Self care isn't always pretty, cuddly & bubble baths.
Showing yourself TLC & being kind to your body, often means doing the things you don’t want to or that are hard.
-Going to the gym to train instead of curling up in bed.
-Slapping on your trainers to go for a walk instead of slapping on a face mask.
-Setting an alarm & going to bed at a decent time rather than staying up all night watching Netflix.
-Cooking something nutritious & balanced rather than nailing a bag of sharing bag of Doritos.
That’s not to say the other things have their time & place. But self care comes in many shapes & forms. Most of which are things that REALLY DO BENEFIT YOU. Just not in the traditional sense of what most people think self care should look like.
Break the phrase down….
“Self”…meaning you, yourself, me.
“Care”…meaning doing something that is looking after your body, mind, health, self.
You’re going out of your way to do things that will benefit you. These should be long lasting things, that future you would be grateful that you took the time to do. It's about realising the difference between self-care & self-soothing. Self-soothing, can see us hiding from things we don’t want to, but should be doing. We tend to disguise self-soothing by wrongly naming it as self-care, because let's be fair, one sounds a lot nicer than the other.
Caring for ourselves means being active, healthy and knowing what our body really needs. It means realising when you need to be an adult and make decisions to do things you don’t always want to.
If you feel like skipping the gym, not moving and swapping your meal prep or sandwich lunch for eating only 🍕 🍭 🥐 PAUSE. Is that what you really need?
OR could you go to the gym, go for a walk and if you still want pizza, have a slice not the entire Domino’s menu.
Try sitting down & coming up with a list of things that you would class as self-care. Then put your critical thinking hat on & go over that list with a highlighter, noting which of those activities will actually bring you enjoyment, purpose, positive impact. If you think your list could do with some tweaking, scribble down a few more ideas that are actual forms of self-care or things that actually care for your body.
You might just surprise yourself with how your current habits are more self-soothing, comforting actions, rather than caring for yourself!
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