Self-Care is Health Care: Why It Works & How to Make it a Habit

Self-care has become a bit of a buzzword - people use it so often and describe such a wide range of activities that many misconceptions have arisen around it. When you hear the term "self-care", do you think about taking a hot bubble bath, going out for a run, or saying no to a night out to watch a movie at home and eat pizza?

Anything that makes you feel good can be self-care. Still, we often see these acts as guilty pleasures and see them as self-indulgent and selfish, especially if we have other people asking for our time.

But self-care isn't selfish. Self-care is about providing your mind and body with the environment, care, and fuel needed to work best.

What's self-care for you may differ from the type of self-care activities your sibling needs to refuel, and neither is right or wrong. Self-care helps us develop positive emotions, gain mental and physical energy, and many other benefits.

Why Practice Self-Care? 3 Benefits of Self-Care

1. Find it easier to manage stress

We live in a stressful world where everything needs to be done now. This VUCA environment (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous environment) means that we often feel like we aren't sure what to expect next - especially when considering the global events we've endured over the past few years.

Self-care allows us to empty our metaphorical bucket. Every new stressful thing that comes into our lives, whether a challenging event coming up at work or the news of a war on the other side of the world, adds to that bucket. When it becomes full, we have a short fuse, have trouble sleeping, and experience other stress-related symptoms.

Self-care allows us to take a cup full of water out of that bucket to stay balanced and find it easier to manage the stresses of daily life. The more self-care you practice, the easier it will be to manage your stress levels.

2. Supports your physical health

Self-care is all about putting yourself first - if you find it challenging to do so, try imagining yourself as a child and the level of care you would give them. Would you tell them to work 60-hour weeks without any time for play? Probably not - when you consider the care you would give a child, you can start to see how you may not be looking after yourself as well as you could.

While indulging in a bit of junk food from time to time is okay, good self-care also takes your long-term needs into account. Self-care prioritizes getting enough sleep, making better food choices, and getting more exercise in a way that feels good to you.

Remember that any activity you do to support your physical health will also benefit your mental health, especially if you've been feeling stressed. Long-term stress leads to high cortisol levels in the body (the stress hormone), which has been linked to many serious health complications.

3. Gives you the energy to support others

The majority of us spend our days supporting others. Whether it be our children, colleagues, or customers, we're constantly giving energy away to others. Our ability to give isn't a bottomless well, however. We can overgive to the point where we feel burnt out or even resentful of the people we're helping.

To ensure we are always in a positive space and give to others in the right way, with healthy boundaries in place, we need to do self-care activities. You can think of this as a penny system; when you give your energy to others, you give a penny away, and when you do something for yourself, you gain a penny. If you don't balance the two sides, you'll not have any pennies (energy) to give to others.

How do you start incorporating self-care into your daily life?

It would be best if you experimented to see what self-care activities help you feel more energized and at peace. Here are some self-care activities that are universal to all of us:

• Get outside for a walk - walking is one of the best forms of exercise as it’s low-impact, meaning it won’t cause stress on your joints and will help you gently elevate your heart rate and get your blood pumping. Walking outside has the added benefit of fresh air, which offers your brain a higher concentration of oxygen, allowing you to function better.

• Connect with nature - reconnecting with nature has incredible benefits for our mental wellbeing. While getting outside for a walk in the park or the countryside is best, studies have shown that even a few minutes of interaction with a houseplant can lower feelings of stress. If you have a backyard or balcony, take advantage of that space to try a little gardening.

• Try meditation and/or breathwork - many people think they can’t do meditation because they can’t clear their head of thoughts, but that’s not what meditation has to be. It also takes practice. If you find it difficult to meditate, try a guided meditation (you can find plenty for free on YouTube) or yoga, which can offer the same mental benefits but with the added benefit of movement and breathwork, which can help you focus.

• Learn to say “no” and set healthy boundaries - if you often find yourself depleted of energy, having little time for yourself, and doing things you don’t really want to do, you likely have some difficulties implementing healthy boundaries. If you ever perceive self-care as selfish, this probably includes you.

As we touched on earlier, you can’t give all your energy away without becoming burnt out and resentful, so you must check in with yourself and start considering what you really want to do. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself, "would I do that 5 minutes from now?" If the answer's no, find a polite way to say no.

• Spend time with people who make you feel good about yourself - they say you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, so make sure those people are people that make you feel good. Suppose you come away from most interactions with a person in your life feeling irritated, down, or like you've had the energy sucked out of you. In that case, it's a good sign that you should limit your time with them as much as possible.

• Practice being your own cheerleader - How often do you say something to yourself you would never dream of saying to someone else? For many of us, that inner critic pipes up several times a day to tell us how stupid we are, how we’re the only ones getting this wrong, or even something as hurtful as we’re unloveable.

You've got to learn to cut in and notice when this voice is talking and realize that it's not you. The more you see it and counter those thoughts with the truth or even just a slightly better view, the quieter that voice will get. When we punish ourselves for every little mistake or imperfection, we set ourselves up to be miserable or avoid trying to reach our goals because we don’t feel adequate enough on the inside to be worthy of them.

Why do we find self-care so tricky?

There are a few different factors at play when we start thinking about why we find self-care difficult.

The first is that implementing new and better habits isn’t easy. Experts believe you need to practice a routine between 18 to 254 days before a new habit will stick and 66 days before a new behaviour becomes automatic.

My advice for making a new habit is to take the most minor steps you can and build up, following the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen (continual small improvement). My clients have seen a lot of success when using this methodology with a better self-care routine.

The second major factor is that society teaches us that taking care of ourselves first is terrible. We should always give to others. As children, we’re taught to share, we’re often told not to be bossy, and many of us give to others to be liked and accepted.

Remember the metaphor about the energy pennies or being unable to give from an empty cup - you’ve got to give to yourself to give to others in a healthy way. If you want to take care of others, you have to care for yourself. Start brainstorming the ways you could practice better self-care and find one easy new self-care habit you can introduce into your daily routine - you’ll soon feel the benefits!