Recently, I was cleaning out some boxes in my office and came across some cards I had created in 2014. They were one of my very first attempts at implementing and tracking a self-care routine.
They have about six million things on them that I wanted to track. They obviously took me a while to format and print. It looks like I used less than ten of them.
If you’ve been around a while, you know that in 2013 I burned out hard, and that burnout manifested itself in a nearly fatal illness. When I was fully recovered and started working to avoid a repeat of anything like that ever again, my Google searches led to this totally foreign concept of self-care.
At that point, I had no idea what self-care was or why it mattered. Today, nearly ten years down the road, I know that prioritizing yourself is not only a good idea, it is absolutely necessary.
Our society as a whole doesn’t value taking care of oneself, let alone prioritizing it. We have been conditioned to go go go and sacrifice our needs and wants for others. We’ve been told anything else is selfish. So we push ourselves to the brink, and then when we just can’t do it anymore, we see absolutely no help from those people that encouraged us along the path that got us there in the first place.
What is Self-Care?
What is self-care, then? I define self-care in my practice as anything one does to prioritize their mental, emotional or physical health.
This can look like so so many things. It also looks completely different for everybody, which is where problems arise when we are trying to implement self-care for ourselves.
So many different definitions exist, and so many people have different ideas of what self-care look like. Most of the time though, other people are trying to dictate how you should do your own self-care and that is no bueno. No one can develop your self-care but you.
So where do you actually start? Well, you definitely don’t start where I started. As is apparent from the cards I found, I definitely was trying to do too much and too many things all at once. That’s why my 10 Beginner Steps to Self-Care is very broad and pretty simple! Learn from my mistakes, friends.
The trick to getting down to exactly what is going to help you, is making sure that you are treating yourself well enough to recognize and implement your true needs and desires. That’s where the 3 Pillars of Self-Care come in.
Self-Care Pillar #1: Positive Self-Talk
I can guarantee I was trying to do too much because I had no idea what I REALLY needed. I would also be willing to bet I only used a few of these cards because the first or second time I didn’t check something off, didn’t drink enough water, or had too many foods from the categories I was trying to avoid, I felt like I had “failed” self-care and was really fucking mean to myself about it.
That last part turned out to be the key that helped me understand, implement and build transformative self-care. It also became the first pillar of self-care in my practice.
Positive self-talk and its importance cannot be understated. I was talking to myself like I was the absolute worst. I was willing to give everyone else a pass, but I held myself to the most ridiculous expectations and was meant to meet them every.single.time.
Once you start realizing how you are actually speaking to yourself, and how you’re internalizing everything you’re saying, it becomes pretty obvious that something has to change. Positive self-talk is the first step, the most important step, and maybe the hardest step when you’re first starting to build self-care.
It doesn’t come naturally, it takes time, and you have to make incremental shifts, because it is ingrained in us to not talk ourselves up. What that leads to is not only a lack of being able to celebrate all the things (large and small!), but it makes it much easier for us to be assholes to ourselves.
My best advice when working to implement positive self-talk is to imagine that you are your bestie. What would you say to them if they were in your shoes? We never let our besties forget that they are amazing human beings, right? Guess what - you too are an amazing human being. Start talking to yourself like you believe that, please.
Self-Care Pillar #2: Self-Compassion
Once I started talking to myself like I actually liked myself, I actually started to like myself (weird how that works, huh?)! Not only that, but as time went on, I was able to like myself just as I was.
I’ve found personally, and over and over again with my clients, that when you make the shift to accepting and loving who you are, just as you are, true growth and deep self-compassion isn’t far behind. Pillar #2 for the win!
The shift to true self-compassion helps so much with self-care, because it grants you the perspective of seeing yourself as someone who is worthy of help, growth and happiness. It also helps you to see that you are not defined by external things.
We have a really, really hard time as humans accepting harder things, and we live in a dichotomy of either/or. A lot of my clients come to me with a feeling of "I am bad because I don't..." and when I tell them that I think they are AMAZING for recognizing that they want to change something, they can't grasp it.
You can be awesome AND depressed, intentional AND anxious, bad at saying no AND good at setting boundaries, and recognizing that is key to building self-compassion. There is no either/or when it comes to your worth and the love you deserve - from yourself and everyone else.
Self-Care Pillar #3: Intention
Since you are worthy and lovable just as you are, and since you’re awesome, dammit, you do not need to hold yourself to insane expectations.
When you do that (like I did with those cards!), you take the intention out of what you’re doing. You are doing it because you feel obligated or because you’ve said you will or because you think it’s necessary.
Once you’re actively and consistently practicing the first two Pillars, you realize you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, and you don’t have to do things that are not working for you. This is where intention, the third and final pillar, comes in and shines.
When you love yourself as you are and you speak to yourself kindly, your true needs and desires become very very clear. You also are able to release the expectations you hold yourself to, and recognize that you are human, and though it is your intention to do this that and the other this week, your physical, mental or emotional needs or desires might make it hard to get all of those things done.
You become intentional with your time, your energy, your relationships, and your resources. When you do that, you find yourself feeling less stressed, experiencing less burnout, able to find time for the things and people that are important to you, and more aligned with your internal voice. You will see that inner voice as your guiding light, your true self, and by honoring it you will be living a more fulfilled and happier existence.
Why Is Self-Care So Hard Sometimes?
The hardest part of building a consistent, workable, deeply-rooted self-care regimen is that self-care is 1000% individually driven. I can’t tell you what you’re self-care needs look like, you can’t tell your bestie what their self-care needs look like, and most of the time, Oprah and Martha Stewart cannot give you advice on how to get to self-care that works on anything but a surface level.
The deep work of figuring out what works for you, what doesn’t work for you, and why what works actually works, is a long and sometimes fraught process. It’s also one that I embarked up alone.
Again, now that I am so far out from those first fledgling days of learning about self-care, I am so glad for all the work I did and all the mistakes I made. It helped me learn more about myself and what I needed. It also helps me immensely in helping my clients avoid certain pitfalls when they first start out.
I have come a very long way since those first cards, but self-care is not something you can arrive at, it is an ever-changing practice.
Since it’s also so individualized, it can be incredibly difficult to sift through all of your ideas, feelings and needs. This is especially true when you have not practiced the 3 Pillars of self-care in your everyday life for very long.
Today, my mission is to help others as they begin discovering how self-care can transform their lives, and to help them do it without all the floundering (and sorta useless index cards!) that I did. Want to learn more about my services and how they could transform your life? Click to request a free Introductory Call.