What You Don't Want to Do When It Comes to Self-Care

Don't Wait Until It's Too Late to Indulge in Self-Care

One common mistake in self-care is waiting until it's too late. People will wait until their life is falling apart and they're at their breaking point before trying to start solving any of their problems, instead of doing things ahead of time or just as they're starting to get uncomfortable.

You don't need to, and in fact shouldn't, wait until the last minute to start getting into self-care, because it won't help you nearly as much once you've reached that breaking point.

For some odd reason, people like to backburner their self-care for another time. They assume they're too strong for it, and they'll just power through their problems. Some see it as a sign of weakness to have to take care of yourself, which is simply absurd.

You should be willing to take care of yourself even if everything is going well, and you should definitely be taking a step in that direction if you're feeling a bit rough. If you let your stress go unchecked for extended periods of time, it can have many adverse effects on your life.

You can start to see it physically in the form of hair loss, weight fluctuation, nausea, and even rashes or aches. Mentally, you can certainly feel the effects, with it bringing on anxiety, depression, and possibly even thoughts of hurting yourself if the situation is extreme enough.

Before you ever get to this point, you should be on some kind of self-care routine. You don't need to wait for times to get tough before you start. You can start as soon as you want.

In fact, it's usually better to start early on so that you've already built a support system for yourself when the hard times do come around. Even if you feel great, start doing the basics of self-care.

Start getting on a workout routine and meditating for your mental health. By doing this, you'll start to develop a great foundation that you can work off of in the future, making it far less difficult to handle stressful situations. You won't need to lay the groundwork, because it'll already be there.

If you really think about it, what's the worst thing that could happen by getting into a self-care routine? Worst case scenario - you won't get stressed out and you'll just happen to be a slightly happier, improved version of yourself.

Don't Let Self-Care Be About Short-Term Relief

One aspect of self-care that's often forgotten is how to solve your long-term problems. When people try to engage in self-care, they only focus on one or two things that they think will help them feel a little better in that exact moment.

They don't appropriately plan for anything else going in the future. This can lead to ineffectiveness over time, because you're still burdened with the same issues, despite your short-term self-care efforts.

When people think they're engaging in self-care, it tends to be pretty surface-level stuff that doesn't help you a whole lot in the long run. It'll be something like taking a long bath with some relaxing music or eating a healthy meal that day.

While these things can indeed help you feel better, they're very short-term options. They're great to do on a weekly basis to help decompress or let go of some stress, but if it's just something you do every now and then, it hardly helps you at all.

Consistency is the key to long term self-care. Even if they're little things like relaxing baths, as long as you keep on doing it on a consistent basis, you'll probably be seeing some long-term results.

This is what sets your self-care routine apart from the ones that just give you some temporary relief. As long as you can keep up with your routine and don't stop doing it, you'll be able to better work out your problems.

Another important thing to remember is that while doing the simple, small things is a good start, it's not enough to sustain you for a long period of time. Pair these types of activities with something more serious in order to improve in more areas with more efficiency over a period of time.

The main thing to take away is that you can't expect to solve deep-rooted issues in your life with something that simple. It would be nice if that were the case, but unfortunately a lot more effort is required to properly rid yourself of not only one or two problems you're facing, but a multitude of life issues.

Short term measures like that will only scratch the surface of your problems, addressing your symptoms but not the actual issue itself, leaving you vulnerable to being affected by it again and again. If you want to properly stop that cycle, you'll need to dig a lot deeper.

Don't Let a Lack of Self Care Accumulate in Your Life

At some point, because it's an additional responsibility for you to tend to, you'll probably take a day off or so from sticking with your usual self-care guidelines in favor of doing more work or getting something urgent done.

At the time, you'll feel like this is fine, and it might be a necessary sacrifice every now and again. However, if you start to make a habit out of giving up your self-care, you're going to find yourself in a less than desirable state rather quickly.

The first aspect of self-care that seems to go most often are workouts or anything having to do with physical fitness and well-being. People often find this to be the least enjoyable part of self-care, so if they need a little extra time, they'll skimp out on this most often.

This could mean missing a few workouts or getting some unhealthy fast food instead of cooking at home. On a rare occasion, yes, missing a workout isn't going to be the end of the world for you.

But you need to be careful, because it's so easy to turn that into a long running habit that can tank your health. One week you just miss one workout - the next week you miss a few more - the week after that you don't work out at all - but you promise yourself you'll get back in the gym soon.

The problem is, it gets harder to make the commitment again. This same thing goes for dieting. People will frequently turn towards an unhealthy diet, making it gradually more frequent over time.

They also lose sight of their mental health goals as well. It can become a serious problem quickly, though people tend not to be too upset about it until it's too late. You might think that you can get away with focusing a lot more time on work, and you might feel fine about it at first.

However, over time, whether you recognize it or not, you'll start to wear yourself out, and you won't even realize it until you're feeling overwhelmed. Then you'll realize the strain you've put yourself under and you'll regret the decision to slack on your self-care.

Take an objective look at how much time you should be spending as a bare minimum on self-care and never dip below that. No matter how good you feel at that time, you always have some room for improvement, so don't let yourself fail to try. Continue to strive for a better version of yourself.

Don't Start Neglecting Areas You Feel Strong About

One issue that people seem to encounter when they're starting to work on themselves is becoming too comfortable with one aspect of their life. Time management is incredibly crucial, and if you don't manage it well, then you're only setting yourself up for more problems.

People often try so hard to improve one aspect of their life that they begin to neglect others, causing more problems than you had previously. For example, if you decided that you really wanted to get in shape, then you might start working out a lot more often.

If you work out a lot, especially late at night, you might then find it more difficult to get to sleep on time, which can lead to fewer hours of sleep, making you more tired the next day.

You might also spend less time with family or friends, which can spark relationship issues. You can't drop certain areas of your life that you're doing well in just to try to improve another area.

It's very tempting to allocate a ton of time toward something that you want to improve. You want to see results in that area as quickly as possible, so it would make sense to spend more time on it.

You have to simply use restraint and only allocate whatever time you can toward it, so that you're not encroaching on other areas of your life. It doesn't make much sense to create more problems than you started with, so be sure to play your cards right and keep track of how much time you're spending on which aspects of life.

One option that can help with time management is looking at what areas you spend too much time on. For example, if you spend excessive time just watching TV at home, use that time slot to fit in a workout routine.

Utilize unused time instead of cutting into other parts of your life. Chances are, you might have a bit of extra free time on your hands that you can use. If that doesn't work, you can try using a detailed planner to get your days organized strategically with all the times accounted for.

Only spend so much time working, so much time exercising, and so much time eating. Spend the time you need, but not more than that. Keep track of how long you need to complete each task, and organize yourself throughout the day so you have an easy-to-follow schedule.

You Don't Need to Hire a Professional for Self-Care

One aspect of self-care that often drives people away from it is the perceived cost of getting everything done for you. A large portion of that comes from this idea that you should be hiring people to help you in this process, which can end up being a substantial amount of money.

In reality, you don't actually need to hire anybody in order to improve yourself. Everything can be done from the comfort of your own home for free. For example, you'd think that one of the most logical ways of improving your mental health would be with a counselor or therapist.

If you have access to a therapist, they can be a great deal of help, but don't start thinking that this is the only way to talk things through with someone, or that it's the only way to improve your mental health.

At home, you can find resources online to be able to talk to people and vent your frustrations or talk out your feelings for free. You can also use alternative methods of mental health care, such as meditation or finding a relaxing hobby to calm your nerves and reduce stress or anxiety.

It doesn't require a professional to get good results in terms of your mental health. People seem to have this same notion when it comes to physical health. Somehow, they get it in their heads that if they want to build a nice physique and get in shape, they need to hire a personal trainer because they don't know what they're doing.

In reality, that's not true these days. On the internet, you can find readily available premade workout routines that are designed by professionals for free. You can even find guides on how to perform the exercises if you're unsure.

If you want your body to be less sore and more limber, then you don't need to go out and spend money at the spa or on a masseuse. By doing simple stretches, ice baths, and yoga on your own, you can quickly alleviate most types of bodily pain without having to break the bank by hiring a pro.

At the end of the day, don't spend more than you need to on self-care. If you decide that you can and want to spend a little extra, that's fine. But don't think of it as a requirement. If you want to take care of yourself in all aspects, that can be done fairly easily and on any limited budget, too.