Do you practice self-care often? Do you understand the importance of self-care?
Lately it seems like self-care is a trend that everyone is doing and encouraging others to do as a means to just be a part of something cool. While I love self-care and highly encourage everyone to practice it daily, I also understand that it’s not a trend. Self-care isn’t something that you just pick up out of the blue, stick with for a while until it’s no longer serving you, and then drop like it’s nothing.
Oh no honey. Self-care is so much more than that!
Self-care is the act of effectively taking care of your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. It’s the process of doing the necessary inner work in order to allow yourself to grow into your full potential. While the majority of self-care is inner work, that’s not all that self-care is.
Self-care is also the skill to be able to reset and center yourself. It’s the ability to be able to easily call forth a skill or ability to regulate your mood and/or thoughts. Essentially self-care is the awareness you have of yourself and the ability to use that awareness in ways that can help you give yourself what it needs in order to regulate yourself.
There’s a constant debate about what self-care is and what it’s not. However, there are many different ways to engage in self-care despite what others have to say about it. The most important thing to know about self-care is that it’s a lot of work, but it’s necessary work if you want to be the best version of yourself.
I’m going to share with you some of the many reasons why practicing self-care is important, as well as some self-care activities that you can do.
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Why you need to practice self-care
By this time, you’re probably wondering why it’s so important to practice self-care. As mentioned earlier there are a couple of reasons. Such as the regulation of your thoughts and emotions, the active care of your mental, physical, and emotional health, as well as the ability to be able to grow into your full potential.
However, there are many other reasons why you should regularly engage in self-care. Below is a list of what I believe to be some of the most important reasons.
Reasons why you should practice self-care:
- helps to eliminate toxic people out of your life
- places your focus on things that matter
- attracts the things that you want out of life
- helps you get clear on your goals
- increases your confidence
These I believe are the most important reasons to practice self-care that cannot be denied. When you think about it our lives revolve around these themes and everything we desire or want out of life, the people that make up our life, and the way we live our lives all reflect the type of relationship we have with these themes.
It’s vital that we do all that we can do to care for ourselves. Let’s take a closer look at these themes as well as some self-care activities that can help us regulate these areas more efficiently.
Eliminate toxic people
We all have people in our life who don’t necessarily push out positive energy. The people who make us uncomfortable when we shouldn’t feel that way, and make us constantly questions ourselves and our decisions. I’m talking about people who just aren’t for us but they want us to be all for them.
No shame if you know or have people like that in your life because like I said earlier, we all have them.
However, just because people like that may exist in our lives doesn’t mean they have to be a part of it. If there is anything practicing self-care regularly has taught me it’s that you have to be mindful of the company that you keep. Yes, that includes the toxic people you allow to be a part of your life. Self-care can help you not only identify who those toxic people in your life are, but also give you the confidence and reassurance needed to help them exit stage left.
How do we go about doing so? Here are some self-care practices that can help you remove toxic people from your life:
- meditate
- journal
- talk to someone you trust
- go to therapy and work through unresolved problems you may have
- write a letter expressing how you feel before having a talk with them
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Focus on things that matter
It’s so important to use your time as wisely as you possibly can. All too often we invest a ton of energy in things that are not serving our higher purpose. Things like arguing with other people, pleasing everyone, and making sure those around you are taken care of but not yourself.
These are the kind of things that drain us of energy, not restore us. In order to get focused on the things that matter you have to take the time to re-evaluate your life and understand what’s working for you and what’s no longer serving you.
As you can imagine doing such a thing is not as easy as it sounds. It really requires you to be patient and honest with yourself. This is a big part of the inner work of self-care so you can’t just do it halfway. You have to commit and see that commitment through. Especially when it starts to get hard and extremely uncomfortable.
Here are some self-care practices that can help you get some clarity:
- meditate
- engage in positive self-talk
- go on walks
- go to a therapist regularly
- journal (regularly or start a gratitude journal)
Attract things you want in life
You’ll be amazed with all the things you can attract in your life with a little bit of positivity. As someone who struggled a long time with telling myself I was worthy of everything I wanted in life, I’m telling you that your mindset is the key to everything you do in life.
The way you carry yourself, the way you perceive yourself, the type of goals you have, the field of work you pursue and so much more are all dependent upon your mindset about your life.
Self-care is the art of knowing your worth, honoring that value, and NEVER settling for anything less. So much easier said than done I know, but self-care isn’t easy. There is no straight and narrow path with a big pot of gold at the end of the tunnel.
Instead you have to dig, build, tear down just to rebuild, and do this process many times over before you get to where you want to be. Once you’ve down the hard work needed to get to where you want to be everything else will fall in place as they should.
Here are some self-care practices that can help you get what you want out of life:
- set intentions daily
- change your mindset from a negative to a positive one
- resolve any unresolved problems you may have
- do yoga
- pay it forward (donate, volunteer, help those in need, etc.)
Get clear on your goals
The main intent of practicing self-care is to have goals to work towards that are meaningful to you. No one likes to just live life day by day, waiting for something amazing and life changing happen. If you want to see and experience change you have to put in the work to help change come about. Goals work in the same way.
If you have a specific goal that you want to achieve you first have to get clear and specific about what that goal is. The only way this happens is if we know what it is that we truly want. Often times what we really want can be blinded by what we feel is only within our reach.
Which means you have to declutter your life in order to see and extend beyond that reach. Once this is done the possibilities become endless and your goals become easier to set out and achieve.
Here are some self-care practices that can help you achieve your goals:
- engage in daily intention setting
- brain dump in your journal everyday
- journal your experiences
- work one on one with a coach (life coach, health coach, etc.)
- talk to someone you trust
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Increase your confidence
Lastly self-care is so important because it can significantly increase your confidence. I’ve found that one of the most common reasons why people don’t practice self-care daily or often is because they don’t have the confidence to do so.
As mentioned earlier lately self-care has been coming across as a trend that everyone is into for the moment, but don’t necessarily know how to make it stick. This is because for a really long-time self-care was undervalued and underappreciated.
Now that more and more people are expressing the importance of self-care, what it means to them, and in some cases how to do it, it has taken on a whole new meaning for a lot of people. As a result of this it’s now become something that is constantly talked about, encouraged, and promoted in various health and wellness related fields.
The main reason for this is because of the positive changes that it can create in your life. The first and biggest change is your level of confidence. There are so many things we no longer fear accomplishing or doing simply because our confidence to either succeed or fail forward increases.
Here are some self-care practices that can help you increase your confidence:
- meditate
- do yoga
- set goals
- talk to someone you trust
- exercise
- spend time in nature
Conclusion
Self-care is so vital to our health. It impacts our mental, physical, and emotional health in so many ways. When we fail to properly care for these areas of our health that lack of self-compassion and loves begins to filter into all areas of our life. We begin to become depressed, have a hard time managing anxiety, lose interest and motivation in our favorite activities, and everything else around us becomes mood sucking trap.
The best way to combat this is to practice self-care as often as you can. Even if you don’t know where to begin, the simple act of starting somewhere is what really counts.
When we regularly engage in self-care, we take the time to care for our mental, physical, emotional, and even our spiritual health. When this happens it’s not only a sure sign of the love and respect we have for ourselves, but it also allows us to soar in life and grow into our full potential.
What do you do to practice self-care and how has it impacted your life?
-Xo
Kimora