by Troop Atomic Mommy
This post contains affiliate links. Learn more about affiliate links and how they work by reading our Affiliate Disclaimer HERE.
Every now and then, we allow ourselves to practice self-care. We may schedule a massage, take a long, hot bath, go for a jog, or even take a weekend away. But how do we know if our self-care is working for us?
As we all know, finding self-care tips, tricks, and hacks, is only a quick search away on Google. There are thousands of articles leading us to believe that if we only do ‘this, this and THIS,’ we will achieve a stress-free life.
The reality is a little more nuanced than that. Does this mean we have to ignore every piece of advice, or think of self-care in dismissive terms? No, of course not. It does mean that curating self-care for our individual selves is extremely important. So when taking advice on self-care, take it with a grain of salt.
That’s why in this article, we’ve outlined how to determine if your self-care routine is working for you. Here’s what we came up with.
Specific Preventative Care
Self-care tips normally include things we can do for ourselves, to make our lives stress-free. Often times, what’s left out of this routine is preventative care specific to our personal health. Some of us may suffer with asthma, cavities, or a metabolic disorder. In these kinds of cases, if we are not making time to look after our health conditions, then we could be at risk of an imbalanced level of self-care.
Thus, for each condition, we would need to maintain regular visits to certain doctors. To keep asthma in check, one should visit an allergy and asthma doctor. To keep cavities at bay, one would want to schedule preventative dentistry appointments. To figure out if there is a hormonal imbalance, a visit to an endocrinologist would be warranted.
Therefore, choosing to add specific preventative care to our self-care routines, ensures self-care success.
Sleep Schedule
Sleep is the most important aspect of a successful self-care routine. Get too little sleep regularly, and there will be mood swings, extra irritability, metabolic imbalances, lower levels of happiness, and more signs of aging.
Creating a personal sleep schedule, one that takes into account the kind of life being led, will provide the sleep we need, a time table to follow to hit sleep goals, and will allow our bodies, minds, and souls to recover. As an added bonus, we will have the best forward progress in energy and brain function for the next day.
A Feeling Of Well-Being
Bad choices means equals bad results. Bad results tend to make a person feel bad. Feeling bad leads to making worse choices, and the vicious cycle keeps going. Making good choices, choices that create positive change in our overall well-being, are what builds good feelings.
To practice accumulating an essential feeling of well-being, we must be willing to make smarter choices, and that only comes when we are willing to take an honest look at our current lifestyle. Am I eating healthy meals? Am I eating too much sugar? Are my lazy habits getting in the way of achieving my life’s goals? These are all important questions to ask ourselves. Making simple choices like cutting daily sugar intake by 50% or choosing to finish one project out of the many we have, could be all the difference. And this is how we can achieve a general feeling of well-being.
Worthwhile Age Considerations
Depending on what our age is, and our overall level of health, self-care might mean something different to each of us. Our twenties may be all about living a life full of adventure. Our thirties may be all about the family. Maybe our fifties and sixties are about getting to a place of calm and serenity. Whatever our individual ages are, we must create a self-care routine that is specific to our ages, and how we are feeling at each stage. Make time to really think on how our current age could benefit from having an age-specific, self-care routine. By doing so, we will be guaranteeing ourselves a very peaceful life.
The Takeaway
We hope that our self-care tips have helped to enlighten those wondering if their self-care routine is working for them. After all, it is important to get it right.
What are your self-care tips? Let us know in the comments!