Self-Care? A most definite YES!

Self-Care Tip 1: Make a note of your feelings

Whenever you’re feeling an overwhelming amount of emotions, a brain dump of your feelings would help you in unimaginable ways! By pouring your heart out on a physical journal or your phone’s notepad (whichever suits you best), you get a sense of relief from all that overwhelming. In addition to that, it helps you understand yourself better - by reading what you’ve just noted down, you can assess why you’re feeling a certain way, what incident caused it, and how you can let go of it. Understanding and processing that heavy bundle of emotions becomes much easier with this. See? Just writing your thoughts down would lead to so much progress in the way you connect with yourself!

Self-Care Tip 2: Physical activities help a ton

Studies have shown that physical activities have the power to stimulate the production of endorphins, which are known to be mood elevators. What’s better than doing something that would raise one’s energy levels of both the mind and body, thus playing the role of a mental and physical self-care facilitator? The physical activity doesn’t have to be a full-fledged gym session (if that’s what you find fun and calming, go for it!) or a two-hour run! It can be something as simple yet effective as a 45-minute walk, body stretches, or anything you find comfortable. Yoga is a great form of physical exercise that when done with proper guidance, comes bearing bountiful mental health benefits.

Self-Care Tip 3: Meditate (cannot stress this one enough!)

Meditation is an amazing realm of self-care that is something that a lot of people rely on when they need to pay attention to and thus calm their inner selves. Especially in the world we currently live in, where everybody is so immersed in their schedules that they don’t even carve time out to focus on the part that is keeping them alive - breathing. Many people assume that being in a meditative state implies that one shouldn’t have any thoughts at all, which is why they end up not giving meditation a chance! However, for almost all human beings, achieving such a still, constant state is extremely difficult. It’s completely normal if, while meditating, certain thoughts grab your attention - thoughts will come and go, it’s perfectly okay and natural. Your response to that should be to bring yourself back to the present moment, without any judgment. This is when the actual meditative state occurs. Even five minutes of meditation in a quiet environment can do wonders!

Self-Care Tip 4: Develop morning and night routines you can stick to

Having a well-established morning routine and a night routine can help tremendously on days you aren’t in a go-getter mode. For me, small things like starting my day with skincare and hydration help get into the groove of getting the required tasks done. Find out what would help you - it could be practicing affirmations, making your bed first thing in the morning, listening to empowering music, etc. Routines don’t have to be complicated or lengthy, and it is important to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to routines - they vary from one individual to another.

How do I stick to these self-care practices?

Understandably, people feel self-care is only feasible for rich people or people who have a lot of free time. However, that isn’t the case - you don’t need to have a lot of time to implement these practices. Writing in a journal and tackling your feelings would take less time when compared to bottling up emotions and not knowing how to process and eventually let go of them. Likewise, simple physical activities do not require as much time as we think they would. Meditation, like mentioned before, if done for even five to ten minutes, can make a world of difference between the way one feels before meditating and after meditating. Routines are dependent on personal preferences, and they can be as short as a half-hour self-care regime that would suit you the best. If you are willing to keep aside a minimal amount of time to improve your wellbeing, then the self-care practices mentioned above are doable and affordable!