipstick color or hairstyle. Learn about hair and make-up styles from a bygone era (the 1940s and 50s perhaps) and emulate that style for a day or evening out. Wear an item of clothing you haven’t worn in ages, or in a way you’ve never worn it before.
Play Tourist: Pretend you’re new to where you live and explore local spaces and places with fresh eyes. Eat out at new cafes or places you’ve never been to (you know, the ones you drive by and say “I must go there sometime”). Go to parks or attractions you’ve never been to, attend a local market, go to a local networking or community meeting with people you’ve not yet met. Go through the weekend paper and pick an exhibition, museum, live event, market or show that is completely new, fresh or foreign to you. Go to it.
Create: Find new or reinvestigate a creative hobby. Doing something creative outside of what you do normally is a great way to develop new skills and to use parts of your brain that may have been dormant for some time.
Getting creative is also a great way to get out of your head (this is particularly useful if you spend too much time thinking) or to short circuit a negative feeling loop (which is useful if you are overwhelmed with feeling). Getting creative is great for your well-being and should be included in your self-care routines.
A creative hobby could be almost anything but to get your creative juices going, consider: painting, beading, pottery, sewing, glass making, kintsugi, mosaics, cooking (and so many different kinds of cooking classes to try out), jewellery making, millinery, knitting, scrapbooking, papermaking, crocheting, fused glass, sculpture, dance (so many forms of creative dance from belly dancing, tap and jazz, swing, flamenco, to pole dancing), decoupage, bookmaking, shoe making, choral singing …. the list goes on and on and on! Try an online search for creative activities, and get inspired!
Creating something that takes an idea and turns it into a physical form (whether that form is a hat or a dance routine) can be both inspiring and enlightening. It can also help you get into the “zone”, where time passes and you just don’t notice anything else happening around you, where the normal stresses (and stressors) of your life disappear, or at least recede into a more manageable size and form.
Body and Mind
Finally, we’re going to consider the impact of body and mind on your health and wellbeing. These have a distinct impact on your style choices, which we looked at earlier in this Module in the section on Physicality and Your Style.
If your body is in pain or not working as well as it should, self care that inspires you to be active or do something to improve how your body feels and moves is what you need.
TAKE ACTION: The body and mind activities included here can restore physical balance and mental, emotional and psychological equilibrium, and a number of them are low to no cost, with the major investment being your time.
Healthcare: Are you needing to take care of you health in some way? Do you need to make a doctors appointment, get a blood test or seek professional advice on a health matter you’ve been putting off for some time? As you advance through life healthcare needs change, and keeping your body in good working order with assistance from the right professionals at the right time should always be on your agenda.
Move Your Body
Move Your Body
Movement and Exercise: Exercise is an important part of life. So much research points to it being an integral part of being healthy. What is great is that there are so many different sorts of exercise you can participate in. From solitary exercise options to group activities. Some are called ‘sports’ and others are ‘arts’, yet in all of them, you move your body, build muscles and improve your heart function – these are so important for keeping your body healthy, flexible and reducing your chance of illness.
If exercise isn’t something that you’ve ever really been keen on, we’d highly recommend you watch this TED talk on the Brain-Changing Benefits of Exercise.
Some of us feel that we can’t participate in sports or just plain don’t want to. Not competitive and don’t care who wins? Then a team sport is not for you. But there are plenty of options to move that will raise your heart rate and improve the oxygen flow to your brain.
Got a body that has specific physical limitations? Then it’s time to find the way you can move your body that works with it, rather than against it.
There are millions of different ways you can get your body moving, and many of them are free. You can take part in group activities or solo ones (and this may be something that reflects your preference for Introversion or Extraversion), or a combination of the two. Finding a way of moving your body that fits with your life and personality is so important to your health and wellbeing. Not only for your body, but for your mind as well.
Movement and Exercise: There are so many ways to include movement into your life!
- We’re advised to do 150 minutes per week of exercise to stay healthy in both mind and body. Are you doing this?
- If you aren’t exercising or moving enough, what activities do you enjoy that you could add in to your routine? Do you prefer to exercise alone or with people? Do you prefer vigorous or more sedate activities?
- There are so many avenues to gaining exercise into your life – aerobics, ball sports, bowling, cross fit, cycling, dance classes (there’s a huge variety of dance forms to choose from), gardening, gymnastics, gyms, hiking in nature, horse riding, hula hooping, laser tag, martial arts, rock climb, roller skating, running (treadmill or outdoors), skiing, swimming, trampolining, walking around the block, walking the dog, water sports, yoga… the list goes on and on!
- If you already have an exercise or movement activity you love, continue with it and challenge yourself to find something new you love about it or can add to it to make sure it’s sustainable for you.
- If you don’t already have an exercise or movement activity or routine you love, challenge yourself to try a range of activities you’ve never tried before. Find at least one way to include exercise and movement into your regular routine so that you get your all-important 150 minutes of exercise a week quota!
- Research shows that moving a little bit every day vastly improves both your skin and how well you think as it oxygenates your blood.
Bodywork Therapies
Bodywork
Bodywork: Bodywork therapies are ways of working with the human body that may include manipulative therapies, breath work, or energy medicine. Bodywork is a form of therapies that may look at techniques to improve posture, and promote more awareness of your body and how it’s feeling and functioning.
Different forms of bodywork include: Massage, Acupuncture, T’ai Chi, Qigong, Reiki, Osteopathy, Chiropractic, Myotherapy, Alexander Technique, Yoga, Reflexology, Pilates.
These can be great ways of improving how your body feels and works, including your posture (which also makes your outfits look better). Improvements to your posture will also aid your bone density – an important issue for every woman as she advances through her life.
Consider trying out one or some of these (or the many other bodywork options) as a form of self-care, and notice the impact on your wellbeing and equilibrium… and your style!
Managing Stress
Stress is part of everyday life for many of us, and finding ways to manage it – and ourselves while we are experiencing stress – is part of our self-care routine.
There are four common types of stress in life:
- Eustress – the fun stress. This is the adrenaline rush you get when you do something that excites you. It feels good and you often want more of it.
- Distress – when you hit overload. This is the debilitating sort of stress that may have you “in a loop” or “in the grip” (touched on in the Module 6 Extension program).
- Positive Stress – motivating stress that helps you get things done. Many of us will add in artificial “deadlines” to our lives to ensure that we have enough of this kind of stress so we achieve what we need to.
- Boredom – when there isn’t enough to do. This is the strange kind of stress that comes when things are just too dull and unexciting for you.
What kind of stress are you under? Is it a positive or negative kind of stress? How is it playing out for you in your life? What kind of self-care would you like to include to improve your stress levels and have a healthier and happier life?
Self Care Examples
Now open your Module 9 PDF Page 67 to the Self-Care Playshops and Explorations and have some fun discovering just how you can add more self-care activities to your life.
