new year, new intentions
It’s a new year, and how is your self-care routine? Have you ever struggled with implementing a self-care routine? Keep reading if your long-term goal is to improve your self-care, but you need to know how!
Let’s first talk about what happens when you don’t have a self-care plan and neglect your needs. When life starts to get stressful, we sometimes fail our personal needs when trying to fix everything else. Are you putting others before your needs? When we neglect our individual needs, it takes a negative toll on us. Neglect could include burnout, lack of motivation and focus, and using negative coping skills to cope. Sometimes patience levels go down, and we can seem rude when interacting with others. It can physically take a toll on your body, with increased headaches and stomach aches. You may have trouble going to sleep and staying asleep. The list can go on!
Implementing a self-care plan can help stop or decrease those adverse effects. Self-care helps balance your physical health and mental health. Self-care is essential because it can help you manage stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms and increase your energy and outlook on life. It gives you time to be mindful of your own needs. You deserve this time! You deserve to put yourself first. It is not selfish to take care of yourself. We need to reframe our thoughts about self-care being selfish and harmful. It’s simply not true!
Instead of focusing on one long-term goal for your self-care plan, let’s incorporate 12 self-care activities. Each month would look different. Short-term goals provide a sense of accomplishment and will boost your motivation. Incorporating 12 self-care activities can help you create a routine, know what works for you, and accomplish your goal of taking care of yourself. When thinking about the activities, make sure to make them specific instead of vague.
Let’s talk about some self-care activities. They can look different for everyone. Some of the most common activities are meditation, taking a walk outside, journaling, reading a book, practicing breathing exercises, trying a new activity, practicing positive self-talk, be phone/technology free for an hour a day, exercising in a way that makes you feel good, do something creative, try to get at least 8 hours of sleep a day, and increase your water intake.
When choosing activities, make sure they are ones you can often do, will only take up a little bit of time, and feel like you can stick to them. This will help create a habit. No matter how you are feeling, make sure to continue your self-care routine. Doing so will help you keep a healthy life. The activities don’t have to be big! They can be small and take just a few minutes, but they must be done. We need to put in the work.
Here’s an example of how the 12 different self-care activities could look like this year and help you maintain and keep your self-care goals. In January, you can take a short 10-minute walk outside at least three-four times a week. In February, you can practice journaling every day. You can journal about your feelings and how your day was. There are a lot of different journal prompts that you can follow. Once March comes along, you can pick a book you want to read. The goal would be to finish it by April. April can be when you try different breathing exercises twice a week. Breathing exercises can help when you are feeling anxiety symptoms or are overwhelmed. In May, let’s start a new activity! You may have been trying to get into pottery or knitting. Practicing positive affirmations every morning can help your self-esteem. Let’s dedicate June to positive affirmations. Let’s try to be phone/technology free for an hour a day for July. How about implementing an exercise that makes you feel good for August? Being creative can be fun! In September, it can be about arts and crafts. How’s your sleep? In November, we can practice getting at least 8 hours of sleep. For the last month, we can take care of ourselves by increasing our water intake.
Working on different activities each month on your self-care can help you feel better emotionally and physically. It will help you feel better about yourself and help you be kinder to yourself, resulting in more compassion for others. Remember, your plan is going to be challenging! Life can get in the way, but it’s important to recognize those signs and try to work on your plan at least once a week. Now, it’s time to think of your 12 activities and start planning, if you need help in the process feel free to reach out to see if we would be a good fit for your counseling needs.
