How to love yourself and how to take time for yourself? What is self care? We live in such a fast paced world and we are often living in the tomorrow and not getting time to pause and catch our breath. Intense jobs, commutes, family pressures and advertisements of solutions in purchasing shiny new products can challenge our abilities to find the time for self care and to find more meaning in our lives. Today we will discuss with you the importance of taking care of yourself and share self care ideas and self care tips.
Why it’s important to take care of yourself
I have often worked long hours and stretched myself but what I began to realise more recently was that if I didn’t learn to say NO in a respectful way to certain things then I would risk burnout. Taking time for yourself and self care is not selfish; it is pausing life for a very short time frame to recharge and regroup. From such a position a happier and healthier you can help people even more and you can offer much more to others. If you have slept well, eaten well, exercised, meditated, enjoyed nature and so on then you will much more energy, creative thinking and flair to do well at whatever your next task maybe. You will also have much more energy and zest to spend quality, focused and playful time with your loved ones.
Learning to love yourself
How to love yourself?
We can often feel guilty about taking time for ourselves. We could be spending another half an hour with our children, we could be exercising, we could be getting ahead in the office. The one thing that we all have in common is time and the one currency people wish they had more of when they get older is time. We can earn more money, we can improve our health but when a day disappears that moment has gone. We can be better with our time and do so much more. Absolutely! The idea here is that we can learn to love ourselves and find time for self care. We can work long hours in our careers, miss important family time and risk burn out. Life is precious and time is precious. It is so very important to take time for yourself and to pause and enjoy the beauty in life. Success is very subjective but it is the journey that will make us happy and fulfilled and our relationships along such a journey and not the shiny object at the end. Use your time wisely to treat yourself well and pause life. Use your time wisely to enjoy beautiful subtleties in nature, to go and visit somewhere new and to be fresh and recharged to enjoy deep meaningful moments with your friends and family. The quality of our relationships is a crucial indicator of our happiness and also has a huge impact on how long we live. Deep quality meaningful relationships matter. you can still be successful and you can still progress in your career and beyond. Put your health and your relationships with family, romantic partner and friends first. Find meaning in your life and create an environment purpose built for positive emotions to flourish and regular engagement with social connections. Make this your foundation and you will not only be much happier and healthier but ironically your career will benefit because you will become the best version of yourself. We have a section overthinking quotes that can help you be more compassionate to yourself.
Understanding your self-image and identity helps us to understand our emotions at a deeper level and be more compassionate with ourselves. How would you treat a friend who is going through a difficult time? Treat yourself as you would a friend.
Building a self-care routine
Where do we begin?
- Prioritise a positive sleeping environment: Avoid looking at social media and a screen 30 minutes before going to sleep and also when in bed. Ideally listen to some calming music and a short meditation. Please read our article on what happens when you sleep and more on the dangers of not having a good night sleep in the second article. (1) Sleep and the mind – What happens to your brain when you sleep? – Meaningful Paths (2) Identifying, avoiding and beating burnout – Meaningful Paths
- Create a 30 minute habit: Create 30 minutes per day that are just FOR YOU! No matter how hectic your life it is so important for your health to create that space. Choose things that naturally energise you and things that are healthy. Examples could be a workout, reading one chapter of a book, meditating, listening to music, take a bath, walking around the block and so on. It is important to do this alone and to recharge your mind and your body.
- Learn to say NO: Be kind and compassionate towards others but sometimes saying no takes the pressure off. You may say no going for drinks one evening as you need a quiet night at home but you can offer an alternative and maybe go for a short walk with this friend on the Sunday.
- Practice self-compassion: Our range of self-esteem techniques can help you with this.
Take time for yourself
Creating a self compassion box is a really nice way to practice self care. This looks at the way we treat ourselves and how we can be too hard on ourselves at times in our lives. By creating a self compassion box we can create space for self care, reduce our stress levels and use our energy to do good things. Alternatively you can create a collage, a vision board or be creative in other ways instead of a box. You may also write in your journal.
- Assess times you are critical towards yourself. When are you often hard on yourself? Is it work related? Is it when you make a mistake? What words do you often use? What tonality do you use?
- Practice pausing as soon as you say something negative towards yourself. Take a breath and say to yourself, “I am only human, I will learn from this and I will be stronger from this situation.”
- Ask yourself, “how would I treat a friend who is going through this situation?”
- Make a list of self care quotes and put them in a box, write them in the back of your journal, create a collage or be creative in other ways. We also have many quotes in our header section you can explore with many varied quotation pages.
This creative accessory can be your new best friend. When times are hard or you have faced a challenge you can pull this 4 step process out and stop negative thought processes.
A conclusion of thoughts
Creating time and space for self care is not selfish in anyway at all. It is so important for our well-being to pause life and to be kind to ourselves. This then gives us new found energy and creativity with our loved ones and also reboots us for work. Create your 30 minute a day habit and create a positive bed time routine and sleeping environment. Self love affirmations or creating a self compassion box can help us to stop negative thinking patterns and to be kind towards ourselves. We can then get over things in a healthier manner and then learn from our mistakes.
Please feel free to explore worksheets, ideas and meditation videos under our resources section in the header. Please also feel free to explore our quotes pages for inspiration and words of wisdom related to self care quotes. We also offer a free course on meaning to help you discover your values at a deeper level and further ideas on purposeful living.
Thanks for listening.
Wishing you health and well-being.
Image References
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