Simple Ways to Practice Self Care

Practicing Self Care is vital to our overall health and well being.

Self-care is an aspect of daily life that is often forgotten, and perhaps neglected. Do you find yourself putting your own needs last? Our love of other people can be so great that we do all we can to help someone else but forget about ourselves! Eventually we become so exhausted that we cannot help anyone – how can we possibly give from an empty cup? We have become so good at giving every last bit of energy to others, our family, our friends, our jobs…, but now we are recognising how important it is for us to nurture ourselves.

Self-care and self-nurturing are about feeding every part of our being. I encourage you to look at what is it that does replenish you on all levels, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. What is it that gives you a sense of fulfilment, joy, appreciation for yourself?

A great New Year’s resolution would be for us to make a commitment to be more caring and nurturing towards ourselves and implement new strategies and disciplines that keep us connected with who we truly are.

Practicing Self Care

Here are some simple ideas on how we can apply self-care in different areas of our life. If any of these sing to you, take them on! If not, simply let them go.

Let each self care activity be a gift of love toward yourself.

Exercise

It can be as simple as a morning walk along the beach or the local park, or around the neighbourhood. When you are out walking, take time to connect with the beauty around you. Let nature joyfully nurture you. Smell the flowers, the trees, the ocean. Let the smells you experience touch the core of your being. Remember the importance of maintaining a positive attitude, not focussing on the negative aspects that may arise, such as “I am not as fit as I used to be”, or “I have put on so much weight that my exercise clothes don’t fit me anymore!” Focus upon why you are doing what you are doing, let each activity be a gift of love toward yourself.

Feel Good Foods

It is good to review our dietary choices from time to time. What types of foods make us feel energised? What food makes us feel really flat? We often think, “that cream cake will be so good”, but then we eat it, and we give ourselves a hard time for it. Whatever you choose to eat, do it with gratitude and joy. Our negative thoughts about our diet choices have a huge impact upon us. So avoid being critical about the choices you make, but recognise that which gives a sense of aliveness and supports health and wellbeing.

Make a self care commitment to do something that makes you laugh each day.

Laugh

Every now and then do something that is really silly. We are so serious so much of the time, when was the last time you had a good laugh and let your hair down? Like a child jumping in a puddle. Make a commitment to do something that makes you laugh each day.

Join a Group

Find a local group that you share common interests with. Perhaps a group on the Inward Bound Network that meets each week? Find group activities that feed and nurture your being. Perhaps a pottery class, a book group, or a singing class… ? Find a Community House that has established groups that you can join.

Ask for What You Need

How often do we think, “If they really loved me they would know what I need.” Why not care enough about yourself to say, for example, “it would be really helpful if you could vacuum the carpet for me today.” Or whatever it is you need help with. Let’s not wait for other people to read our mind to determine what we need. Or do we find ourselves rejecting help when it is offered? Do we think that we should be able to do everything ourselves? Learn to say “yes please” when someone offers help.

Gratitude

One of the most important gifts of self-care. You can find lots of ideas on cultivating more gratitude on Our Practicing Gratitude Compilation. Taking time to appreciate who you are and all that you are a part of. Let yourself truly experience gratitude, look deep into your heart for that which you are grateful for. Here’s an article on how to practice gratitude daily.

As our physical being is cared for, it affects the rest of our being.

Listen to Self

We already know what makes us feel good, but sometimes these thoughts get buried inside and we have forgotten. Give yourself permission to listen to the voice inside you, such as, “I’ve always wanted to do yoga”, or perhaps “I used to do yoga and it made me feel so good, why did I stop?” What can we add to our daily routine to care for and nurture ourselves? As our physical being is cared for, it affects the rest of our being. As we get older our body may struggle with aches and pains, but there are things we can do to help our body feel appreciated.

Time with Friends

We are social beings and it’s in our DNA makeup to interact with others. We need community, we need friends and family. We give to our community, and we receive from it. Set up times to meet with friends, and if you can’t get out physically, make sure you keep up your social interactions via phone or internet calls.

Compassionate Self-Talk

This is the greatest gift of self-care we can offer ourselves. Take a moment to reflect upon how your thoughts manipulate you. Negative thinking is exhausting. Set aside time to work with techniques to clean the memories that are the cause of negative thinking towards yourself. Learn some tactics in order to nip these thoughts in the bud, to recognise the negative thought immediately and “flip it over”, like flipping a coin. For example, “I am so useless”, flip the coin over, what is on the other side? “I recognise the brilliance of all that I am.”

Compassionate self talk is the greatest gift of self-care we can offer ourselves.

Some of our actions and choices may not be desirable, but this does not mean that we are undesirable. It just means we had a little lapse in our thoughts and activities. When we can let go of habitual negativity we start to recognise the wisdom that we can acquire through our choices. Like a toddler learning to walk. They get up, they take a step, they fall. They get up again, and again until eventually they are walking. What if they stopped trying after the first fall saying, “I won’t do that again”. We would all be crawling around the rest of our lives! Think about yourself as this small child. Come back to the true essence of who you are, drop your negative thoughts and feelings. Instead of harsh self-criticism, offer yourself encouragement and support.

Acts of Self Love

Find ways to show yourself more love and nurture yourself just by the way you act toward yourself. Pat yourself on the back. Buy yourself flowers. Instead of a “To Do” list that you try to complete each day, create a “Ta-Da” list, including all the things that you accomplished today!

Do What YOU Want

Giving ourselves permission to do what we want, not what we think others want us to do. Take a “mental health” day each month, a day off work to do what you want, not waiting until you become ill and have to take time off. Commit to taking time out to care for yourself. No one else can do it for us.

It is vital for our health and wellbeing to take time to sit in stillness. Try a Self Care Meditation.

Meditation for Self Care

A beautiful gift of self-care on all levels. It’s important to bring stillness into your life. It is also highly beneficial to balance your regular meditation practice by alternating between listening to guided meditation recordings and doing your own self-guided meditations. It is vital for our health and wellbeing to take time to sit in stillness and watch the thoughts go by, not engaging, just watch them. Go to that still place inside yourself and just “be”.

Even if you have never meditated before, everyone has the capacity to set aside 15 minutes a day to just sit and BE. There are many, many meditations on the Inward Bound Network.

Click to view our free guided Self Care Meditations or if you are new to meditation, check out our How to Meditate Series.

Self Care - Do it Now!

Allow the motivation to look after yourself to rise within you. We don’t want to wait for another year to go by. Do something now.

Self Care Matters

It’s important that all these activities be done from a place of self-love. If we can’t find love for ourselves, we can utilise various healing and transformative techniques such as Ho’oponopono mantra. Recognise that you are worthy of self-care, and your whole being craves it. What happens if we collapse into a heap exhausted, or have a mental or physical breakdown? It’s time to put yourself first for a change. Putting ourselves first in order that we serve others more fully.

Self-Care Sunday #SelfCareSunday

A trend began a couple of years ago to create a day for focused Self-care and we invite you to participate in the Inward Bound Network #selfcaresunday. The idea behind this is to take time on Sundays to take care of yourself, to do things for your well-being that you don’t have time for during the week. Over the coming weeks we will post some Self-Care meditations and inspiration each Sunday on our Facebook page. For now, here are a few of our most popular self-care meditations:

Suggested Self Care Meditations

Self Care Meditation - This guided Self Care Meditation offers a beautiful gift of nurturing on all levels of our being: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. This is an opportunity to immerse yourself within a warm bath of golden light, nurturing you, caring for you, loving you.

Self Nurturing with Ho’oponopono - A relaxing and transformative self care meditation utilising the Ho’oponopono technique to release past conditioning and expectations by integrating all aspects of our being, allowing us to open more fully to self-acceptance and self-love.

Self Love Meditation - This Ho’oponopono meditation focusses upon cleaning those negative beliefs that stand in the way of us experiencing spiritual love – that which we call “self love”.

Inner Smile Healing Meditation - This self care meditation is based on a Qigong practice of smiling into the organs and transforming the emotions associated with them for healing body, mind and emotions.

Click to view all our Self Care Meditations.