5 Things You Can Do For Your Personal Self-Care Routines
In the previous article, I covered what self-care is and why it is important. That was a fairly simple introduction to the subject. To follow that up, I wanted to share some areas in which you can develop routines for your own self-care plan.
While I am recommending some different ideas that you can use for creating routines for your self-care, there is one common theme that carries throughout. One thing that must remain constant, self-care, is personal. Any, or all, of these, need to work for you.
Exercise
Here is perhaps one of the more dreaded self-care recommendations anyone can make. Doctors do it all the time. “Get more exercise.’ Unfortunately, that is a generic statement and can mean so many different things. It can easily get translated into hours of working out at gyms or running for miles every morning. Exercise doesn’t have to mean any of those things.
From a self-care perspective, exercise is getting your body moving. This is one that you may want or need to consult with your doctor before engaging fully in, especially if you have any underlying medical needs. That note aside, there are so many options available today for different types of exercise activities. For people in the Apple ecosystem, I have previously mentioned the use of Apple Fitness. I think this is a simple way to get started if you have an Apple Watch and you need a jump start for getting your body moving. If you are not invested in the Apple products, check out Nike or any of the common athletic wear websites, all have ideas and options to help you find activities that might be right for you. The great thing is, they almost all have very short time investment options. You can begin your routine with as little as five-minute workouts. It seems like all of us can find five minutes to help take care of ourselves better.
Where you start doesn’t have to be where you end. Many years ago, I began with just a few minutes on a treadmill to get started. I did that for several years. It wasn’t until this year I started to change the timing and the routine a little to make more time available. I made that change because I saw how much better I felt when I did different types of activities and increased the intensity of my exercise. Now, almost every day, I am dedicating more than forty-five minutes to a much more intense exercise set than I had been previously. The outcome is simple: my body feels better. I have more energy for the day. My mind is clearer each morning when I sit at my desk for work.
Rest
We have been sleeping since the dawn of man, yet somehow it is only now getting the attention it deserves as an important part of taking care of ourselves. Perhaps it is something that is so easy to take for granted. At night, we go to bed, we wake up the next morning. It all seems to happen automatically. We tend not to think much about the quality of the sleep or even how much we get. Over time, we have heard, ‘you need eight hours’ or ‘you don’t need eight hours, you only need five hours.’ There have been so many studies on sleep and the data can be confusing and contradictory that many people just ignore it all. ‘If I am tired, I’ll sleep’ is what I hear many people comment. It is not always that easy. Having more of a plan for the rest you get will ensure that you know what is best for your body and the way it works.
There is not a one-size-fits-all approach to getting enough rest. It is unique to each individual. Rest can come in many forms as well. It is always just about sleep. In a previous article, I wrote about the different types of rest that each of us need. Ensuring you find what works best for you is step one. Step two involves building a routine around that. If we concentrate on sleep, since it is most common — having a defined bedtime and wake time for every day of the week is one of the simplest ways to manage your rest. It may seem silly to ‘have a bedtime’, but occasionally those lessons from Mom really do have extra value. Cramming in extra work or activities late at night rarely are done with any high quality, so trading that extra work time for sleep may be the better way to get ahead for the next day. (Note: some people do their best work late at night. So, you will need to adjust accordingly. For night owls, doing the work at night, so you can sleep later into the morning, may be the best approach.)
Hobbies
Do something fun. Is that a reminder, or is that advice? That statement is probably a bit of both. Of all the things on this list, making time for hobbies is the most difficult for me. However, it never fails to surprise me how restorative taking time to do something just for me is. Something that takes me away from my work and places me in a different environment helps to relax my body and my mind. Not only do I end up enjoying that time, I find I almost always have some fresh ideas or new creative energy to apply towards all the other parts of life after dedicating this time.
Don’t overthink hobbies. Sometimes I think that people want to have some that is always Instagrammable as a hobby. It doesn’t have to be some of the traditional items we hear talked about when the meeting icebreaker is, ‘what is your favorite hobby?’ Hobbies are one-hundred percent ‘you do you’ thinking. Taking walks in the morning to clear your mind and enjoy the sunrise can be a hobby. Watching old movies (and old can be a relative term) can be a hobby.
Hobbies should be something that is just for you that you enjoy. Let it take you out of your typical mental and physical spaces and just enjoy it. Typically, hobbies will engage one or more of the idea of hands, heart, or mind and for good reason. Doing something that allows for creation (hands) feels good, and you get a sense of accomplishing something. Woodworking, painting, writing for fun would be common examples of this. For heart, it is usually something people are really passionate about or has special meaning for them. Volunteering or teaching Sunday school may be examples for this hobby area. And for mind, anything that allows you to relax your brain or stimulate it in really different ways from normal could apply here. Activities such as learning a new language, doing puzzles, or even playing online games could be mind-driven hobbies.
Diet
How you eat is as important as what you eat. And when I say how you eat, I don’t mean chewing our food. What I do mean is building a routine for meal times. Done well, your diet becomes something you plan, versus just happening. Don’t get me wrong, having some spontaneity in where you go or what you eat from time to time is absolutely necessary. Food can be an experience in itself. But, under normal circumstances, having a plan for when and what you eat can really help in defining your dietary routines.
Once you establish that, I believe you will be surprised at how much better you feel each day. In some regards, it can even reduce the stress and decision fatigue in trying to figure out what you’re going to eat. Meal planning has valuable benefits.
When it comes to self-care, there is no one thing that will make or break your process. But your diet is a significant part of fueling your daily activities. Managing it closely, without being burdensome, can accelerate your positive outcomes.
Development
Development is a broad topic that does not have to always be specifically related to your professional development. Development is something we can and should do, simple for being human. There can also be a lot of cross over between skill development and hobbies (or any of the other items mentioned above). I have found in doing new things over the span of my life that what may have started as a single project, or a hobby, tuned into something I was more interested in. Thus, I spent time developing myself and my skills in that area. Something like photography comes to mind as an example of that. Over time, that evolved from something that was interesting to something I did a lot of research on, to something I do more casually.
In the mindset of self-care, development should be fun, engaging, and a choice more than anything else. It shouldn’t feel connected to work or feel like work at all. Development is about obtaining new skills and understanding how that may connect to other things to help you enjoy your life better.
Routine might sound like a bad word for some. But developing a practice for how you can take care of yourself can be the difference in a successful self-care approach and one that does not deliver the benefits you need and deserve. This is definitely an area that ‘what gets planned, gets done.’ Start small and simple. Perhaps you only take one area from this list and start with that. That is exactly how I took this on. As I felt comfortable with each and had a solid routine in place, I moved on to the next one. Pick any of these to start, work in any order; just get started and create the time you need to ensure you are taking care of you.
How will you begin your self-care routine?
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