Self-care often elicits thoughts of soft instrumental music, the scents of essential oils, and pampering spa treatments. There can be a disconnect when talking about self-care because, often, self-care actually involves activities you would really rather not be doing – preparing healthy meals, doing your taxes, having awkward conversations with your significant other about support, setting boundaries, going to the gym – but these things are equally if not more important for a true self-care plan.
Self-care is really an investment in your future. It’s about putting in the work now that means Future You will benefit. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t be kind to yourself while you’re figuring out life’s big lessons, but it also means that you shouldn’t avoid the hard stuff out of a desire for ‘more self-care’. You can do both, which is really the goal of any good self-care plan.
Any plan, be it self-care, rehabilitation, financial health, self-improvement, etc., should involve both short-term and long-term goals and activities. When it comes to self-care, the pampering, indulgent activities provide short-term relief to acute stressful life moments, but long-term they don’t help you to navigate out of financial trouble or relationship struggles. In fact, sometimes you can get ‘stuck’ because you’re unwilling to view other activities as self-care, or use these things as a way of avoiding your problems rather than dealing with them. However, when dealing with the stress and overwhelm of navigating life’s hurdles, getting to the end of them better off than you started can be near impossible without being willing to pamper yourself along the way.
Personally, I’m a big fan of indulgence, but in the healthiest ways possible. So, if I’m going to eat cheesecake, I try to chose plant-based, gluten and dairy-free. If I’m going to have a glass of wine, I try to make it preservative free. If I’m going to spend money on a new item, I’m going to make it my reward for bringing in extra clients, etc. And by God, if I just need a slice of pizza, well, I try to make it a cauliflower crust pizza with dairy-free cheese and plenty of veggies. That way there’s no feeling of restriction or loss associated with making healthy shifts. I get my indulgence in a way that meets my short-term needs while also investing in my long-term health.
Self-care doesn’t have to be an expensive indulgence either. Walks in nature, a warm foot bath with calming essential oils at the end of a rough day, getting together with friends to play a board game rather than going out for dinner and drinks, etc., are all excellent ways to get a little extra self-pampering in in low-cost ways. Generally speaking, a good self-care plan should have 3 layers to it: self-pampering activities, strength-building activities, and long-term life changes activities. It’s kind of incredibly super geeky, but in my brain it looks like a big ol’ Gant chart.
Let’s face it, there’s usually a reason you need self-care activities in your life – your job is sucking the life from you, you’re supporting a friend or family member through something horrible, or you yourself are going through something horrible, financial worries, etc., etc. To tackle these problems from a place of rock bottom energy and mood levels means that you exist in a perpetual state of too exhausted to make the long-term changes necessary to get yourself out of that place.
This is where self-pampering is useful. You need to be as kind and gentle on yourself as possible while in the trenches. It’s the best way to survive horrible life events. However, to really be able to make the big changes often required to really get yourself clear of those life events, you need a long term plan: tackling debt, taking night classes to up your education to be able to apply for a dream job or promotion, doing home renovations so you can sell your house for the best price so you can move to a better neighborhood, etc. All of these things seem impossible to do if you’re at rock bottom.
Where self-care plans shine is when they aren’t just short-term self-pampering activities but instead use those things as acute care treatment while you make the long-term changes required to level-up your life to a place where you don’t need to take a vacation from it. That’s the ultimate goal – to make the changes required that get you to a place where you’re just loving life all the time instead of merely surviving it. And taking the time to really map out and plan for what needs to change, what skills you need to develop, what activities need to take place, and what self-pampering and support you will likely need along the way so that you have the energy and motivation to accomplish it makes it that much more likely that you will be able to achieve the long-term changes required to improve life’s circumstances. It’s not about living life completely moment to moment with no thought of the future, and it’s not forgetting to live now so that the future might be better, it’s a good mix of both things. It’s taking care of yourself now while also working to improve your future. That, at the end of the day, is the ultimate form of self care.
Til next time, Folks!