Many people think self-care is indulging yourself with bubble baths, spa visits, and getting your eyebrows waxed. It’s not. I mean, maybe a bubble bath and a massage can be part of a self-care routine, but it’s much more basic and essential than that. It is not pampering. It is necessary for survival.
Consider self-care like disaster preparedness. You go for your annual exam. You get your teeth cleaned. You get your oil changed. You change the timing belt at 50,000. Rather than wait until your timing belt breaks while you’re driving and you can’t steer the car. Been there, done that.
In case you forgot what self-care is, here’s the list again.
- Self-care
- adequate sleep
- you need to sleep without an agenda or an alarm for a few days to find out what this amount is
- it can vary, but less than 1% of the population can live without 6 hours so…
- a cat nap (less than 30 minutes) can be helpful as a cup of coffee, when you’ve undershot your mark
- healthy diet
- 3 meals and snacks, or 5 small meals that include protein/fat/carbs
- eat at predictable intervals or you will trigger your starvation instinct and binge uncontrollably
- eat meals until you are at least 85% full or you will trigger your starvation instinct and binge uncontrollably
- movement
- you don’t have to do a formal workout
- a little goes a long way, as Yoga with Adrienne likes to say
- it doesn’t even have to be 10,000 steps
- connection
- self
- others
- nature, God, the universe, Isis, Sophia, Thor, Captain America
- pleasurable activities so you remember to play
- adequate sleep
Of course, things happen and it rarely goes perfectly. You go to bed and give yourself 8 hours, but you can’t sleep. Your boss decides to schedule a meeting and it ends up being for 3 hours instead of 1 and you can’t eat lunch. And it didn’t occur to you that a 3 hour meeting was possible so you didn’t grab a snack. But now you know.
Dee wrote a post on how hard it can be to practice self-care, which you can check out here.
When practicing self care, keep in mind that you also need to practice mindfulness and self-compassion, as Dee describes in her post. Which means grace, forgiveness, and re-setting your intention will be necessary every day, if not moment to moment.
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