Self-Care Is Not One Size Fits All
Self-Care Is Not One Size Fits All When it comes to self-care, it’s easy to assume that what might work for one person will work for you as well. We like to take advice from others on what to do to improve our quality of life, though this might not be the best path. Everyone has unique experiences in life, and we all have different problems that we want to address – and even different ways of going about solving them. While you could follow someone else’s guide and feel a lot better, that doesn’t mean this will always be the case. For example, if you’re having issues with your job and that’s stressing you out, you might start to look at some generic solutions for your self-care. Someone might recommend working out to relieve stress, which does in fact work for some people. It can take your mind off…
Self-Care Is the Antidote to Chronic Stress
Self-Care Is the Antidote to Chronic Stress Many people suffer from a wide variety of stress factors today. It can come in so many different forms: internal, external, from school, from work, from relationships, and so on. With so many factors today that can contribute to stress, you might develop chronic stress, meaning that it’s constantly occurring. This can cause both adverse mental and physical effects that can lead to many extra problems on top of the ones you’re already dealing with. In order to curb your stress, you need to adopt a self-care routine. One source of stress that can be helped by self-care is your physical appearance. Your physical appearance can vary in many ways, so there can be a lot of different sources of stress within this category. For example, you might be unhappy with your fitness progress up to this point. Whether you find yourself overweight…
Self-Care Combats Cortisol Overload
Self-Care Combats Cortisol Overload Despite most people not knowing what it is, cortisol is a chemical that might be affecting your life negatively every single day without you even knowing it. It sounds like a drug of some kind, but in reality, it’s just a natural hormone that your body produces when you get stressed out. In general, it’s meant to help you respond to stressful things and help you work through it. There’s a typical fight or flight scenario that your body experiences when cortisol is released. Now, this doesn’t sound so bad at first, and in fact, you really need cortisol to help your brain handle big amounts of stress. Where the problems begin is when your body produces too much cortisol, chronically. Too much cortisol can lead to your body lashing out and hurting itself in the process of trying to cope with all of the constant…
Self-Care Begins with Self Awareness
Self-Care Begins with Self Awareness An often overlooked aspect of self-care is developing something that caters to your specific needs, which all begins with self-awareness. You could pick up a random self-care routine, and it might help a bit, but if you want to see the best results, you need to be constructing a plan to specifically address your own issues. You can’t even start to plan that until you know what those problems are. By being more self-aware, you’ll be able to easily pinpoint the root of your problems and continue on to build a plan to address that. The first and most important step is identification. This means taking an honest, hard look at your life and figuring out what it is that you’re not happy with. It could be anything. You might not be confident in your figure, you might dislike your job, you might be struggling…
Plan a Mini Retreat to Dive into Self-Care
Plan a Mini Retreat to Dive into Self-Care Sometimes you just need to take a bit of time off for yourself – time where you can be away from any stress factors you might have, and time where you can just relax and take care of some basic needs that you have to fulfill. It doesn’t have to be an extravagant or expensive vacation, though. A small retreat in the comfort of your own home could be just what you need. A mini retreat doesn’t require a lot of set up or money. It just requires a few days at most of free time. You can plan this out in advance to ensure you’re actually doing what you set out to do during this time, and it’ll benefit you greatly to do so. Essentially, during your mini retreat, you want to have time to engage in your self-care routine, practice…
Mental and Physical Health Can Benefit Each Other
Mental and Physical Health Can Benefit Each Other It can sometimes be difficult to properly manage your time in such a way that you’re able to work on both your mental and physical health. It seems that sometimes they don’t really work well with one another. However, they’re more similar than you might think, and by working on one, you can actually greatly improve the other at the same time. Everything in your body is connected, and that includes your brain. Your mental health can have a direct effect on the rest of your body, and your physical health can have a direct effect on your mind and mental well-being. If you let one deteriorate, the other will follow suit. However, this also applies to improvements, meaning that if you’re able to develop better physical health, you can easily develop better mental health. As you improve your mental health, you’re…
Make Your Self Care a Priority
Make Your Self Care a Priority Many people find themselves in the bad habit of trying to always help others. On the surface, this doesn’t sound like a bad habit or a problem at all. In fact, it sounds rather noble. However, after extended periods of time, we start to prioritize the needs of others over the needs of ourselves, neglecting our most basic needs and wants, which can lead to some serious long term issues both physically and mentally. Though it may sound selfish, you need to make yourself a priority. You can’t effectively help others unless you’re in a sound enough state yourself. Instead of devoting as much time as possible to appeasing others, let yourself be happy for a change. Don’t let yourself be trampled on for someone else to be happy, you deserve to be happy as well. Take control and learn how to make your…
How Often Should You Switch Up Your Self Care Routine?
How Often Should You Switch Up Your Self Care Routine? When people find a self-care routine that works for them, they tend to get very attached to it. It might’ve taken a bit of effort to get to that point, so they don’t want to do anything that’ll undo the work they’ve done. However, it might be necessary to make the change. After a little while, your self-care routine will become stale, and you might have to change certain parts of it around to keep it working for you. You can think of your self-care routine like a car. Unfortunately, the whole thing isn’t going to last forever. After a period of time, certain parts will need to be replaced to keep it running efficiently, even if it’s a bit of a hassle to do. Going through that hassle is a lot better than seeing the whole thing fall apart…
Four Ways to Nurture Your Body’s Physical Needs
Four Ways to Nurture Your Body’s Physical Needs Keeping your physical health in check is important. It can affect how you feel and can carry over into affecting your mental health. However, people typically only think of one or two ways to keep their physical health in god shape. In reality, there are a multitude of ways that you can and should keep yourself healthy in order to live a better, longer life. First, you need to maintain good nutrition. This doesn’t mean you have to eat strictly healthy and bland foods, but rather you shouldn’t be having fast food for every meal. You should be mixing things up, learning how to cook at home, and making some better dishes. When it comes to nutrition, you also need to learn portion control. It’s fine to have something unhealthy now and then, but if you eat a ton of that unhealthy…
Four Signs You Need to Start a Self-Care Routine
Four Signs You Need to Start a Self-Care Routine Sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether or not you’re in a good place in life. You might feel as though you’re not doing very bad but you’re not quite good, either, leaving you in some kind of limbo. At this point, you might start to feel some of the more negative effects of not taking care of yourself, which you might interpret as something that will simply come to pass. In reality, it might be the wake-up call that you need to make some lifestyle changes. One more serious effect you might see is insomnia. Insomnia means that you find it difficult or impossible to fall asleep, causing you to be up late for hours and dozing off from time to time during the day. If this only occurs once or twice, it’s probably not a big issue. But…