Also sharing a uniquely serene home you’ll want to tour at the end! The essence of self-care? It’s critically important, and in fact, I find myself in radical self-care mode at the moment. (Did you see the chaos all around at the renovation?) Maybe you are too. These ideas for self-care aim to ignite your imagination. How to better nurture the body, mental health, well-being, and soul?
I independently selected products in this post—if you buy from one of my links, I may earn a commission.
6 Ideas for Self-Care, Mindful Quotes & Tour This Calm Home!
I think self-care begins as a very intentional loving gaze as a devoted parent gazes at the needs of a child. Today’s ideas spring from daily life, right where I am.
Please PIN THIS POST to save for future reference!
1. Aim for Less Feverish Mornings
It takes discipline to change a morning routine. However, if you find that mornings are chaotic, stressful, rushed, and anxiety-provoking, the time may be right for change.
If you can awaken 20 minutes earlier in order to read, write, meditate, stretch, or just gaze at nature outside, this can be lifechanging. Contemplative prayer is my thing, but your thing could be relaxing with a book. I know folks who wouldn’t dream of not taking the time in the morning to make their bed.
These things set a tone, and they can even reset our minds as we give ourselves to a new day.
2. Notice Your Breath
This idea is especially important for fast-moving, high achieving types who multi-task and pride themselves on productivity and speed. Noticing your breath, taking deep breaths, and intentionally checking in with the breath matters.
You can still tackle problems, move mountains, and successfully reach your goals without holding your breath.
You are deserving of all the sweet oxygen your body needs to thrive.
Your heart health is counting on you to slow down enough to notice the breath and adjust it.
3. Listen to Your Body
Here’s what this looks like. Some days, you’re going to feel energetic and strong. You’ll have the resiliency you need to move through the highs and lows. Other days, you’ll feel less than energetic. Listen to what your body needs whether that is more rest, sunshine, healthy food, or exercise. Sluggishness can be a clue we need to move the body.
The important part of listening is to not judge.
STOP JUDGING THIS WONDERFUL ASSORTMENT OF BONES, FLESH, AND SYSTEMS WORKING SO HARD.
Let’s say you feel fatigued yet slept eight hours the night before. Maybe you didn’t sleep deeply enough or required a little more. Whatever the case, don’t punish your body with negativity for its need to recover.
Go with what it is telling you in a loving, non-critical manner.
4. Allow Your Mind to Fall Into Your Heart
Our minds are often a flurry of lists, insecurities, confusion, and information in a culture that keeps throwing more worries in our path. Self-care can include gestures that promote better mental health.
Depending on your values and spiritual container, you may have tools and practices in place to ease your mind and keep you from overwhelm. Talking with family, friends, therapists, and support groups can help. Encouragement from others can go a long way. Music can be a great gateway to the heart.
But you can also turn inward for encouragement, self-kindness, and self-awareness.
Without rehearsing all the worry (turning those negative conversations, stressful encounters, and miserable missteps over and over mentally), you can become an observer of the flurry. You can begin to become more sensitive and centered in your heartspace as you simply let go of each passing thought.
By the way, in my own meditation practice, the thoughts arriving make themselves VERY VERY sexy and difficult to resist.
With practice, you’ll get better at returning to the gorgeously still, quiet, spaciousness of the heart.
Idea to Get Out of Your Head & Relax Even If You Only Doodle
Since a painting on a Buddha Board is impermanent and evaporates before your eyes, it can be a creative yet spiritual practice. If meditating or walks in nature aren’t realistic additions to your self-care, here’s an unexpected practice of heartfulness and surrender.
Journaling is another way to let go of what needs to go and bring expression to what needs expressing.
5. Say NO to Things Everyday Without Guilt
Do you have trouble saying no because of FOMO or a desire to people-please or for reasons mysterious even to you? Self-care is about keeping you balanced, healthy, and joyful so that you can enter into relationships and life fully.
And since you cannot possibly do ALL the things, you honestly should be saying no to many of them daily.
Are you beating yourself up for showing up imperfectly for loved ones or communities you serve? Time to let yourself off the hook. To re-evaluate and remind yourself SELF-CARE IS NOT SELFISH OR SELF-CENTERED. (If this is a tough one for you, don’t forget that there are all kinds of forces out there steering you toward the unhealthy – get comfortable saying “Taking better care of myself is taking better care of everything.”)
Loving yourself back to life is such a valuable, vulnerable, virtuous gift to your families and communities!
3. Slow Your Pace for Self-Care
You already know this, but your body, mind, and spirit are counting on me to remind you. There are manipulative messages everywhere encouraging us to keep running – keep running in fear – keep running when we feel like collapsing.
Think about how attention spans, impatience, and delay of gratification tolerance have changed culturally speaking in the last decade. If my time driving on a Chicago highway yesterday is any indication, we’re out of control and highly allergic to slow living, slow driving, and slow savoring of the sweetness all around.
So much of modern life media is swift sound bites and snarky cynicism. Consume less of it. Be radically and unapologetically slow in your reactivity, judgment, analyses, eating and bathing habits, moments gazing at beauty, commute to work, and rising from bed on the weekends.
Slowing the pace is a way to come back to ourselves, to RE-member.
Be so well-practiced in slowness to anger that people wonder if you’ve lost your mind. Because maybe that’s a step in the right direction.
Pssst. Numbers 15 and 17 (above) get cozier thanks to design genius: a scrumptious travel pillow from Honeydew. No idea what YOU expect from a travel pillow, but for 50+ years I was brainwashed somehow into believing they couldn’t possibly be as comfy as bed pillows.
No more!
I hope you found something useful in this list.
Tour a Uniquely Serene Peaceful Home
Peace to you right where you are.
-michele
Shop for items you already intended to buy on Amazon RIGHT HERE, and also find home decor here to keep decor inspiration flowing on Hello Lovely!
Hello Lovely is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
