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- The main goal of self-care is to prevent or control disease and preserve overall well-being through consistently taking care of various aspects of your health. For a person to practice true self-care, they must use personal responsibility and self-reliance in a way that positively impacts their health in the current moment and the future.
www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-self-care-5212781What Is Self-Care and Why Is It Important? - Verywell Health
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What is the goal of self-care?
Why is physical self-care important?
What are the pillars of self-care?
What is mental self-care & why is it important?
How can self-care improve health & well-being?
What are SMART goals for self-care?
- Exercise Regularly. SMART Goal: I want to be more active and commit to exercising at least three times a week. I will consider joining a gym or taking up an activity I enjoy, such as swimming, walking, yoga, and cycling.
- Get Enough Sleep. SMART Goal: To improve my physical and mental health, I’ll establish a consistent sleep schedule of 7 to 8 hours per night by the end of two months.
- Develop Healthy Eating Habits. SMART Goal: I will commit to preparing four healthy meals each week for two months. By doing this, I’ll make sure that my diet is balanced and that I get all the nutrients my body needs.
- Find Meaningful Hobbies. SMART Goal: Within the following four months, I want to find two new hobbies that are meaningful and bring me joy. Whether it’s painting or gardening, I’m going to make sure that I dedicate at least two hours of my week to doing what I love.
- Overview
- What Is Self-Care?
- Different Types of Self-Care
- Physical Self-Care
- Social Self-Care
- Mental Self-Care
- Spiritual Self-Care
- Emotional Self-Care
- Why Is Self-Care Important?
- Develop Your Self-Care Plan
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Self-care, as the name suggests, is all about caring for yourself to ensure that both your physical and emotional needs are met. All the stress relief activities in the world won't help if you aren't taking care of yourself. Meditation won't do you any good if you aren't getting adequate sleep. In fact, when you try to meditate, you might doze off because you aren't taking care of your body's need for sleep.
Similarly, hitting the gym once in a while won't relieve much stress if you're not regularly fueling your body with healthy, nutrient-dense food. You need to take care of your basic needs first if you want your stress relief activities to be effective.
This article discusses some of the different types of self-care and why they are so important. It also covers some of the things that you can do to develop a self-care plan of your own.
Mental Health in the Workplace Webinar
On May 19, 2022, Verywell Mind hosted a virtual Mental Health in the Workplace webinar, hosted by Amy Morin, LCSW. If you missed it, check out this recap to learn ways to foster supportive work environments and helpful strategies to improve your well-being on the job.
Self-care has been defined as "a multidimensional, multifaceted process of purposeful engagement in strategies that promote healthy functioning and enhance well-being." Essentially, self-care means a conscious act people take in order to promote their own physical, mental, and emotional health.
There are many forms that good self-care can take. It could be ensuring you get enough sleep every night or stepping outside for a few minutes for some fresh air. It can also mean taking the time to do the things that you enjoy doing.
Self-care is vital for building resilience toward those stressors in life that you can't eliminate. When you've taken steps to care for your mind and body, you'll be better equipped to live your best life.
Unfortunately, however, many people view self-care as a luxury, rather than a priority. Consequently, they're left feeling overwhelmed, tired, and ill-equipped to handle life's inevitable challenges.
It's important to assess how you're caring for yourself in several different domains so you can ensure you're caring for your mind, body, and spirit.
"This Is Us" Star Chrissy Metz on Work-Life Balance
Self-care isn't just about finding ways to relax. It's about taking care of yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. In order to care for your health and well-being, it is important to find a balance that allows you to address each of these areas. Sometimes you might need more self-care in one specific area in order to restore balance or find relief from a stressor in your life.
The seven pillars of self-care fall into the following areas: physical, social, mental, spiritual, emotional, recreational, and environmental.
Socialization is key to self-care. But, often, it's hard to make time for friends and it's easy to neglect your relationships when life gets busy.
Close connections are important to your well-being. The best way to cultivate and maintain close relationships is to put time and energy into building your relationships with others.
There isn't a certain number of hours you should devote to your friends or work on your relationships. Everyone has slightly different social needs. The key is to figure out what your social needs are and to build enough time in your schedule to create an optimal social life.
To assess your social self-care, consider:
•Are you getting enough face-to-face time with your friends?
•What are you doing to nurture your relationships with friends and family?
Research shows that a lifestyle including religion or spirituality is generally a healthier lifestyle.
Nurturing your spirit, however, doesn't have to involve religion. It can involve anything that helps you develop a deeper sense of meaning, understanding, or connection with the universe.
Whether you enjoy meditation, attending a religious service, or praying, spiritual self-care is important.
As you consider your spiritual life, ask yourself:
•What questions do you ask yourself about your life and experience?
•Are you engaging in spiritual practices that you find fulfilling?
It's important to have healthy coping skills to deal with uncomfortable emotions, like anger, anxiety, and sadness. Emotional self-care may include activities that help you acknowledge and express your feelings regularly and safely.
Whether you talk to a partner or close friend about how you feel, or you set aside time for leisure activities that help you process your emotions, it's important to incorporate emotional self-care into your life.
When assessing your emotional self-care strategies, consider these questions:
•Do you have healthy ways to process your emotions?
Having an effective self-care routine has been shown to have a number of important health benefits. Some of these include:
•Reducing anxiety and depression
•Reducing stress and improving resilience
•Improving happiness
•Increasing energy
•Reducing burnout
An effective self-care plan should be tailored to your life and your needs. It needs to be something created by you, for you. Customizing your own self-care plan can act as a preventative measure to make sure that you don't get overwhelmed, overstressed, and burned out.
Assess which areas of your life need some more attention and self-care. And reassess your life often. As your situation changes, your self-care needs are likely to shift too.
As you are building your self-care plan, the following steps can be helpful:
•Assess your needs: Make a list of the different parts of your life and major activities that you engage in each day. Work, school, relationships, and family are some you might list.
•Consider your stressors: Think about the aspects of these areas that cause stress and consider some ways you might address that stress.
•Devise self-care strategies: Think about some activities that you can do that will help you feel better in each of these areas of your life. Spending time with friends or developing boundaries, for example, can be a way to build healthy social connections.
- Elizabeth Scott, Phd
- Make sleep part of your self-care routine. Sleep can have a huge effect on how you feel both emotionally and physically. Not getting enough can even cause major health issues.
- Take care of yourself by taking care of your gut. Your gut health can have a significant impact on your health, well-being, and feelings of vitality.
- Exercise daily as part of your self-care routine. We all know exercise is good for us, but do we really know how good it is? Daily exercise can help you both physically and mentally, boosting your mood and reducing stress and anxiety, not to mention helping you shed extra weight.
- Eat right for self-care. The food we eat has the potential to either keep us healthy or contribute to weight gain or diseases such as diabetes, but it can also keep our minds working and alert.
- Get outdoors. Recent research tells us that daily contact with nature can help us reduce anxiety and depression while also helping us improve our health (Soga, Gaston, & Yamaura, 2017).
- Listen to soothing music. Did you know that listening to relaxing music can reduce cortisol (an important stress hormone)? Well, research shows it can (Khalfa et al., 2003).
- Practice deep breathing. By practicing deep breathing, we activate our parasympathetic nervous system—our calming 'rest and digest' system.
- Build the skills that generate happiness. Much of what makes us happy comes from our thoughts, emotions, and actions. That means we can learnto be happier.
Feb 10, 2021 · 1. Mental Self-Care. Mental/intellectual self-care is about cultivating a healthy mindset through mindfulness and curiosity. Mental self-care is important for developing a healthy mindset, growing your skills, reducing stress, and enhancing your knowledge and creativity. Mental self-care ideas: Meditating. Writing in a journal.
Oct 17, 2023 · Self-care is the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a health worker.
