Self-Care Considerations for Maximum Healing

Self-Care Begins with Self-Awareness

An often overlooked aspect of self-care is developing something that caters to your specific needs, which all begins with self-awareness. You could pick up a random self-care routine, and it might help a bit, but if you want to see the best results, you need to be constructing a plan to specifically address your own issues.

You can't even start to plan that until you know what those problems are. By being more self-aware, you'll be able to easily pinpoint the root of your problems and continue on to build a plan to address that.

The first and most important step is identification. This means taking an honest, hard look at your life and figuring out what it is that you're not happy with. It could be anything.

You might not be confident in your figure, you might dislike your job, you might be struggling emotionally, and so on. Don't be afraid to get a little bit critical with yourself during this time.

This is a time for honesty, not comfort. Once you know what the problem is, though, it's time to dig a little bit deeper. The next step is analysis. At this point, you know what your problems are in your life, but that's about it.

By looking closer at your problems, you should try to analyze what it is that's causing these problems to appear in the first place. Take, for example, you not liking your job. That sounds simple enough on the surface, but by digging deeper, you'll recognize that there are more varied reasons for this.

You might feel unfulfilled in your potential, or you might feel as though you've gone down a path you regret. Or it may be something simpler like the hours that you have to work or a bad coworker.

It's these things that you want to start to know more about. Just knowing what the problem is in your life isn't necessarily all that helpful. You want to know what's causing the problem to exist in the first place so that you can treat it at the root level.

Much like a weed growing in your yard, you don't just want to cut the visible part away - you want to uproot the whole thing so that it doesn't come back. Knowing what your problems are (and what's causing them) allows you to start down a path of rebuilding for a better life.

You can formulate a self-care plan specifically to help address these big issues and help better your life in the long run. Too many people use self-care as a Band-Aid, but you want a long-term solution, so make sure you engage in awareness and analysis before you initiate a plan for your self-care.

Make Your Self-Care a Priority

Many people find themselves in the bad habit of trying to always help others. On the surface, this doesn't sound like a bad habit or a problem at all. In fact, it sounds rather noble.

However, after extended periods of time, we start to prioritize the needs of others over the needs of ourselves, neglecting our most basic needs and wants, which can lead to some serious long-term issues both physically and mentally.

Though it may sound selfish, you need to make yourself a priority. You can't effectively help others unless you're in a sound enough state yourself. Instead of devoting as much time as possible to appeasing others, let yourself be happy for a change.

Don't let yourself be trampled on for someone else to be happy, you deserve to be happy as well. Take control and learn how to make your mental and physical well-being a priority.

Think of it as the flight instructions you get before you take off on a plane. You're told to put your oxygen mask on before helping others, and there's good reason for this. If you fail to put on your oxygen mask in time, you can become afflicted with hypoxia, which can prevent you from being able to help someone else put their mask on.

This same concept applies to self-care. You can't reliably help others, even if you want to, before you learn how to help yourself. By taking care of yourself, you'll learn to live a happier life, which others will take note of and start to possibly improve on theirs as well.

You can act as an influence, but you shouldn't devote all of your time to being a life coach, especially when your life isn't going exactly as you would have hoped. Even if you are able to get yourself in a spot where you're comfortable and happy, you should wait until getting to that point before trying to give tips.

You shouldn't be telling people how to solve their problems and improve their lives if you didn't even go through that yourself because that's just not a viable source. However, if you've made the efforts and seen what works and what doesn't and you have taken care of yourself both physically and mentally, then you'll feel a lot better giving advice to people than you would have before, knowing that it comes from a genuine place of care and concern.

Balancing Your Mental and Physical Health Care Strategy

It's easy to spend too much time on either your mental or your physical health. You could be spending many days inside relaxing for the sake of your mental health, or you could be spending all of your time out exercising and doing other activities for the sake of your physical health.

What's difficult is finding that good middle ground in which you're taking care of both parts of your health, because they're both equally important. Mental health is very important, because if you're not taking good care of it, you can end up developing depression, anxiety, suffer from a lack of drive, and a lot of other negative symptoms.

Without good mental health, you might have a negative opinion of yourself, of others, and might even find it hard to want to get up in the morning. Taking good care of your mental health ensures that you're able to maintain a positive attitude - and a genuine one at that.

Physical health is also very important. You want to be able to do things that you love, and that can often require you to be in good shape. If you want to go out hiking, play some recreational sports, or just look healthy, you need to be in good physical health.

However, there are other sides of physical health outside of just weight loss and looking toned. Physical health involves things like diet, blood pressure, and even the amount of sleep you get.

Having good physical health allows you to do the things that you want to do without feeling tired or feeling pain. If you spend too much time on one, you'll end up neglecting the other.

This means that you need to learn how to manage your time in such a way that you're able to take care of yourself in multiple ways. Without one, you'll find it hard to take care of the other.

For example, without good mental health, it's unlikely that you'll do well at the gym and with your diet. Time management is key here. You can divide it up into days, if that helps you.

Alternate between physical health days and mental health days, giving you more time on each day to spend improving both. By managing your time wisely, you'll be physically and mentally sound, which can go such a long way in helping you feel better and improving your chances of succeeding in life.

Technology That Can Help You with Self-Care

With technology becoming more and more widespread every year, it's no surprise that many devices and apps have been created with the intention of helping you with your goals of self-care.

Taking advantage of technology is highly recommended, because it allows you to simplify certain things and do others that you might not have been able to do by yourself, which could even save you money in the long run.

First off, you've got your apps. There are all kinds of free apps available for your smart phone that can help you really take your self-care routine to the next level. For example, if you're trying to work on your diet, it can be so difficult to keep track of what calories you've eaten and how many carbs versus how many proteins, and so on.

There are apps available that you can use to track your food, which will give you instantly accessible information on what all you ate, how many calories, how many calories you should be eating, and so on.

There are also plenty of apps that can help with your mental health, as well. For example, if you wanted to get into journaling, but you didn't feel like busting out a pen and paper every night to detail how you're feeling, you can use very simplified apps to help.

These apps let you simply input what emotions you're feeling that day along with a short blurb, which can be easily accessed by you over time to see how you've progressed. There are many physical devices meant to help you with self-care as well.

If you intended to have massages as a part of your physical health routine, then you've probably considered the cost of always having to get a massage. Instead, simple devices can be added to regular chairs to turn them into massage chairs.

These might be a little expensive up front, but that can save you tons of money in the long run. Another device that could help your mental health is a simple noise machine. You can get machines that generate soothing noises, tones, and background white noise.

One of the most difficult parts of meditation is sitting there in the silence, because you're afraid you'll hear something and break concentration. With this, you'll be able to focus without worrying about hearing anything else, because this will be providing ample background noise that isn't overly distracting.

Who Should Be on Your Self-Care Support Team?

A serious mistake that you should avoid when you're getting started with self-care is trying to do it all alone. Even if you think that you're going to be better off sorting things out yourself, you're probably going to falter along the way and you're going to want someone there who can help you.

Having support is key to having a successful self-care routine, but who you select can vary quite a bit. One common option for someone to help you with your self-care is your family.

They're typically close, they know you, and they're willing to help you and keep you accountable. Family can be such a great resource because they're often very connected in your life, and can help take some of the stress off of you if you're feeling overburdened.

Unfortunately, for many people, family isn't an option. It could be because they've had a falling out, or because they're distant, or any number of things. Another option then is a significant other.

Your partner can be such a great source of inspiration to keep going and should hopefully be able to provide any assistance they can. Apart from just providing love, they should also be able to provide care.

Of course, not everyone has a significant other in their life. However, this doesn't mean that you can't still form a support team. You can have people who you've hired as part of your support team, such as a therapist, life coach, or personal trainer.

All of these people care about your success and want to see you do well. Outsiders can provide new angles on life that you might not have considered before. They essentially provide an outsider perspective on your life.

Their advice and their thoughts come with years of professional training and a lot of personal experience, so you should be supported by them fairly well. However, it should be noted that a therapist, for example, can only effectively support you in their field of expertise - meaning that they're not going to be giving a ton of great fitness advice.

Don't be afraid to open yourself up to those around you who want to help. It's hard going through things all alone. Humans are social animals. By allowing others to help you advance in life, you're really going to take your self-care abilities to the next level.

Taking a Spiritual Approach to Self-Care

Self-care isn't something that's always meant to be taken on alone. Sometimes we need others there to help us and to guide us, but those people aren't always available to us or perhaps they're not the best resources.

For that reason, it's always viable to turn to a more spiritual approach to your self-care practices. It could be religious or not, but by turning to a higher power, you might find it a lot easier to do what you need to do.

For many people, the most prevalent example of this is religion. Whether it be Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other number of religions, you'll likely find that it has a set of codes and morals to live by for an ideal life.

These can help guide you in your times of need, when you're not sure what route to take or how you should approach a situation. It can also be more about spirit than any particular deity or god.

Many people find things like chakra or aura to be guides on where their lives are going and what they should do next. This can help you reflect on your life and where you're at from an objective standpoint, and can help influence your decisions on what to do about it.

Having that kind of basic guide and structure can go a long way in delivering peace of mind for you. Another important aspect of spiritual self-care is comfort. Feeling as though you're on your own or having to rely on other people can feel desolate at times, and you might be unsure of what you're even doing.

Spiritual practices can help you feel as though you're not alone, that you have someone watching over you and guiding you through the toughest of times, which can be an incredibly comforting feeling.

No matter what it is that you choose to practice for a better feeling of self-care, you should feel some kind of improvement in yourself from it. If you're feeling overwhelmed or weakened by something as a part of your spiritual approach, perhaps it might be time to look elsewhere for some guidance.

Spiritual approaches should only ever help you and guide you - they should never lead you astray or cause you to suffer in any sort of way. Don't let something like that get in the way of your self-care success. It's simply not worth it that way.

Use a spiritual approach when you want to tap into that next level of enlightenment that comes from a place deep within your soul. It can be very healing and comforting, regardless of which path you choose to embrace.