Simple Self-Care Strategies that Work -

Twitter Facebook Pinterest LinkedIn Flip it

Self-care plays a significant role in your physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Therefore, if you would like to improve your health and feel better in your own skin, you need to take care of your basic needs in every area of your life.

If you are wondering how to add more self-care to your days, I have to tell you that there is no one-size-fits-all self-care plan. Instead, it’s important to create your own self-care plan by identifying those activities and self-care strategies that work for you and leave you feeling refreshed and rejuvenated. A well-thought-out self-care plan can help you to support your overall well-being and sustain your self-care in the long run. So it is definitely worth it to take the time to develop a plan!

Today, we will go through the most important aspects of self-care, and you will also get some help with how to prioritize caring for yourself and how to create your self-care plan. Are you ready? Then let’s dive into the world of self-care.

Aspects of self-care

There are 5 main aspects of self-care: physical, social, mental, spiritual, and emotional. It is important to look at your needs as a priority in all of these areas of your life. Depending on your habits and lifestyle, you may need to focus on some areas more than others.

Physical self-care

The first aspect of self-care includes all your physical needs. If you want your body to function properly, you need to take care of these needs. For example, you have to make sure that you get adequate sleep each night, you exercise regularly, you eat well, etc.

Also, there is a strong connection between the body and the mind, so you should not miss fulfilling these basic physical needs. If you care about your body, you will be able to think and focus better too.

Regarding your physical self-care, here are a few questions to ask yourself (these are just examples, you can continue the list and create your own questions):

Do you get adequate sleep each night?
Do you have a sleep routine?
Do you have a healthy diet?
Do you exercise regularly? At least 2-3 times a week?
Do you use your sick leave?
Do you do something to improve your physical health?

If your answer is “No” to any of these questions, it means that you need some improvements in that area of your life. Here is an example of how you can use effective self-care strategies to improve your life: if you realize that you don’t get enough sleep each night, you should try to change your daily routine, or manage your time better. This way, you can have a good night’s sleep every night, and you will feel less tired the other day.

Related read: How to Design Your Own Home HIIT Workout

Social self-care

Your social connections play a significant role in your well-being. Therefore, you should not forget about the social aspect of self-care. But you should keep in mind that everyone has different social needs. While some people are okay with meeting their friends for a few hours a week, others need more social life.

First, you should assess what your social needs are. Then, you should try to devote enough time to build new relationships, and cultivate and maintain existing ones. This way, you can have a social life that is optimal for your needs. (Note: You may need to be creative in these times of social distancing with outdoor picnics or zoom game nights.)

Here are some questions to find out whether you need to improve in the area of social self-care:

Do you spend enough time with your friends/family?
Do you make efforts to develop close relationships with others?
Do you have a healthy relationship with your family members?
Do you attend the special events of your friends or family members?
Do you find yourself feeling lonely often?
Do you have healthy relationship boundaries with others?

Related read: Building Awareness for Mental Health

Mental self-care

When it comes to mental self-care, you need to do things that are good for your mental health. It is important because the way you think and your thoughts affect your psychological well-being. The best way to stay mentally healthy is to engage in activities that improve your memory and concentration, trigger positive thoughts, and inspire you.

Therefore, you can play memory games and learn something new to keep your mind sharp, or you can also watch movies, read some books, and listen to music for inspiration. It is up to you which activities you choose. It should be just something that helps you maintain or improve your mental health.

You may consider asking these questions to check where you stand in mental self-care:

Do you have time for activities that serve your mental health?
Do you have a hobby?
Do you spend time with those who are important to you?
Do you meditate or relax sometimes?
Do you have time for self-reflection?

Spiritual self-care

People often tend to neglect spiritual self-care because they think it is not something important. But the truth is that spirituality can be very beneficial for our health. Although spirituality is often mistaken for being only a religious process of reformation, over time its meaning has expanded.

To nurture your spirit, you can choose from many spiritual activities, such as meditation, yoga, connecting with others, volunteering, praying, or going to church.

A few questions regarding spiritual self-care:

Have you engaged in any spiritual activities recently?
Do you take part in spiritual practices that help you to discover your deepest values or understand the meaning of your existence?

Emotional self-care

Your emotions are amongst those segments of your life, where you need easy-to-use and effective self-care strategies. This is because sometimes we can find it extremely hard to deal with our emotions, especially with the negative ones (just think about anger and sadness).

When you are caring for yourself emotionally, you are involved in activities that help you to maintain good emotional health. This means that when you do these activities, you acknowledge and express your emotions. Good emotional health does not mean suppressing “negative” feelings- but rather recognizing then, expressing then in a healthy way, and finding ways to move on intentionally without burying your emotions to deal with later. However, if you cultivate a better mindset, you may find negative emotions hold less power over you!

You may consider the following questions for verifying if you need better emotional self-care strategies:

Do you know how to express your feelings?
Do you talk about your feelings to your partner or best friend?
Do you have supportive friendships?
Do you process your emotions in a healthy way?
Do you participate in leisure activities that help you to recharge? For example, watching movies, going out for a coffee, dancing, etc.?

Create a self-care plan

Now that you have assessed your current self-care strategies, and you are aware of which areas of your life need to be improved, you can start to create a self-care plan that fits your needs.

To those areas where you don’t perform very well concerning self-care, try to bring more attention. Create a plan to improve that aspect of your life and also don’t forget to schedule some time for the changes that you are planning to do to fulfill your self-care needs. Maybe, sometimes it will be difficult, but you have to do your best to make self-care a priority.

Here is an example of self-care that you can use… If you are a workaholic and you don’t have time for your basic physical needs like sleep and exercise, you have to improve your time management skills and find some time for these activities. Finding this life balance is important for staying healthy and not feeling totally burned out.

Other examples for making self-care strategies include:

Reducing time on social media
Taking time for proper stress management (mindfulness, exercise, etc.)
Doing things daily that truly bring you joy
Being good to yourself
Take time to reflect and learn about what truly fulfills you (meditation, keeping a journal, etc.)
And on…

You will see that when you are caring about every aspect of your life, you will feel better and your body will also function more effectively.

What are your best self-care strategies for taking care of own needs?