Developing an Everyday Self Care Routine

Usually, when we think about self care, bath bombs, tasty treats, and Instagram filters come flooding to our minds.

While the occasional self indulgence can be a great way to express some gratitude to yourself and all you accomplish, self care is about more than that! By its own true definition, self care is about taking intentional care yourself: your mind, your body, your environment & your spirit.

An intentionally cultivated daily self care routine can make a *huge* difference in our lives, and allow us to be balanced & more restored when it is time to take part in the self indulgent manner of self care!

Today ask yourself:

1. How do I typically take care of myself day to day?
2. Do I take time to regularly assess & address my needs?
3. How is that impacting both my mental and physical health?

I really want you to think about how (or if) you set aside time each day to take care of yourself. Do you have time to sit back and assess your needs? Do you listen to your body when it tells you that you need a break? When you’re mentally strained, do you have a routine that helps you rest & rejuvenate?

Make a list of the ways you engage with self care! Are there daily habits on there? (There should be!)

Everyday self care is all about prioritizing mental & physical health to keep us balanced, and operating at maximum capacity without overstraining ourselves!

Here are a few ways you can start to look at your everyday routine and determine how to add daily self care into it to keep you balanced:

1. Assess your true needs: when we’re talking about daily self care we’re talking mainly about wellness (mental & physical). For a week, keep a log of your physical and mental expressions of stress or strain. Are you tired? Do you have frequent headaches? Look at what comes up for you and come up with small, incremental steps to take action. Maybe you have constant headaches because you’re dehydrated! Start carrying a water bottle, set some reminders on your phone to actually drink from it.
2. Take a critical look at your routine: What is taking up your time on a daily basis? Often times we fall so behind on creating an actual daily routine that *serves* us that we just wind up playing perpetual catch up–which really only leaves us more exhausted and LESS balanced than if we would take some time to prioritize our needs. Write down everything that you do on a daily basis. Are any of these things you can drop from your daily routine? Can any of them be done in larger batches less frequently, or, on the flip side, done in smaller batches more frequently? Finding the right way to balance what you need day to day will help ease stress and keep you feeling more balanced and in control.
3. Prioritize rest: if you have to put it in your schedule or on your to do list to make sure you get time to rest and recharge then, by all means, do it! Maybe it’s yoga, or reading, or taking a bath: however you find rest & rejuvenation should be a priority in your daily routine. Set aside small chunks of time each day where you stop the machine, ignore “productivity” and let yourself rest. It seems counterproductive when we have so much we need to get done, but giving ourselves time to recharge means we’ll be able to get back to our chores with full energy and do a much better job at them anyway!
4. Find your “boring” self care: there are a lot of little things that are self care but that aren’t exciting or instagram-able. That doesn’t make them less important! Below I’ve made a list of a few types of boring self-care that are important to many of us to incorporate into our regular routines.

Take a look at the list and use it as a jumping off point for your own! Take the things that are important to you and add any that I left out:

• • transfer dirty laundry from the floor to the hamper
  • check which prescriptions need refilling
  • check in on your budget
  • track your moods
  • pick one room to clean up clutter
  • set a time to be done with screens
  • make a meal plan that gets you excited to eat 3 meals a day!
  • take a look at your calendar: are you overbooked? need a fun outing to look forward to? need to make a doctors appointment?
  • wash your dishes
  • return missed phone calls
  • spend time outside

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” – Anne Lamott

 

Alyssa Mairanz, LMHC, DBTC

Alyssa Mairanz provides counseling and therapy services for life transitions, relationship issues, self esteem, depression, anxiety, and DBT and Psychodynamic therapy in a NYC group practice in the Flatiron District near Madison Square Park. She also serves the Village, Chelsea, Union Square, the Financial District and the surrounding areas.

Empower Your Mind Therapy’s mission is to helps our clients build the life they want and find more happiness and satisfaction.