Is Self Care Important?
4 Keys to Avoid Burnout and Thrive!
It’s not just important; it might be the most important skill you ever learn!
Nobody has a vested interest in your physical and psychological health like you do. Nobody benefits from your successes, and suffers during your defeats, like you do.
Your friends and family may love you. Your doctors, therapists, and counselors may genuinely want to help. But no matter how much anyone cares, they aren’t you. If you crash and burn, their lives go on! Yours doesn’t.
You've got to learn to nurture yourself.
Motivate yourself. Become strong on your own!
Don’t just do it for you; do it for the people you love. They’re going to need you when their own lives fall apart. You can’t help them if you’re an unhealthy, emotionally unstable, psychologically fractured mess yourself!
This article is about using self-care to become strong, and stay that way. By the end of it, you’ll know exactly when, why, and how to take care of yourself.
I’ll also give you two powerful tools you can start using right now to improve your state of mind, which is the foundation for everything.
Is Self Care Important:
What is Self-Care?
Self-care is any activity you engage in to improve your physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
It can be as simple as taking a few minutes to rest your mind, or as complex as developing a routine of healthy habits that support your overall wellness.
Whatever form it takes, it’s an essential component of a healthy, balanced life.
Self-care is crucial for 4 reasons:
1. Self-reliance
It’s good to be nurtured by your parents, motivated by your mentors, and supported by your friends. What happens when they go away?
Loved ones die. Friendships fade. People get busy. What are you going to do, fall apart forever? It behooves you not to be overly reliant on other people for strength!
There’s only one person who will always be there for you. There’s only one person who’s fought alongside you from the very beginning, and is guaranteed to be with you at the very end: YOU! Get it in the habit of being your own greatest supporter, your own healer, and your own motivator.
The people who love you mean well. If you’re ever in trouble, then by all means, accept their love with open arms. Thank them for it. Genuinely appreciate it.
But also know that they’re giving you fish, not a fishing pole. If you ever want to truly be strong, you’ve got to nurture yourself!
2. Amount of Care
No matter how much your doctors, therapists, dentists, and guidance counselors want to help you, they can only do so much in the limited time that they have.
No matter how much your family and friends love you and want to help you with your problems, they’re also dealing with their own problems. They have jobs and responsibilities. They’ve got their own tragedies. They don’t have the time to focus 100% on you, even if they wanted to.
Do you know who does have time? YOU!
You’re always around yourself. Because of that fact alone, you can provide an amount of care for yourself that no one else can match.
That might mean small acts of self-care throughout the day, whenever you have downtime. If you’re in distress, it can mean stopping everything you’re doing immediately, and taking a solid hour to just focus on making yourself feel better.
In my experience, just a few minutes of psychological and physical maintenance everyday is more than enough to prevent stress from ever becoming overwhelming.
If you can’t find that kind of time, then maybe you’re not prioritizing yourself as much as you should. Remember, you can’t be strong for your spouse, your kids, or your friends if you’re falling apart yourself. Take care of yourself, so that you can be strong for the ones you love.
3. Customized Treatment
Only you know what’s going on inside your head.
Other people can make educated guesses based on what you tell them. They can make recommendations based on what seems to work for the “average person.”
But you’re not the “average person.” You’re your own unique individual. Your precise combination of thoughts, experiences, sensitivities, and eccentricities occurs only in you, and a “cookie-cutter” approach might not be what’s needed.
Besides, the recommendations professionals are allowed to give you are severely limited by what insurance companies are willing to pay for, and what regulators consider “real” treatment. (Remember, sometimes “real” means what’s profitable, rather than what works).
Of course, you should take the recommendations of your doctors and therapists. I’m all for that. But when it comes to self-care, you can come up with an all-encompassing plan that’s custom tailored to fit your needs, and no one else’s. You’re in complete control!
Not sure how to treat yourself?
Don’t worry!
Self-care is a skill that’s developed over time. It’s a journey of self-discovery that requires experimentation and practice.
But if you just analyze your situation honestly and with no emotion, then most of the time you already know to do.
If you’re angry, anxious, and depressed all the time, you know if it’s because your marriage is on the rocks, or your job sucks, or you’ve got a long string of feuds and grudges you’ve been holding onto for too many years.
If you feel bad physically, you know if your diet is bad, or you’re not getting enough exercise.
I’m not saying that there’s no value in seeing “professionals,” far from it! What big problems arise, those are the people you want to see.
But self-care is custom tailored to fit your needs specifically, and it’s something you do everyday to prevent big problems from arising. All it takes is honest self-assessment, and a little action.
4. Speed of care
Whenever I’m stressed, or sad, or I feel weak, I attack the problem right away! I don’t wait for others to ask me what’s wrong, or to cheer me up, or to motivate me. I do it myself, and I do it immediately.
As soon as I get depressed, I’ll read positive affirmations for 10 or 15 minutes straight. I don’t wait several hours for my friends to get off from work, so I can call them. I don’t wait two weeks to get an appointment with a shrink, so that he can ask me questions for an hour.
As soon as I’m feeling even a little bit down, BOOM! I’m on it! I don’t give my negative thoughts enough time to snowball out of control, and you shouldn’t either.
If my stomach feels bloated, I’ll immediately start fasting for a day, or I’ll change my diet to nothing but fruit and salad for a week. I don’t wait 3 weeks for an appointment with a gastroenterologist, so he can tell me I developed an ulcer during the 3 weeks I was waiting for him.
No one can respond to your problems as fast as you can! Only you can nip problems in the bud before they turn into major problems.
Am I saying not to talk to your friends or professionals about your problems? Of course not! Use all the resources you have. But your first line of defense, your fastest line of defense, must always be you.
Here's what to do!
Now that I’ve explained the 4 benefits of self-care, let me give you specific ideas for EXACTLY what to do. You don’t have to do all of these things, but do a few of them, and try to do them everyday.
There are 4 aspects of you’re life that you should always be working on: the physical, the mental, the spiritual, and the financial.
Only you know which aspects of your life are in most need of attention. Only you can monitor them and make adjustments to your daily routine accordingly.
Is Self Care Important:
1. Physical
Exercise everyday.
If you want to join a gym, that’s great, but you don’t have to. Walk around the block a few times after work. Feed the squirrels. Jog in place for 10 minutes while watching TV. Regular cardio is absolutely essential for improving your energy level and releasing stress.
Lift weights.
If you’re a guy, lift heavy. If you’re a girl (and you don’t want to bulk up too much), lift light. But lift something!
You’ll look better and feel better, and your confidence will skyrocket.
Is Self Care Important:
2. Mental
Read something everyday.
Fiction is good for the imagination. Self-help books will improve your happiness. Biographies will give you inspiration, showing you what a person can achieve in a single lifetime.
You don’t have to finish a book a day! You don’t have to read for 2 hours.
Just read for a few minutes, but do it everyday. It’ll improve your ability to concentrate, it’ll relax you, and it’ll make you smarter over time.
Is Self Care Important:
3. Spiritual
Pray. Meditate. Take a few minutes to remember past relatives.
Find a charity and donate some money to it. It doesn’t have to be a lot.
The next time you see someone begging by the freeway, give him a few bucks.
Think about your past. Are there any grudges you’re still holding? Is anyone holding a grudge against you? Do you feel guilty about anything? Be honest with yourself.
Becoming aware of unconscious hurts and resentments is already an exercise in self-care. Want to take it to the next level? Start thinking of ways to end the feud.
No one goes through life without damaging other people. We’re all guilty. By doing some of the things on this list, you can ease your psychological burden, much of which is unconscious.
It feels good to be charitable. It feels good to end 20 year feuds, regardless of who was right or wrong. Do it, and I guarantee, you’re body will let go of pain and tension you didn’t even know you had.
Is Self Care Important:
4. Financial
Each day, you should do something to improve your financial life. You don’t have to spend an hour on it. Just a few minutes will add up over time.
Watch a Youtube video about how to buy stocks. Read a few pages from a book on real estate investing. Go over your credit card statements and see if there’s any fraud, or any wasteful spending you can cut out.
If you’ve already got a side hustle, work on it everyday, even if it’s only 20 minutes. You can’t build a company in 20 minutes, but you can create the habit of working on it everyday, and your habits are everything in life.
Which of the 4 aspects is most important to work on?
The mental, and I’ll tell you why.
By taking control of your mind, you can program yourself to improve your life physically, spiritually, and financially. The best method of doing this, by far, is to read affirmations.
Affirmations are positive statements you read in order to permanently improve the quality of your thoughts. They make you optimistic. They can help you conquer phobias. They can even make you run faster and jump higher, which is why professional athletes have been using them for decades.
This website is dedicated to making the process of using affirmations as easy and convenient as possible. On every page, you’ll find affirmations to improve physical health, to relieve depression, to boost confidence and self-esteem, to make money, and whole lot more!
Just print the PDF sheet for 5 minutes straight, or watch any of the 5-minute videos, and in no time, you’ll create mental habits that will completely revolutionize your life (in a good way).
Is Self Care Important:
To get started, here are some recommendations!
If your self-esteem has been failing lately, see affirmations for self-worth, body-positivity, and self-love.
If you’ve been having money problems, or you’re worried about money, see affirmations for finances, prosperity, and abundance.
If you’ve been feeling insecure or self-conscious, please see affirmations for social awkwardness, self-consciousness, and confidence.
On any of these pages, you don’t have to read the entire article. Just find the video and watch it, or print out the PDF and read it! The mental and emotional improvement will be felt almost instantly.
Remember, by prioritizing self-care and making it a regular part of your routine, you can improve your physical, mental, spiritual, and financial health and live more balanced, fulfilling life.
Do the affirmations.
Good luck!
(For an INSTANT boost in mood, below are some general affirmations about life. Click the video and watch it for just 5 minutes. I guarantee that after 5 minutes, you’ll feel more relaxed, confident, and in control of your life!)
Affirmations About Life
- I love being alive! I see the good in every situation.
- I don’t take life too seriously! I try to enjoy myself.
- I value relationships and experiences more than material things.
- I love myself, flaws and all!
- Money is important, but it’s more important to spend time with family and friends.
- I enjoy challenges!
- Everything in life is a learning experience. I’m always improving myself.
- I forgive everyone who ever hurt me. Life is too short to be angry!
- I’m fiercely loyal to my family and friends.
- I always stand by my principles, even if it costs me.
-Tommy