The Importance of Routine in Self Care

Four Signs You Need to Start a Self-Care Routine

Sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether or not you're in a good place in life. You might feel as though you're not doing very bad but you're not quite good, either, leaving you in some kind of limbo.

At this point, you might start to feel some of the more negative effects of not taking care of yourself, which you might interpret as something that will simply come to pass. In reality, it might be the wake-up call that you need to make some lifestyle changes.

One more serious effect you might see is insomnia. Insomnia means that you find it difficult or impossible to fall asleep, causing you to be up late for hours and dozing off from time to time during the day.

If this only occurs once or twice, it's probably not a big issue. But if it's a consistent problem, it can mean you're suffering from insomnia. This can be brought on by stress, diet, and a number of other things that are solvable with self-care routines.

Another sign you might notice is a fluctuation in weight. This can either be a sudden gain or a sudden loss in pounds, and it's not exactly healthy. While you might like seeing a sudden drop in weight, unless you've been dieting and exercising a lot lately, it's probably not a good sign.

Sudden weight fluctuations can be caused by both mental and physical issues, and it typically comes from a sudden change in diet caused by emotions. For example, if you were sad and stopped eating, you'd suddenly lose a lot of weight.

Though, to be healthy, you need to continue eating. Pain, aches, and inflammation are also brought on by poor self-care. While a lot of this can come from the physical side in terms of not stretching enough, not being active, and not eating properly, you can actually feel real pain due to the fact that you're stressed out.

Stress can lower your immune system and leave you more open to inflammation, which can cause a great deal of pain. Finally, mood swings are a tell-tale sign of needing help. Sudden changes in attitude and demeanor can be confusing, frustrating, and can even make others upset.

This is often a side effect of poor mental health care, especially in times of high stress or anxiety. If you find yourself lashing out at people, it's time to start a path of mental self-care.

Anchor Your Self-Care Strategy with Routines

A major part of self-care that's often overlooked is consistency. If you want to make progress in life, you need to be consistent and on some kind of schedule or routine. You can't get too far just doing things at your leisure, or without any kind of structure.

You should always have a guide to follow. Having a good routine for your self-care can show you results a lot faster than you would see them just by doing random self-care tips whenever you get the urge.

The first aspect of your life that you should get consistent with is your bedtime. It might sound childish at first, but sleep is such a crucial part of living a healthy and productive life.

It's not only about the amount of sleep you get, either, but also about when you're going to bed. You should have a set time at which you get into bed, and a set time at which you go to sleep.

This ensures that you're able to wake up at a good time with plenty of sleep every day, allowing you to get more done. After you wake up, you should start the day off right with some proper nutrition.

Getting on a consistent diet can help you lose weight, have clearer skin, and keep you more focused and energized throughout the day. You can meal prep in advance if you'd prefer not to have to make breakfast every morning, but either way your meal should be consistent and fairly healthy.

This will give you the energy boost you need to continue on throughout the day. While this doesn't have to be a daily occurrence, you should be working out at least a few days of the week.

This can be anything from cardio to weight lifting, or a combination of both - but as long as you're keeping your body active on a regular basis, you'll be doing well. Keeping your body moving helps maintain parts of your body like joints, so that they're not feeling sore when you try to do little things, and so that they're not hurting you when you're older.

If you want to add in more mental health themed parts of your day, have a certain time slot dedicated to things like meditation or relaxation. The way you make your schedule is entirely up to you, but what's important is that it's a consistent schedule and you're able to actually stick by it.

How Often Should You Switch Up Your Self Care Routine?

When people find a self-care routine that works for them, they tend to get very attached to it. It might've taken a bit of effort to get to that point, so they don't want to do anything that'll undo the work they've done.

However, it might be necessary to make the change. After a little while, your self-care routine will become stale, and you might have to change certain parts of it around to keep it working for you.

You can think of your self-care routine like a car. Unfortunately, the whole thing isn't going to last forever. After a period of time, certain parts will need to be replaced to keep it running efficiently, even if it's a bit of a hassle to do.

Going through that hassle is a lot better than seeing the whole thing fall apart later down the line, so you need to be sure you're staying up to date with it. The frequency at which you change up your routine differs for everyone.

Some people are very comfortable and do well with engaging in the same thing for a while. Others, however, start to get bored of the same thing after some time, so for them, they'll need to be ready to mix up their routine if they don't want to get stuck in a rut.

One way of going about this is to have multiple entire routines laid out, and when one starts to get old, you switch to another, and so on and so forth just rotating them out. This option has a lot of benefits because it has some consistency and structure, but it's not stagnant.

It also allows you to have it ready in advance, so you don't have to scramble to restructure your formula. Another option you could take is just replacing aspects of your schedule as they get old.

Some things you do in your routine will become old before others do, so you might want to keep certain aspects but replace others. For example, if journaling and keeping a diary of sorts started to get old for you, you could just rotate that out for meditation, while keeping the rest of your routine intact.

This has the benefit of allowing you to have a more modular, flexible self-care routine. You can replace as much or as little as you'd like in order to fit your needs. Just don't allow yourself to get bored or unaffected by your self-care regimen.

10 Minutes a Day of Self Care Could Be a Game Changer

Something that tends to hold people off from starting down a path of self-care is that they don't feel as though they have enough time to make that kind of a commitment. They assume that it'll be hours out of their day that they currently need for other tasks, and they don't want to cut back that much just to feel a bit better.

But in reality, you don't need to take a ton of time out of your day in order to get a self-care routine going. Just a mere 10 minutes a day will do. Self-care doesn't have to take up a lot of time.

If you have the time to dedicate an hour to physical health and an hour to mental health, that's great. However, this amount of time is not a requirement at all - it's only if you can do it.

As little as 10 minutes a day is enough to help you improve your life significantly. Now, there are a few options you can take in regards to self care considerations. First, you can spend those 10 minutes a day focusing on one specific thing - primarily either mental health or physical health.

You can alternate days so that you cover both bases, and have a full 10 minutes to dedicate to each one. You can spend time each day doing 10 minutes of quick cardio or a quick workout, which can mean the world for someone in terms of improving their physical health.

It seems insufficient, but if you really push yourself for those 10 minutes, you can do a lot more than you'd think. Similarly, those 10 minutes can be spent on improving your mental health.

You can do this by getting in a quick meditation session or any other equivalent helpful stress relief strategy. It can be done anywhere, and as long as you're giving yourself around 10 minutes, you're going to do just fine.

Another option would be splitting it up each day. You can even do five minutes each, mental health and physical health, if that's what you'd prefer. If you feel as though it works better for you, then you can do that.

This doesn't give you as much time, of course, for each part, but you'll be able to do it more often, which might be what's best for your situation at that time. There are many experts that say even a small amount of self-care goes a long way.

It's certainly better than completely neglecting yourself on a routine basis. Find small time-saving strategies like deep breathing or a quick, brisk walk, and engage on them consistently throughout to week to see how your body and mind respond.