Balancing life can be extremely difficult when there are a variety of moving parts that we can’t control. Life seemingly has a way of piling up things that leave us feeling overwhelmed and stressed out. Finding ways to bring ourselves back to the centre where we can breathe and manage our lives is extremely important and the reason behind the importance of self-care. Stress is a reaction that our body has in response to demands it doesn’t feel it can navigate. Stress looks different in each person but there is a common theme of sometimes finding difficulty on how to navigate it both successfully and healthily so it doesn’t impact our mental and physical well-being in the long term. Finding ways to centre ourselves and do things that bring us peace is vital to living a mentally healthy lifestyle.
In this post we’ll talk about 5 different things to try out!
- Yoga / Meditation
- Yoga helps you develop skills to help ground yourself in the moment
- It empowers you to develop a deeper connection with yourself and health through self healing and self discovery
- By concentrating on poses and breathing, it allows for us to relax our muscles and clear our mind from the busyness of life
- Slowing down our days with meditation or yoga allows for our parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) to be activated and give our systems a much needed break
- Pampering Sessions
- Sometimes pampering yourself is what self care looks like to you and that’s totally ok!
- Lighting a few candles, preparing a bubble bath (or even dropping in a colourful bath bomb) and lathering your body with luscious creams/body butters can help put you in a relaxed mood
- Taking that extra hour or two to every once in a while to just focus on giving yourself that tender love and care can do wonders for your spirit and mood!
- Engaging in something you enjoy
- Too often we get wrapped up in the hyper productivity culture of the overwhelming expectation to do doing something that will contribute to elevating yourself in someway
- Engage and spend time picking up new activities that you enjoy or revisit old hobbies for the sole purpose of giving yourself that mental break of doing something for profit or gain
- There are a variety of activities that are soothing and can be taken up mindlessly to pass the time and double as a destresser!
- Some popular activities are exercising/working out, crochet/knitting, baking, photography, poetry, playing an instrument or even sewing
- Journaling
- Some people feel that being in control of their thoughts and feelings by writing them down helps to clear their mind and process the progression of their life
- Journalling can be very therapeutic and eye opening when established in your life with the goal of being practised as self-care
- The moment that it begins to feel like a chore and you put pressure on yourself to complete it consistently, it can wobble over the thin line of being a destresser and becoming a stresser
- Journaling doesn’t have to be focused about what’s going on in your life, but rather a way to let your mind float and grace yourself with the freedom of expression
- Some potential items to journal about could be setting a timer for 5 minutes and writing down any thoughts come to mind, or it can be focused with a theme such as daily affirmations that you like
- Journals can be as free flowing or as structured as it suits your needs and overall a great method of allowing yourself to decompress and focus on how to love and care for yourself
- Nourishing your body and mind
- Equipping your body and mind with the tools it needs to be healthy is a huge part of self care that can often be overlooked
- We often are able to take on and try a variety of activities in the hopes of finding ones that fit into our lifestyles but in the process overlook the small things
- Nourishing of the body can look like creating healthier eating habits, becoming more active, creating a new routine that incorporates breaks in your day to eat and give your brain a break
- Nourishment of the mind can look like taking work or study breaks and allowing your thoughts to roam without the pressure of staying focused on a centralized task
- Filtering out negative content can also be a form of self-care that strengthens your mind whether that be unfollowing accounts that leave you feeling in a less than positive mood, or muting/blocking people who aren’t furthering you on your life journey (and yes, that even means blocking that toxic ex you’re sometimes tempted to hit up!)
- Helping your mind doesn’t have to be about removal either; it could be as simple as blocking out electronic free time periods/cut off internet usage times
- Whatever you feel helps centre you and ease your mind and body, just a bit, can make a world of a difference in the long run
Overall there are a variety of ways to help us focus on ourselves that better and strengthen our health through the practice of self-care. An important takeaway is that self-care is not a single isolated event, but rather a continuous practice over time to be worked into our lifestyles. It doesn’t have to be everyday but starting by choosing something for yourself once a week can make an impactful change on both your mental and physical health.
