By: Shantell Carraway
Self-care has become a front-and-center topic of discussion in the past few years. Trends are appearing in the consumer industry for skincare, in the mental health industry for therapy, and how work-life balance is defined.
Now that we are well into 2022, you may be in a place of re-evaluating your vision or goals for the year. It’s possible that you have found yourself back into an all too familiar routine of work, home, binge-watching your favorite shows, sleep, and repeat. Maybe you’re frustrated with starting and stopping your self-care again and have found it challenging to prioritize taking better care of yourself. But knowing about self-care, alone, is not enough to truly adopt the changes we desire without looking at the “self.” Let’s take a deeper look into components of the “self” by defining self-care and a couple of its companions: self-love and self-worth.
There is a bit of overlap between self-care, self-love, and self-worth. In a nutshell, self-care is about action, self-love is about feelings, and self-worth is about thoughts. Defining these self-concepts helps further clarify how they all connect. Hence, the thoughts we assign to ourselves about the type of person we are impact our feelings towards ourselves and ultimately impact the actions we take towards caring for (or not caring for) ourselves.
So, what exactly does it take to commit to your own needs more? Here are five realistic ways that you can take better care of yourself…
- Identify the limiting or negative thoughts you have about yourself, and replace them with positive thoughts. Consider how you describe yourself if your thoughts about yourself are more positive or negative, and how you came about adopting those thoughts. Also, do you think of yourself as synonymous with your personal challenges, issues, or struggles? Replacing those limiting or negative thoughts could be as simple as shifting your focus to what you would like to think about yourself, instead, and adopting new mantras for your thoughts about yourself. For instance, I may have anxiety, but I am not anxiety. That, in itself, is a way to take care of your mental and emotional health.
- Examine what you have the capacity for in life as it is today, and redefine what self-care looks like for you. Adopt realistic habits that may fit into your existing schedule as it is today. While it may be impractical to set up a spa day for facials, masks, and massages once a week, fitting in an at-home facial mask once a week maybe more practical.
- Find an accountability buddy or join a group of like-minded people. There is a ton of research that exists around the effectiveness of having someone or something to hold yourself accountable to. Connect with current friends, join an existing club/group, or create your own virtual or in-person space to dedicate to how you want to take better care of yourself.
- Challenge your own definition of success. Do you have an all-or-nothing approach to tasks, or think that success is only measured by doing something? Some success is in the “not doing” or challenging yourself to think of what, for today, was “good enough” while considering your daily responsibilities and existing energy levels.
- Be kind to yourself. Sometimes, you may have to consider yourself a personal source of encouragement for you. If you’re not used to adopting affirming words towards yourself, think of how you would speak to a friend in a similar position.
Developing greater self-awareness allows us to interrupt the patterns that are visible enough for us to notice, but not quite conscious enough for us to determine why we repeat them. The greater our connection to how we think of and feel about ourselves, the more likely we are to see the patterns around how we treat ourselves. It is in that space that we can adopt healthy emotional, mental, and action-focused habits. Cheers to learning more about YOU in 2022.
