Self-Care Tips

Since it’s Valentine’s Day and all, I figured it would be a great time to talk about self-love and self-care. In my opinion, the goal of self-care is really to keep your sanity and to unwind from the pressures of daily life. It’s the little things you do for yourself that help you feel like you’re operating at your highest capacity, as much as possible. Ultimately, I think self-care is one of the many acts of self-love.

A lot of what we see on social media promotes the idea that self-care is expensive gifts to ourselves or lavish beauty treatments, or (pre-covid) yoga retreats, etc. This isn’t wholly wrong, but day-to-day that’s not super practical. In the end, self-care is 100% personal and it is whatever YOU want it to be.

GRAPHIC VIA RED BUBBLE

I’m all about finding ways to include self-care on the daily. Here are some of my favorite ways to fit self-care into my day-to-day and/or other ways that I’ve come across that could work for you:

Prioritize Your Day

This helps me stay sane, for sure. I like to write out a list every day of what needs to be done. If some things are absolutely more important than others, I'll mark them. This not only helps keep my day focused, but also helps me not stress so much about the little things not on the list. You can only do so much and taking tasks day-by-day certainly helps.

Eat Balanced Meals / Meal Prepping

This is a big one for me. Eating well balanced meals is honestly one of the best gifts you can give yourself. Your body, brain and mood will thank you. When you properly fuel your body, it’s so much easier to think clearly, focus better and react reasonably to the world around you. If you’re someone who finds they’re short on time throughout the day to make 3 meals (aren’t we all?), then I can’t recommend meal-prepping highly enough. Choosing one day per week as your “meal prep” day will be so beneficial.

Dry Brushing + Gua Sha

Dry-brushing is a fun one and can take as little as 15 minutes. There’s definitely something to be said about physically taking care of yourself that just makes you feel really good. Dry-brushing is an incredible tool for this-- for those who aren’t familiar, it’s the method of brushing your body with a coarse brush and it helps exfoliate your skin. Even better is that it stimulates your lymphatic system and helps your body eliminate toxins better. I’m not an expert by any means, but this is one of the things I love to incorporate into my routine (when I remember).

Gua Sha is another awesome tool that only takes about 5+ minutes. It’s essentially using a massage tool and "scraping" along your face to help promote circulation. Again, I’m no expert at this but I did watch a few Youtube videos on how to do it (haha). This has a few key benefits, but is really useful for calming inflammation in the face.

*Always check with your health care provider before implementing something new into your routine.

Exercise + Moving Your Body

This is a non-negotiable. The trick here is, again, finding something that resonates with you and that you’re excited to stick with. It doesn’t have to be grand or excruciating, it can simply be a 30 minute walk a few times per week. Whatever works for you.

Journaling

The positive effects of journaling may shock you. The simple act of writing things that you’re feeling down can really take the weight off of you and can change your headspace. I swear my mindset is never better than when I have a solid gratitude-journal practice because it shifts your focus onto everything you already have versus what you think you may lack or want. I highly recommend it!

And for the millionth time, self-care is so personal, so what I’ve listed above may not resonate with you and that’s 100% fine. The point of self-care is to find what little things you can do for yourself that make YOU feel good, and loved, and taken care of. Even if it’s seemingly small, like setting aside 10 minutes every morning to enjoy your coffee, or making your bed each morning so that it’s not a mess when you get home, doing these small acts of love for yourself can make a really big impact on your daily life.

What about you guys? What are your favorite ways to include self-care?