In our busy lives, we’re always going, we’re always doing, and we’re always helping others. So where does this leave time for taking care of ourselves? For most of us, self-care falls on the back burner. We’re burning ourselves out by always helping others, which actually isn’t helping anyone—especially yourself.
What we need to do is to learn how to incorporate self-care into our daily routines, even if it’s just a small moment or gesture, every bit helps to restore, motivate, and energize us!
Try incorporating some of these into your day tomorrow:
Place your hands over your heart.
Yeah, similar to how you did when saying the allegiance way back in elementary school. Why? According to clinical psychologist Christopher Garner, the gesture of placing one or both of your hands over your heart can help to create awareness. We feel the beating of our heart and begin to deepen the breath, establishing balance and warmth.
Incorporate mindful moments into your day.
You don’t have to schedule an hour of silent meditation into your day in order to reap the benefits of mindfulness. Although, don’t we all wish we had that much time on our hands?!
Instead, incorporate short meditation practices throughout your day whenever you have a moment free. Try these 1, 5, and 7-minute meditation techniques.
You can also bring mindfulness into mundane tasks such as writing or eating. Find out how here.
Stop multitasking and schedule tasks by time length.
If someone were to challenge you to complete a task within a short time period, chances are you’d finish it up with time to spare. How can we do this? It’s all about focus. Instead of multitasking and splitting our attention, we’re focused on the task at hand, enabling us to complete it more quickly.
Multitasking really doesn’t help us work any faster (it actually harms us)! So, start focusing on just one task at a time, determine how long it should take to complete, and get to work.
Eat your veggies like your parents taught you!
Proper nutrition is a vital part of self-care. Not only do veggies improve our overall health and fight off illness, they can also improve our mood. How? Vegetables help to control inflammation, and inflammation can actually impact our the area of our brains that control stress and anger. So, more veggies=a happier you!
And finally, be smart with your smartphone.
While technology can be extremely helpful, it can also lead to
Try downloading a meditation app or start tracking your screen time with a tool like Moment.
What do you do to keep self-care a top priority throughout your day?