Do You Prioritize Yourself?
Do you take deliberate steps to promote health and well-being in your daily life? Are you mindful of how these actions impact your stress levels and long-term health? If you answered no, or even had to stop to think about it, you are likely like a lot of women who do not prioritize self-care in their day-to-day life.
Self-care is one of the most underrated personal needs, especially for women. As a therapist I regularly encounter individuals who do not always prioritize their personal needs. Many don’t even realize this is the case, and sometimes personal needs are put on the backburner longer than they should be.
Whether this relates to work, relationships or even personal health and wellness, many women are guilty of sacrificing their own well-being at some point.
What Happens When Self-Care Isn’t A Priority?
One thing that I have been reminded of as a new mom is that women always find a way to get the job done! Women are extremely hard workers, regardless if your work is being a corporate mogul or if you excel at being a stay-at-home mommy.
No matter how tired, frustrated or burnt out you may be, women find a way to show up for our kids, our families, our friends and our careers.
What I have found is this isn’t without consequence though. This constant drive to do and be our best for those around us can take a toll on our physical, mental and emotional well-being.
You may find yourself snapping at your kids quicker, binge eating or drinking when you know you shouldn’t, or feeling burnt out at work. These may be signs that you aren’t making YOU enough of a priority.
What is Self-Care?
Self-care can be described as any steps that you take to maintain your physical, mental and emotional well-being, with the intention of promoting health and happiness, and reducing or preventing disease. Self-care can include anything and everything from fitness, hygiene, health care, spirituality, nutrition, and many other facets.
I like to separate self-care into different domains. I have provided some examples below.
Types of Self-Care:
- Physical: Working Out, Sleeping, Eating Well, Getting a Massage, Doing your Makeup
- Social: Interacting with Friends, Communicating, Prioritizing Relationships
- Emotional: Healthy Venting, Stress Management Strategies, Attending Counselling, Seeking Support from Friends
- Personal: Health Care, Trying a New Hobby, Exploring Self-Development, Reading, Journaling
- Spiritual: Meditating, Going to Church, Connecting with Nature, Practicing Yoga
- Space: Cleaning your Room, Decluttering your Home, Landscaping, Taking a Personal Safety Course
- Financial: Saving Money, Investing, Budgeting, Splurging on Yourself
- Work: Time Management, Organizing your Workspace, Setting Boundaries, Continuous Education
Why is Self-Care Not Always a Priority?
Over the last two years I have facilitated many presentations and talks on the importance of self care, particularly during the pandemic, but I don’t know if people actually understand it’s value or grasp the importance. Sometimes it does not become relevant until it is too late, and you are seeing the negative implications of lack of self-care.
I have even spoken to women who have expressed that they feel guilty when they take time for themselves or deliberately make time for self-care.
This should NEVER be the case.
Without taking steps to safeguard your health and well-being you will eventually reach a breaking point. This could be in the form of health issues, mental crises or other physical symptoms, but failing to prioritize yourself will always eventually catch up with you!
How Thinking About Balance Can Help
One of the most relevant concepts I discuss with clients is that of work life balance. If you imagine your life as a wheel or circle, and divide it into different segments, you should be able to come up with several different areas or domains, each of these representing a different sector of your life.
In an ideal world each of these domains should be equal for a healthy well-balanced life, but often times our segments are out of balance and some domains are given priority over others.
Being mindful of these imbalances can give us an idea of where we need to focus our self-care efforts.
Examples of Life Domains:
- Career
- Spiritual
- Personal Development
- Social (Friendships & Relationships)
- Finance
- Family
- Health
- Recreation and Fitness
What Can Work Life Balance Teach Us About Self-Care?
Using the above life domains as examples, think about the following scenarios:
SCENARIO 1: You spend eight hours a day at work, and then come home to work from home for 4 hours, before eating and getting ready for bed.
SCENARIO 2: You wake up and quickly meditate, workout for an hour before heading to work. After work you return home to cook dinner, help your children with homework and then watch a tv show with your husband before heading to bed.
Which one of these daily schedules promotes more work life balance?
When several facets of your life are being fulfilled, you are a more well rounded, stable and healthy individual.
This is where being mindful about self-care can help!
Ask yourself, in what areas of your life are you struggling to find balance and promote enough self-care on a daily, weekly or monthly basis?
Life Balance vs. Self-Care!
You have likely noticed that both self-care and work life balance can be separated into various domains. Focusing on self-care in domains where you may need to adjust or establish balance can help to promote a heathier lifestyle.
Consequently, this will increase your long-term well-being and help you to feel more fulfilled on a daily basis. You would be surprised what a huge difference small steps can make!
How Can You Bring About More Balance in Your Life?
Since many people struggle with being mindful of self-care and how to actionably work it into your everyday life, I have come up with a list of ten ways to encourage more self-care to give you an idea of where to start!
I have listed self-care strategies in some of the various domains to give you a well-rounded list.
Remember, this list is just a guide. I hope that it gives you a starting point, but feel free to adjust so that you create a list that is relevant to your life (and your life balance).
10 Self-Care Ideas to Improve Your Well-being!
Self-Care Idea #1: Find an Emotional Outlet
This can take many forms, but the goal is to have an opportunity to vent and get your feelings out. Keeping things bottled up will eventually lead to either an emotional breakdown or an explosion, and is not healthy.
Find a way to share what you are thinking and feeling, without judgement, so that you have an opportunity to process your thoughts and get it off of your chest!
Some examples include:
Journaling, writing poetry, speaking to a trusted friend or seeing a Counsellor
Self-Care Idea #2: Find and Start a New Hobby (or resume one)
Doing something that you enjoy, just for fun, is a great way to improve your mood and enhance your skills.
Your hobby will be unique to you, but once it is something that you find pleasure in doing and it takes your mind off of your busy life, it is likely a good idea!
Some examples of popular therapeutic hobbies include:
Painting, blogging, baking or dancing.
Self-Care Idea #3: Learn to Take Breaks
This could be at work, at home with kids, at the gym, or any other domain in your life where you constantly work hard or push yourself. Breaks are much needed opportunities to rest your mind and/or body and prevent burnout.
It is common for us to try and push ourselves to the limit, but when you are constantly going on full drive, you aren’t giving yourself time to refuel and recharge. Taking breaks does not mean that you are weak or lazy, it simply means you know when to allow yourself time to recharge.
Breaks have many positive benefits, whether they promote physical renewal or mental freshness.
The best example I can give is based on some of the most real advice I have ever received:
A colleague once told me to stop pushing myself so hard because the same people who are constantly on me to get work done are the same people who will replace me the minute I fall down, and then where would I be?
Their words resonated and reminded me of the importance of rest and breaks in order for me to be able to give my best long-term, instead of working to the point of breakdown.
Self-Care Idea #4: Start Budgeting
If you don’t know where your finances are going (weekly, monthly or even annually) you could be wasting a great deal of money that could otherwise be used for other things (like treating yourself and more self-care!)
Although budgeting may not seem like self-care, it is actually a very helpful process that promotes a healthy lifestyle in many domains. For example, creating a budget will allow you to achieve financial balance and monitor how much you spend on living expenses, food, health care, etc., and what might be left over for fun things like entertainment.
Check this out:
I learned a great deal about budgeting from a Canadian-Jamaican author named Gayle Vaz-Oxlade. She has since retired, but her Master Class information and budgeting worksheets can be found here.
Self-Care Idea #5: Learn How To Prepare a New Meal
Let me emphasize that I said prepare, and not cook, so this can apply to those of you who aren’t so comfortable cooking lol.
We often get into a rut of eating the same foods, which can limit our palettes or even create health issues if what we are often consuming is unhealthy. What we put into our bodies has serious implications for our physical, mental and long-term health.
Trying new meals is a great way to treat your body to food that will trigger your pleasure centres and also encourage you to be more conscious about what you are putting into your body!
A great way to diversify our eating habits is to learn to cook or put together a new meal, and include at least one healthy additive that you don’t actually use. Try exploring new recipes online or ask a friend for a suggestion for a meal that they enjoy.
Check this out:
One of my favourite sites to find new healthy recipes is HealthNut Nutrition.
Self-Care Idea #6: Set Healthy Boundaries Regarding Work
Your work life is surely important. It is a reflection of who you are and provides you with a salary, but it should not be your sole priority!
Finding balance in your life requires setting healthy boundaries that will allow you to have time and energy for other life domains. One way to do this is by setting healthy boundaries related to work.
Setting boundaries at work does not mean you don’t love your job or make you a poor employee, rather it promotes a healthy work life balance and will make you feel more encouraged to put in your full effort on the job.
Here are two examples of how you can set boundaries at work:
Example 1: If you often take work home, set a time-limit so that you aren’t spending you entire evening working without giving yourself a break or doing other things.
Example 2: If you are typically passive at work and let others saddle you with the bulk of tasks during group work, work on becoming more assertive so that you feel comfortable speaking up about sharing the workload.
Self-Care Idea #7: Stay Up-to-Date on Medical and Dental Visits
Some women wait until they feel unwell or have an issue before visiting a Medical Practitioner or Dentist. It is important to prioritize your health by thinking of healthcare proactively rather than reactively. This means, instead of waiting until you have a problem, try to reduce the chance of serious medical and dental complications by having regular and timely check-ups.
For women, this can mean attending annual physicals, pap smears, mammograms and other routine tests and screens as you get older.
Similarly, don’t wait until you feel significant pain before visiting a dentist. Routine x-rays, cleanings and check-ups can help you to avoid many more serious, and keep your teeth and gums healthy.
The same thought can be applied to mental health. Many wait until they have a significant issue to seek counselling or psychiatric treatment. However, these services can be great outlets for clarifying emotions, exploring options, increasing self-awareness and developing coping mechanisms, all positive strategies can be useful in everyday life an reduce the need for more long-term therapeutic intervention.
These self-care tips will help you to prioritize your and overall health long-term wellness.
Self-Care Idea #8: Shake Up Your Fitness Routine
If you don’t have a fitness routine, let this be a challenge to start one, no matter how small! If you do, let this encourage you to diversify your current routine by adding one new activity to your workout per week. Try something different that you don’t usually do.
This will help in two ways:
First, it may encourage you to use different parts of your body that you don’t usually work. Second, the positive endorphins that flood your body during exercise may be increased with a new activity, as it is something novel and out of the ordinary.
So make a plan to try a new solo activity, or grab a friend and try one together for bonus self-care points!
Here are some ideas to get you thinking:
Dancing to your favourite upbeat childhood songs in your living room, going on a hike in a new area or trying a new class at your local fitness centre.
Self-Care Idea #9: Prioritize Sleep
Sleep is when your body refuels and recharges itself. It is essential for repairing your body when you are sick, it helps with weight management, and it refreshes your mind for greater mental clarity.
Research also indicates that people who do not get adequate sleep have more health issues and possibly a shorter lifespan.
With all of these benefits, it is a wonder why many women report getting far below the recommended 7-8 hours of sleep per night.
If you’re guilt of this, try to find a way to add a little extra sleep each day or night. This is one of the ultimate forms of self-care because it will provide you with more energy to do the other things that you love!
Here are some ideas:
Squeeze a nap into your day (as little as 15-20 minutes helps) or add an extra hour of sleep in the evening by going to bed earlier.
Self-Care Idea #10: Go Out With Friends or Family (or ANYONE lol) At Least Once a Week
Social relationships are a key factor for good mental health and promoting happiness in your life. Finding time to socialize by interacting with positive people will provide you with a sense of connection and support, which consequently leads you to live a happier and more fulfilled life.
Social relationships help to lower feelings of anxiety, increase self-esteem, and encourage empathy and trust. These are all things that can only bring about benefits in your life.
You can do absolutely anything once you do it with a buddy. Be creative and have fun!
Tip for Success:
The goal is to foster positive social relationships that will help you flourish and grow as a person. If the person isn’t a positive influence or example, it may be a good idea to reduce contact with them instead.
BONUS Self-Care Tip: Do Something Just For You At Least Once a Week
This one should not need an explanation, but I will elaborate. Although we often focus on those around us (our family, kids, significant others or friends) you should recognize your importance and the need to take care of your body, mind and spirit. You can’t take care of others if your cup is empty!
A great piece of advice I was given many years ago is that you should always think of yourself as your own best friend; If you aren’t going to do it for yourself, then who will?
So once a week do whatever you would like just because you feel like it!
Don’t feel guilty or feel the need to justify or even tell other people. Reward yourself for the amazing woman that you are by taking care of you.
Here are few examples to get you thinking:
Make time for a pedicure or massage, treat yourself to a nice special dinner, sit on your couch and watch some Netflix, or take a road trip (you can read more about my last one here)!
Final Thoughts
I hope that you have found this post helpful and that it has changed the way you think about self-care.
My goal was to give you an idea of how you can add more self-care to your life, and improve your overall work life balance. I hope that I have succeeded and got you thinking!
What is your favourite self-care strategy or which do you plan to start after reading this post? Let me know in the comments!
Feel free to contact me with any questions or to leave a comment below.
I love this! Thank you so much for sharing! 🙂
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I really need to work on more self care. This is a huge motivator.
Spiritual self care and teaching self care to our kids is so important. Nice article!
These are some great tips! I’m currently struggling with tip #3 but making a daily progress!
Self-care is a must for every human being more so if you are a mother. Thanks for the tips!
We have a budget right now and it helps us to keep track of all our finance. Thank you for these great tips!
As a mother of 2 young kids, self-care is often not a priority for me, but this is a great reminder to myself to practice it (for the sake of myself and my family!). There are some great tips mentioned above. Thanks for sharing this!