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Self Care Tips
Have you ever been told to “take care of yourself”? Maybe it is straight forward, but for a lot of us this phrase can be beautifully confusing. You may know that you need to take care of yourself, but what are some self care tips?
In this article I want to offer some basic self care tips that everybody can incorporate! I focus on small things to do throughout the day, so if you are looking for massive life overhauls, this is not quite the article for you.
Check out the next section for the importance of self care followed by my self care tips!
The Importance of Self Care
The words “self care” tend to appear as a black box term-usually for taking care of yourself, right? We all should practice as best we can. There is no doubt a great benefit to self care!
But what exactly is self care? How do we practice it? Is it something we should continue to practice? If so, how do we continue to maintain a good routine? These are all important questions to ask.
Throughout my graduate program we students were always told “take care of yourselves”. After all, how can we take care of our patients if we can’t take care of ourselves?
I absolutely love this idea! We need to be doing what we can to manage our stress day-to-day to avoid psychological burnout. As a matter of fact, therapists that don’t manage their self care can often times do more harm than good in the long run.
If you are thinking “I hate therapy”, it may be that your therapist or you are psychologically fatigued. Check out this article that discussed psychological fatigue due to therapy.
Learning about what to do if you want to switch therapists due to poor boundaries may be important, too. Investigating why you may begin to hate therapy and considering switching therapists are good practices for self care if warranted.
However, ideally, we would like to keep that from happening. This is why I want to discuss specifics. I find that we often times know self care is good for us. That much is evident.
But do we know what self care looks like? How often do I need to practice it? What specifically do I have to do? Answers to these questions are often times glazed over and ignored.
I remember being in school and being told to “take care of yourself” by the same people that made my life more difficult! We unfortunately live in a system (in the US) that promotes the opposite of self care. So what do we do?
We assess, adapt, and overcome. Is it difficult to do? Absolutely. However, the very fact of looking into how to take care of yourself is a form of self care. So let’s look at some self care tips that can help you in your day to day in the following section!
Here are Some Self Care Tips
Before I give you my self care tips I want to emphasize that these tips are not glamorous. Often times we see people riding bikes with their families on a beautifully paved bike path. Maybe you have seen the picture of the person doing yoga in the sunset?
My personal favorites are the Instagram “fit-fluencers” that talk about working out as their self care. Don’t get me wrong, these are all great modes of self care! But we can’t all drive into the sunset every time things get difficult during the day.
Perhaps you work an office job. When your boss says the wrong thing to you and it throws off your day you probably can’t go bench a personal record in that moment, right? Of course not! We need to manage in the moment.
This is what we want to address here. How can we manage our mental health with self care tips day to day and in the moment? I present some simple (and non-glamorous) ways to take care of yourself throughout your day as needed.
Cleaning
One of my favorite self care tips is to clean. When I say clean I do NOT mean deep cleaning or spring cleaning. I would recommend saving this for when it is needed. Otherwise, cleaning might make things worse and overwhelming.
I say cleaning to mean simply putting things where they belong. Is your desk at work a bit cluttered? Move some papers to one side. Throw that trash you have been wanting to get rid of. Maybe decorate your space at work.
This may seem small, but getting into the habit of doing small “tweaks” of your space over time will yield great results. This also applies when you are home!
Get into the habit of simply putting your pillows and blankets back where they belong on your couch. Maybe you need to keep the dishes out of the sink more regularly. These and other aspects of cleaning your spaces are great ways to keep a nice “baseline” level of cleanliness in your spaces.
So why would this all matter? The way we organize our lives and emotions often times is related to our spaces that we occupy. Sitting down at a desk that is cluttered after a difficult conversation with a coworker makes it that much more difficult to manage.
The same goes for coming home. Your child may have had a rough day at school which has you a bit flustered. Coming home to dirty dishes and a messy living room may make dealing with your child’s problems more difficult.
So we aren’t necessarily changing the sources of stress in your life to make them better. Cleaning here is to help you manage inevitable sources of stress. When we can manage daily stresses proactively with cleaning, we can better manage future stressors with more grace!
This also counts for the following self care tips. Let’s continue!
Making Lists and Reminders
Making lists is a great way to keep yourself on track with your day. Like your physical space, it is important to keep your mental space free of clutter.
A great way to do this is to make lists. I would pick whether you want electronic lists or paper lists. Personally, paper is a nightmare for me when it comes to reminders! But you may be different.
Using a list can help keep your brain occupied with what it needs to be occupied with instead of all that plus your tasks you need to do. Make life easier for yourself so when stress strikes you can manage it better!
Regular Exercise
Okay, I know I may have poked a little fun at “fit-fluencers” earlier. However, regular exercise is so beneficial for your baseline mood. Endorphins from physical activity will consistently keep your mood higher throughout the day-especially when you do it consistently.
The good news here is you do NOT have to over-exert yourself! Take a walk in nature like I talk about in this article. Any kind of physical movements or exercises are great self care tips to try. So feel free to get outside with your family and friends!
Getting to Scheduled Appointments
Along the same lines as maintaining your mental and physical spaces, make sure to get to all your appointments. This is a great self care tip for the simple reason that you can check your appointments off.
The act of planning and fulfilling a task is actually highly important for your mental health! Keeping a schedule and being able to fulfill all of your obligations may be just what you need to keep yourself at a healthy baseline.
Perhaps combining this self care tip with the above tip of keeping reminders and lists is what you may need. So continue to prioritize your appointments. Sometimes we simply need to successfully show up to keep ourselves grounded.
If you do not struggle with this, a great self care tip is still to continue to prioritize your appointments. Keeping good habits as a form of self care is a great way to maintain your baseline where it needs to be!
Maintaining Relationships – Even When You Don’t Want To
In the age of a viral pandemic maintaining relationships can be difficult. Any way that you can manage this is so beneficial! Whether it is virtual (with a healthy dose of moderation) or in person, quality relationships are the single most important factors in happiness for us as humans.
A highly fascinating project out of Harvard Medical School supports this notion, among others. Robert Waldinger is a psychiatrist working as the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is the longest study of humans ever–spanning 75 years.
You can watch him chat about the study here. Dr. Waldinger talks about how throughout time previous directors of the study have followed people through all walks of life to measure which ones turned out happiest.
The consistent variable in every person who reported higher life satisfaction and happiness reported the highest quality relationships! This idea is consistent across the literature on life satisfaction.
So reach out to that family member you think about often. Maybe you have a friend who you have wanted to reconnect with. It may be a good idea for you to set some time aside to get back in touch. Being happy alone is good, but being happy with a friend is even better!
Putting the Screens Down and Being in the Moment
This one is probably the most challenging suggestion I’ll offer. I will even include myself in this, because screens are such a big part of our life! And when I say screens, I mostly mean social media and “mindless” scrolling.
Repeatedly giving yourself dopamine hits by scrolling through social media and using screens is actually quite harmful for your long-term mental health. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist in the US, discusses this idea in this interesting interview.
Essentially, when you continuously scroll and use screens in the “in-between” moments we create a baseline that has hazardously high levels of dopamine. The more we try for those hits of dopamine, the more we need to get the same “high”.
You can likely see where this goes. So putting the screens and social media down or focusing them to specific times of the day are great ways to keep your dopamine receptors fresh. Otherwise, you may feel lower mood and irritability without having a concrete cause!
Well, the cause is concrete–your brain expects much more than it is prepared to receive. Dopamine detoxes, or times when we intentionally keep our brains away from high dopaminergic activities like mindlessly scrolling, are great ways to practice self care regularly.
This can keep your brain nice and fresh to receive and appreciate new hits of dopamine from a wider variety of sources! So don’t be afraid to be a little bored sometimes. It’s good for you!
Conclusion – Self Care Tips
I know I threw a lot at you with these self care tips. Despite this, they are all still important! My advice is to pick one or two that seem to stick out to you and see if practicing them for a couple weeks gives you that little bit more control over your day you may be seeking.
They are not in any particular order, so feel free to pick and choose which work best for you! Keep in mind not to try to do too much. This can actually work against you, which may make your day-to-day more difficult.
Remember, slow and steady wins the race when it comes to life changes. Smaller changes over the course of a long time turn into much healthier changes than trying to “cut the cord” and completely overhaul the way you do things all at once. Give yourself some space to explore what works.
If you are wanting more specific self care tips that fit you, feel free to reach out to me using my contact form!
