Five Key Self-Care Practices You Should Start Doing Today
If you spend most of your days working and meeting other people’s expectations on you, soon you will become unhealthy and feel terrible. Before anything else, you want to make self-care a priority. As it is when you are in your best shape and state of mind do you actually feel motivated, inspired, and ready to take the day-to-day challenges in your life.
Making a habit of self-care benefits our body and well-being tremendously. This positively impacts not just your relationship with yourself but also with others. So here are some self-care practices you can start doing now. As you make them a part of your daily life, you will feel more engaged with yourself and life becomes better in the long run.
Embrace mindfulness.
You’ve probably heard about mindfulness and how it impacts your daily life so many times – on TV, magazines, internet, and other social media. This hype is well-deserved. Research has shown that mindfulness practises such as meditation can relieve stress, improve focus and concentration, boost feelings of happiness, and bring clarity to our lives. Spend at least 10 minutes of your day tuning in with your mind and body and nothing else. What’s great about mindfulness practice is that it benefits you even when you are not actively practising it.
Keep a journal.
Journaling isn’t just for high schoolers. If you quit making a journal when you stepped into adulthood, please start again. Psychological research finds this activity to be beneficial to our physical and mental health. In particular, journaling helps you recognise your thoughts and feelings, identify patterns or habits that trigger your stress, cope with stressful life events, and get to know yourself more.
Disconnect.
How much time do you spend browsing the web or connecting with your social media followers and friends? The more time you spend on these things, the less time you dedicate to yourself and to embracing mindfulness. Instead of watching online video clips, let yourself enjoy the present moment. Linger over a cup of coffee, practise meditation or yoga, or do simple stretches. To connect with yourself and the real around you, you have to disconnect from your virtual world.
Say something nice to yourself.
Whenever you look at the mirror, what do you see first? Is it your beautiful features? Or your imperfections? If you are able to notice the good things before the bad, you are doing a really good job at practising self-care. You are your best ally. No one can make you feel worse than yourself. Be good to yourself. Instead of saying negative things about your look or your status in life right now, appreciate the good things. For sure there are many. Have this mantra each day as you wake up – My life is full of blessings. And I am grateful.
Be active.
Staying active is one great step to practising self-care. Not only are you nourishing your body, you are also nourishing your mind through exercise. Consider outdoor workouts like running and cycling so you also get to tune in with nature as you sweat it out.
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