6 Pro-tip Keys to helping you feel healthy and well

[JamieMackenzie]

 

Transition & life can be challenging and stressful. It is important to keep focused on your own health & wellbeing to help you move through life. Here are 6 pro-tip keys to finding success in your self-care practices. 

 

1. Do What Fills You up. When it comes to self-care keep in mind to focus on things that fill you up. Self-care is a hot term these days. Some self-care tips are sort of b/s and seem more like a chore. Remeber it is important to focus on care practices that actaully work for you and fill you up, not the latest social media trends (unles they work for you)!

2. You are a whole person. Make sure you focus on your whole person needs. I like to think of whole person self-care as split into 5 different categories. Physical self-care, mental self-care, intellectual self-care, spirtual self-care, and social-self-care. What are your practices in each of these areas? Remeber, they don't have to be done alone.

3. Check-in with yourself. Take a moment to stop and actaully be with yourself and notice what are your feelings. It is important to observe your current feelings and understand what are your needs that aren't being adressed resulting in that feeling. I know for me I am stressed for this weekend because I am scared for my partner and I's future. Going one step deeper, I feel scared because there is a lot that is unknown and out of my control. My need is to feel secure, I understand that I cannot control match, so being able to let that go, and instead, focus on what I can control. To find control I plan using my internal authority to use self-care tools that makes me feel secure. The tool I am planning on using is social self-care. Reaching out to family, friends, and my significant others. People in my life that make me feel secure. This is an invitation to check-in with yourself, and ask what are you feeling and what do you need to help you feel more balanced and in control.

4. Be Intentional and Self-Aware. I find with many people that I work with do actively engage in self-care, but they do not actually realize it and do not get the benifits. Often we live on auto-piolit and can just move through the motions and not realize we are doing things that actually fill us up. One way to help with this is to be more intentional and be self-aware. Set aside specific times to actively engage in self-care and when you are actively engaging in self-care take a moment to notice how you are feeling. Another pro-tip is to take time after your self-care activity, reflect on the activity and notice how it made you feel. Just thinking about it can make a difference, but a way to cement it more into your mind, is by writing it out, or talking about it with others. (This is the same reason why in school we take notes and talk to others, rather than trying to remember everything that we learned)

5. Manifest Your State of Mind. You may not beleive it, but we actually have a fair amount of control over our state of mind. However, a lot of our state of mind is dependent on what we can control v. not control. If we focus on what we can control, typically we have a better state of mind. Where as if we focus on things out of our control, that can lead to a more negative state of mind. Therefore, It is often important to ask yourself. Is your state of mind truly serving you and what is in your control or not? Controling your state of mind does take some practice. One way to do this is noticing the state of mind you are currently in, especially when you are entering into the self-care practice. If you are in a state of mind that isn't serving you, try not to think your way out of the problem. Einstien always said "You cannot solve a problem with the same state of mind by which it was created." This is an invitation to be creative and find play. Our mind massively influences our body and our body has huge influence over our mind. Get out of your own head by entering into a new space of conciousness. Some suggetive activites: Move your body, Physical activity, Dance, be weird, maybe it is journaling, laugh (your body doesn't know the diffrence between an authentic laugh v. fake laugh), creating art, being creative. Find a place of play, groundedness, and then notice after the activity your state. Were there things that worked? That didn't work? Self-care is important to enter into without expectation, rather invite a sense of play, learning, and curiousty.

6. Practice: Like anything, you cannot become good at anything without practice and routine. Remember as a kid when you were in extra curicular activites. Maybe it sports, arts, or whatever. I am sure when you started you weren't very good. But with daily, weekly, or monthly routine, you had opporutnity to practice. I am sure overtime, you got better. Self-care is the same. It might not work right away, but with regular routine, and practice, it can be something that builds, becomes easier, and helps you feel more in balance.

As you noticed I didn't give you any specific self-care activities perse, thats simply because you are unique, just because one style of self-care works for others, doesn't always mean it will work for you, and vice versa. It is important to customize yourself care to your own unique needs. If you are feeling stuck about what that maybe. Id love to chat! Community is extremely important during these times.

 

[rainflower]

The Mindfulness Self Compassion Workout by Kristin Neff is a great resource.

[Heather Shay]

@AwesomeClairethank you - I've been what working on ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) and watched a lot of Steven Hayes videos. These are also good - as I still have issues with past abandonment issues from a divorce  35 years ago and issues with feeling and expressing emotions - thank God for HRT and my gender specialist therapist who has unlocked many doors.