4 cooping articles and tips for self care
Does Self Care Make You Feel Selfish?
When describing most people’s lives, busy is an understatement. It’s hard for you to find the time to give to yourself and your needs. When you steal away for a minute or two, it bothers you because you’re thinking about other things.
That’s a common occurrence. You might be one of millions of people who experiences feelings of guilt whenever you want to do something for yourself. The reason that people feel this way is because they think it’s selfish to take some “me time” when there are so many other things they could be doing for someone else.
It’s not selfish to take some time to recharge your batteries. You need to unplug from being plugged in to everyone else’s needs. Otherwise, you drain your own batteries and then you have nothing left to give anyone – including yourself.
It’s not wrong to put yourself at the top of your to-do list. By taking care of your own needs first, you protect yourself financially, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
Practice self-care by understanding where you’re at with your health goals and see what you’ve been neglecting in that area. You might find a mental or physical issue you’ve been ignoring that could be addressed and give you a new lease on life.
Because you have so much going on, you push your own health needs aside, telling yourself you’ll get to it someday. But the most ideal time to take care of yourself is now. Take a few minutes and take stock of what’s going on with your body and then make time to deal with whatever it is.
You should also look at the things that you like to do that you haven’t been able to do because you haven’t been practicing self-care. These might be things like going to the movies with friends, taking a class you’ve been wanting to take, reading a book, taking a trip or simply sitting at home working on a creative project.
Taking the time to do the things that feed the emotional side or creative side of you is a great way to add self-care. Just like you list events or appointments on your calendar for family or friends’ needs, you should add yours as well.
Block out time to do the stuff that makes you smile or makes you feel fulfilled. You don’t have to spend a lot of money – or even any at all – just find what you enjoy doing and make time for it.
No distractions, no thinking about meeting someone else’s needs. Tune in to yourself instead. Part of self care is found in protecting your time. This means you’re going to have to set boundaries. Don’t be afraid to say no to others so there’s time for yourself.
Everyone’s Idea of Self Care Is Unique
You might have heard about the idea of practicing self-care. In case you haven’t, it simply means doing things to nurture or take care of yourself. In light of how busy everyone is these days, the last person who gets soothed or helped is usually you.
You’re so busy providing for other people that you don’t often think about how it’s best to take care of you. Even though you might not be thinking about it, your body probably is wishing you would.
If you find yourself battling insomnia, experiencing pressure at work, suffering stress from your relationships, and handling long days of obligations, then you feel that in your body.
You might have shoulders that ache or feel strained. Maybe you’ve been having headaches lately or you just feel tired all the time and can hardly wait to fall into bed. Your zest is gone and you long for time for you to unwind, but you don’t ever do anything about it.
That could be because you imagine that in order to revitalize yourself, you don’t have enough time, money or energy to see it through. Self care doesn’t have to be something that’s complicated.
It can be sweet and easy. All you have to do is think about what appeals to you – what you love, what gives you the feeling of having your batteries recharged. What you come up with isn’t going to necessarily be what other people have in mind for their own self care.
Every person will have a unique idea of what self care means to them. Some people might picture self care as having an hour where they can go for a run or hit the gym for an uninterrupted workout.
They might picture it as going for a walk in the neighborhood with the family pet or spending time at the dog park. For others, self care might be taking a luxuriously hot bath where they light candles and put on some relaxing music.
They might imagine themselves submerged in bubbles, head back against a neck pillow, glass of wine in hand with an audiobook or music playing softly in the background.
You might be someone who thinks of self care in terms of intangible things. Your idea of self care might be to have time with your family. You might imagine spending a night playing a family game with the kids, going out with your significant other, or visiting your parents, siblings or grandparents.
You might see self care for you as wanting that emotional connection. Self care can be something like desiring more sleep, so it could be taking a nap or sleeping in on the weekend. Other people want self care in the form of laughter.
You can do whatever you want. There’s no right or wrong way and there’s no right or wrong amount of time, either. It could be something you do for just a couple of minutes or something you do for an hour. Maybe you want to take the day. Whatever it is, just practice self care in a way that nourishes you.
How Many Minutes Do You Need for Self Care?
Self care seems like an impossible idea for many people to even consider. When they add up all the things they have to do at home, plus at work, not to mention scheduling things with family and friends, self-care just doesn’t fit into the picture.
Part of the reason it gets tossed out the window is because there’s an all or nothing way of looking at the time you have or the energy that it takes to practice self-care. You might assume that it means something like jetting off for an island getaway or relaxing by the pool for an entire afternoon.
When you think about it like that, if you have a packed schedule already, you dismiss the idea of self-care needlessly. But the time it takes to make sure you get taken care of doesn’t have to take all day, half a day or even a full hour.
A simple five minute pause to enjoy something funny – to have a good laugh – can work wonders for you mentally and physically. Just taking the time to sit quietly and simply be in the moment can also count as good way to initiate self-care.
So if all it takes is five minutes, then why aren’t more people doing it? Because self care is a matter of priorities. Everyone tells themselves that they’re so busy they don’t have time to take a walk, sit by the fireplace, or enjoy a drink with a friend.
They don’t have time to read, to sit on the porch, to laugh, to take a walk – and the list could go on and on. But look at your life. Check out all the things that you did make time for.
That coworker who talked your ear off. The neighbor who stopped to chat as you checked the mail. There are dozens upon dozens of five minute intervals sprinkled throughout your day.
They’re just all consumed by other things or other people and none of that matters more than making sure you get taken care of. Without you taking care of yourself, you end up stressed, overworked, mentally exhausted.
But that short time that you take to recharge yourself can change the course of your day. It can make you feel relaxed. It can ease that tension between your shoulders. It can make you feel happier and even more energetic.
You don’t need a lot of time – but you gain a lot in return. Just choose your priorities and make sure you’re one of them. Learn how to say no or end conversations with attention vampires who leech off of you.
When Self Care Turns Into Sabotage
The concept that you should take care of you and indulge yourself is everywhere, but it’s usually in the form of advertisers advising you to vacation somewhere exotic, buy a new car, a new house, or new clothes – for no other reason than you just deserve it.
But now, pampering your needs has taken a different turn – people are focusing more on their mental and physical needs to promote happiness and calm in their lives as a way of escaping stress.
You’re overworked, underpaid, the house is a mess, the family or romantic relationship is stressing you out and you feel the need to practice a little self-care. While there’s nothing wrong with taking care of yourself, it can easily slide into the area of self-sabotage or the development of bad habits that can derail your goals, hurt your health and lead you down a path that you don’t really want to be on.
This can take away what you really want in life and strip you of what you’ve worked to achieve. Many people splurge on themselves every now and then – especially on special days such as birthdays or holidays and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But if you’re not careful, you can let frequent splurges become less about soothing your soul and more about mindless overindulgence. There are ways to examine your life to see if there are signs that maybe you’ve crossed the line from self-care to sabotage.
If you do something for yourself, then later wish you hadn’t because now you’re paying the price for it, that’s one symptom. An example of this can be indulging in a binge shopping spree that wrecked your budget to the point that now you’re hurting financially.
Some people refer to this as playing, then paying. If whatever it is you want to do to treat yourself keeps you from reaching personal or professional goals, then it’s sabotage.
Self sabotage can become ritual that you turn to automatically and in the long run, it causes trouble or discouragement. An example of this is feeling upset about something and blowing a day’s worth of calories on a single meal.
You have to take stock of your life and see if what you’re doing is causing you to ignore your goals or suffer setbacks. Look at the self care routine or product you’re about to invest time or money in and see if it’s about to make things better or somehow make them worse. Self-care will always help your life for the long-term, while sabotage may only give you a comforting feeling for a short time.
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