What is self-care?

Self-care results from small, consistent habits strung together that support physical, mental, and soulful wellness. Wellness is not just the absence of poor health, but the presence of positivity and fulfilment.

If you’re glowing with wellness, these experiences might be familiar:

Hobbies light you up

You feel proud because you’re doing things that you’re good at

Close relationships allow you to be your imperfect self

Your purposeful work makes a positive impact on someone or something

It’s easy for feelings of wellness to fade, and so, sometimes we need to bring self-care back into our conscious thoughts to move those feel-good scales back to the centre. There is a danger though, that self-care can tip to self-indulgence. It’s okay to sleep in, skip your exercise and eat your favourite comfort food, but before you realise it, you’ve slept in, skipped your exercise and eaten comfort food every day.

When does the self-care conversation in your head become one that is pushing self-indulgence? The idea of gentle self-discipline can be helpful. Taking time to think about what self-care means to you, combined with structured habits, can create a powerful shift in the way you think about self-care. It transforms into a process that you will look forward to, rather than just another self-imposed annoyance.  

How to apply self-discipline to support your wellness. Note down the following:

How do you define self-care? What is the purpose of self-care?

What self-care activities do you do right now? Are you doing less or more than you tell yourself?

Imagine that you are living your ideal life. What self-care activities are you doing? How frequently are you doing them?

Whilst still imagining your ideal self-care activities and your ideal life, how do you feel?

Thinking about your current life, what can you do to enhance your self-care? What can you do to fill the gap between how you act now, and how you’d like to act?

You can check in with yourself every once in a while, by following these five steps, and readjusting and adding self-care activities. Before long, you’ll have a supportive self-care routine that you won’t want to run from.  

Let me know how it goes! Love, Hayley x