Why Self-Care Is Important To Your Overall Health
"You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."
- Buddha
Taking care of yourself should come first. I don't mean exercising twice a week and eating a salad for lunch. Self-care is about promoting your mental, physical, and emotional health. It's about breaking bad habits and replacing them with positive and healthy habits. It's changing your routines to incorporate daily activities that involve self-care.
Areas Of Self-Care
1. Mental health
Your outlook and mindset greatly influence your psychological health. Stop yourself when you use negative self-talk. Instead of saying "I did horrible" say "What did I learn from this experience?". Start doing mind exercises like crosswords, puzzles, and learning something new. Is there something new you would like to learn? Maybe a new language or a new craft activity? Also, you want to practice humility, compassion, acceptance, gratitude... these are the things that will help you maintain a positive inner dialogue.
2. Emotional health
How you feel and express your emotions impacts your health. It's important to be self-aware about how you react emotionally in a situation. Once you understand your emotional triggers, you can develop healthier coping skills when dealing with a stressful, sad, or any other uncomfortable emotion. This is always hard to do at first, but you'll get better if you continue to practice. First, ask yourself these questions: How is my current emotional level? Do I have empathy, compassion, and emotional literacy? How do I process my emotions?
3. Physical health
There are several ways you can incorporate physical activities into your life. This includes getting enough sleep, the physical activities you're doing daily, addressing your physical needs, and what you eat. While some may argue addressing certain physical needs, such as using beauty or bath products, can be considered superficial, I disagree. When we take care of ourselves and do things that allow us to feel good, we're doing self-care. Always ask yourself: What am I do daily to improve my physical health? Do I get enough sleep? What foods do I eat? Do I drink enough water? How can I address my physical needs to help me feel good in my own skin?
Incorporating self-care into a daily routine won't look the same for everyone. We all have different lifestyles, jobs, social lives, wants, and needs. Pay attention to an area in your life that needs to be addressed. Create a plan for change and take small steps to start your self-care routine. Over time you can begin implementing new steps into your routine. For instance, you can start with physical health. Start by eating healthier foods and drinking more water, then you can start exercising daily. From there you can continue to build until you have a complete physical routine.
We can always sit here and talk about the things we need to do to lead healthier and happier lives. Or we can start by taking action now. It's time to take back control over your health and well-being.