My 5 Favorite Self-Care Practices

About Self-Care

Self-care is in my opinion the most important aspect to maintaining good mental health. Without practicing self-care, I feel tired, unmotivated, less productive, more cranky, experience lower self-esteem and make poorer choices. Establishing a self-care regime or routine helps me find more balance and stability in my day to day life, allowing me to accomplish things I set out to do and interact with others from a good internal working model.

Self-care essentially means carving out time in your daily life to do the things that improve your mental, physical, and spiritual health. There are a myriad of ways in which someone can practice self-care, and no one’s way of doing self-care is going to necessarily be the way that self-care works for you. We are all unique and what helps one of us, might not work for the other.

As with anything in our lives, it’s important to have self-compassion toward your self-care practice, making sure not to judge yourself for only being able to do one thing to improve your self-care, or feeling bad about not having a range of self-care practices. Whatever it is, make sure you are gentle with yourself, giving grace, thanking yourself for what you are able to do, and listening to your body. Remember, self-care practices aren’t meant to cause more stress or something extra to worry about, but in fact, they are meant to relieve you of these feelings.

Here are my 5 favorite self-care practices…

Exercise

Exercise helps me so much with my mental health. Just 30 minutes a day is all I need, although sometimes I do up to 90 minutes a day if I am feeling up to it. Not only does exercise improve my mood and energy levels, but exercise also makes me feel more confident in my body and my ability to be social. When I feel more confident in my body, my outlook and perspective towards the issues and stressors that come up through the day tends to be more positive and I tend to approach problems with the mindset that “there is nothing I can’t handle” and “I am excited to do this” instead of “what am I going to do and how” and “I don’t want to do this.”

My favorite exercises to incorporate include walking, hiking, yoga, pole dancing, and doing exercise videos such as those from the Blogilates YouTube channel. Walking and hiking get me outdoors in the fresh air and allow me to feel free. Pole dancing makes me feel strong, sexy and talented. Yoga grounds me to the present moment and enhances my spiritual life, and Blogilates exercise videos connect me to specific areas of my body.

Journaling and writing

Writing in some form or fashion is always useful in helping me transfer thoughts, feelings, beliefs and ideas into something tangible, clear and organized which helps me to solve problems, strategize, set goals and gain clarity on how to move forward. Some of the ways I incorporate writing into my self-care regime are through creating blog posts (such as the one you are reading right now), filling out prompts and worksheets found online on various topics such as identifying my triggers, goal-setting and thought logs, using a feelings wheel to identify my feelings and then writing about where I feel those feelings are coming from, writing in a gratitude journal, or simply writing in any journal whatever comes to mind without placing judgment or having any expectations.

Meditation and breathwork

Meditation for me is a practice in which I focus my attention on my breathing and the present moment. While meditating, anytime that my mind begins to wander and think about what I have to do today or that bill I have to pay or that person who cut me off on the freeway, I am reminded to refocus my attention to my breath and the present moment. Meditating is not always something that comes easily for me, and in fact, when I first started meditating I was only able to do it for 2 minutes. So do not be discouraged if you start meditating and find it boring or incredibly uncomfortable. Eventually, meditation becomes a practice that feels great and incredibly rewarding. I do not meditate everyday but when I do, I aim for a at least 5 minutes and prefer to do it in the morning after waking up. Sometimes I watch YouTube videos or use an app like Calm to help guide me through my meditations.

Breathwork involves incorporating intentional breathing exercises and practices. I specifically like to incorporate them into my meditation practice. While meditating, one of my favorite breathwork practices is to do the square breathing technique. Square breathing involves breathing in slowly for four seconds, holding the breath at the top of your lungs for four seconds, slowly exhaling through your mouth for four seconds, and then holding for four seconds before taking your next breath in. With square breathing, everything is done for four seconds. I aim to continue the four part cycle of square breathing repeatedly until I feel present, calmer and centered.

Sleep

Sleep is something I have learned over the years to be incredibly more important and necessary than I originally had thought. I have had to learn the rough way through trial and error what sacrificing even one hour of sleep can do to my mental health, and the fact of the matter is that any loss of sleep can and will have an impact on the quality of my day. I tend to be much more distracted, grouchy, rude, quick to react and irritable when I lose sleep. Everyone requires a different amount of hours of sleep a night to feel rested. For me, at this time in my life, I need about 8 to 8.5 hours of sleep a night to feel rested and if I get less than that, I can feel it. It is recommended for most adults to get between 7-9 hours of sleep a night, so I don’t suggest sleeping less than 7 hours to anyone. However, there are some people that do only need and require 6 hours a night and so if that works for you then by all means. Meanwhile, there are some people who are long sleepers who actually do require more hours. Everyone has unique sleeping needs, and it is important to honor your body’s needs.

Personally, if I am short on time and I have to decide between going to sleep now or waiting 20 minutes to complete some journaling before going to sleep, I will skip the journaling and just go to sleep. I also make sure to try and turn off cell phones and electronics 30 minutes before bedtime. I think sleep for me is the most important aspect of self-care.

Staying Connected

Connection is a fundamental human need and absolutely necessary to maintaining good mental health. As an introvert myself, I often prefer alone time and can be prone to isolating myself if I am not intentional about carving out time and making social interaction a part of my day. There was a time in my life where I failed to prioritize relationships and spending time talking or hanging out with others, and over time, I became incredibly alone and somewhat lost. This led to a range of negative emotions that I could not pull myself out of even with good sleep practices and exercising. It was only when I put myself out there and in a way quite literally forced myself to connect with others either by calling friends or family on the phone, going out for coffee or lunch/dinner, attending a local community gathering, finding a self-help group and attending meetings was I able to feel relieved and supported. Intentionally carving out time in my day to prioritize staying connected to others has allowed me to build close, intimate and deep interpersonal relationships and a community around myself.

… I am curious. What do you guys do for self-care? Feel free to comment on this blog post and let me know!

Love, Paige