Are You Strategic With Your SELF-CARE?
“If you don’t love yourself, nobody will. Not only that, you won’t be good at loving anyone else. Loving starts with the self.”—Wayne Dyer
SELF-CARE = YOU-CARE
What does self-care mean to you? How do you practice self-care? How does your personal self-care show up at work, at home, and in your everyday?
Do you own a home or rent an apartment? We do home self-care by making sure our smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, electrical outlets, and wiring are up to date. Home self-care. We ensure these items are working so that we don’t have to watch our home catch on fire.
SELF-CARE is very similar. It is being intentional to practice protecting and improving your own health (spirit, soul, and body), with your balanced lifestyle. In these stressful and uncertain times, it’s never been more critical. Self-care is being intentional with eating well, getting enough sleep, exercising, focusing on those relationships that are important to you, having spiritual focus, looking after your finances, and so on. In a nutshell, it is LOVING YOURSELF on every level.
Is it time to take your self-care to the next level or try something different? Shake up your self-care? What do I mean? If you feel burned out or stressed about work or life and can’t get past it, think about changing your self-care routine and revamping it. For instance, what focus do you put on your finances? SELF-CARE is a lot like the time we put into budgeting our money. Look at your bank statement or online account and you will see exactly where your money goes…what is important, what is necessary, and what is spent on other items.
TIME for SELF-CARE is the same way. I want to challenge you (and ME) to look at your bank account on SELF-CARE and see how much TIME you spend on the list below 👇. Are you spending more TIME on other things/items than on your SELF-CARE?
SELF-CARE = STRATEGIC SELF-CARE
How do you budget your SELF-CARE time in these areas👇?
✔️EMOTIONAL
✔️MENTAL WELL BEING
✔️PHYSICAL
✔️FUN / RECREATIONAL
✔️SOCIAL/RELATIONSHIPS
✔️SPIRITUAL
✔️ENVIRONMENTAL (the places and spaces around you)
As a life coach, I have seen great success with my clients as they take those “stressed or anxious” and add new self-care ingredients to do the heavy lifting so they can move forward. Sometimes we just need to do a personal TUNE UP.
SELF-CARE = CELEBRATING YOU
“Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself”— Coco Chanel
Isn't it easy to celebrate others...we can always find so many things we appreciate, admire, like, and enjoy about others. But what about you? Can you take some time today to CELEBRATE yourself because of what you have accomplished, learned, and implemented in your life up to today? Let me provide some food for thought to get you started:
✔️Take a well-deserved break (any amount of time)
✔️Write yourself a note or letter celebrating you
✔️Give yourself the GIFT of TIME
✔️Look in the mirror and literally pat yourself on the shoulder
✔️Give yourself a high five in the mirror (let your hand touch the mirror)
✔️Choose to CELEBRATE YOU!
SELF-CARE = TIME WITH YOURSELF
In just the same way that you would get to know or explore a new relationship or people at work, you have to spend time with them. If you want to learn about a new role at work, you need to learn about it. To give yourself the best SELF-CARE, I want to encourage YOU to spend quality time with YOURSELF. Ask yourself some questions to get the ball rolling.
1. Who Am I?
2. What matters to me? What relationships matter to me?
3. How do I want to show up each day as ME?
4. How do I want to show up in my relationships?
5. On a scale of 1 – 10 how do I feel emotionally, physically, and spiritually? Rate each area.
6. What is one thing I can do today to move forward in my SELF-CARE?
“Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.”— Malcolm S. Forbes
THIS I KNOW…SELF-CARE means putting YOURSELF FIRST!
When you fly on an airplane, the flight attendant instructs you to “put your oxygen mask on first,” before helping others. Why is this an important rule for ensuring survival? Because if you run out of oxygen yourself, you can't help anyone else with their oxygen mask. SELF-CARE is the same. You cannot pour into your career, goals, education, relationships, or anything else when you are depleted. You can get away with it for a time, but eventually, it catches up with you. Take care of yourself first so that you can pour into others and into YOU! ❤️❤️
Just like we do home care to make sure our roof and windows are not letting heat escape or water in, it is the same with SELF-CARE. What is depleting us so that we cannot show up in our healthiest way? What are we allowing into our lives (whether unhealthy relationships, stress, or the results of having no personal boundaries), that is depleting us and taking up unnecessary room by pushing the good out of us? Take time today to do a self-inventory (see list above) on every level. Most of all, SELF-CARE is also about having fun, laughing, and enjoying life as much as you can.
“Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.” Buddha❤️
