Self Care That Works: 5 Practices To Transform Your Life
The key here is the intention that you place upon your self care activities, the presence you show up with as you engage in self care, and ensuring you’re choosing self care practices that genuinely work for you.
Don’t get me wrong – bubble baths and nights with your girlfriends can be valuable for your wellbeing. They give you a chance to slow down, recharge, and connect with loved ones. But the self care that’s truly going to transform your life runs a little deeper than that – and it isn’t always the fun and relaxing kind.
In this post, I’m going to walk you through 5 impactful self care practices that have the power to transform your life. Let’s get started!
1. prioritizing yourself
The first step to impactful self care that works is simply committing to yourself. The relationship that you have with yourself and the value that you place on yourself has a direct impact on your ability to follow through with your own self care. If you don’t believe that you’re worth the self care that you need, if you don’t think you’re worth the investment in time or money that it takes to do the things that make you feel good, then you’re likely going to struggle with carving out the time to practice self care at all.
Committing to making yourself a priority is a process of building respect for and trust with yourself. Every time you’ve told yourself you’ll do something and then didn’t is another promise to yourself, broken. And each time you make a promise to yourself and break it, you damage your self-trust.
Committing to staying true to yourself and honouring your promises to self just as much as you’d honour a promise to a friend is how you take your self care to the next level. If you’re working on your own self love/self worth journey, here are 4 self love rituals to try.
2. following through on your boundaries
Boundaries, baby! They’re the missing link to living freely and staying consistent with your self care. Boundaries sometimes get a bad rap for being restrictive and some people even fear that implementing a boundary comes off as being rude, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.Implementing boundaries are an essential part of transforming your life with self care and you never have to feel icky about them when you’re communicating them with clarity and kindness.
Boundaries come down to two things: learning to say YES when you want to say yes and NO when you want to say no, without the guilt. A boundary isn’t selfish or mean. In fact, when you’re able to stick to your boundaries you’ll find yourself being able to show up more fully in your interactions and engagements. And that is better for everyone.
3. befriending your emotions
The desire to attain ultimate positivity in life is at an all time high. At its core, toxic positivity is essentially a desire or belief that no matter what’s going on, you should always keep a positive mindset. You’ll see phrases tossed around like good vibes only or look at the bright side or just think happy thoughts. While the intention of these phrases are well meaning (I think), they can do more harm than good.
Refusing to acknowledge or process our emotions outside of happiness is a recipe for disaster. Avoiding things like anger and sadness can lead to emotional explosions when we least expect it, mood swings, physical ailments and more significant impacts like anxiety and depression.
Befriending your emotions involves getting curious about them so you can better understand what they mean. It’s about learning not to avoid or be afraid of them. As you take the steps towards understanding them and experiencing them, you’ll eventually come to learn what you need when you’re experiencing a certain emotion. And as you begin to offer that need to yourself, you become a safe space to feel and hold all that you experience.
4. managing your energy
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: energy management is infinitely more important than time management. Managing your energy involves knowing what lights you up (energy gainers) vs what leaves you feeling drained (energy drainers) – and how to respond appropriately.
It’s also about knowing your patterns throughout the day, week or month and checking in with yourself each day to see what your energy levels are looking like.
Some questions to consider when taking a look at your energy management: What time of day are you most awake and alert? Most creative? Most relaxed? When is your get shit done mode? If you can, organizing your tasks of the day or week to match the energy required can be really supportive.
Your energy management ties in nicely with your boundaries, by the way. Once you know your energy gainers and energy drainers, you’ll want to start prioritizing your energy gainers and creating boundaries around your energy drainers.
5. doing what works for YOU
Self care only works when you focus on self care practices that genuinely work for you. Remember, the trending self care or the self care that works for your best friend might not be what works for you – and that’s okay! Figuring out what self care is impactful for you might take some trial and error, so don’t be discouraged if you try meditation once and it doesn’t magically support you.
As you experiment, remember the practices that truly supported you. Write them down on a piece of paper or keep them on a note in your phone. The more you practice various self care strategies, the sooner you’ll have a customized self care toolkit at the ready whenever you need it.
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Which of these 5 paths to transformational self care do you need to work on in your own life?