Self-care, well-being and “choosing you!”, have been trendy topics lately. It’s great to see that we know the importance of looking after ourselves and our well-being.
But how easy is it to implement it in daily life?
And how do we know what the best way is to practice self-care?
We often do know what the healthy thing to do is. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Often, things get in the way of creating helpful habits. And these things are mostly daily life things that we feel we can’t escape.
Sometimes I feel we talk about everyday life like it’s easy, fun, and positive and you need to enjoy every moment of it. You only need support from a friend or professional during hard times. And yes, at certain points in your life, you will have to deal with the big things. The big problems, big struggles, and the big emotions. We often understand and support it when someone reaches out to a coach or a psychologist to seek help for the big moments in life.
But most of the time our sessions are about dealing with stress, people, partner, family life, work, insecurities and how to deal with everything at once.
But what about everyday life?
Does that always feel like a walk in the park?
Probably not, and that’s okay. I don’t think it’s always about living the best life and being happy. Sometimes, it’s about getting through the week and not losing your mind and still being content with most of your life at the end of the day.
Do you know that most people who come and see me, work on personal growth, and learn how to deal with daily life things? It’s not always the cliché picture of laying on the couch and psycho-analyse everyone (which is also fun). But most of the time our sessions are about dealing with stress, people, partner, family life, work, insecurities and how to deal with everything at once. Talking about these things can be helpful to increase your well-being. It’s a way of caring for yourself, like exercise and a healthy diet. And there are many ways to practice self-care and give yourself the attention you need and deserve.
Practicing self-care is not only satisfying at the moment itself, but it is also a preventative of when life does throw that curveball at you. By developing and maintaining self-care skills, you will be able to set a strong mental foundation. It’s good to feel the trust within yourself that you know you can deal with whatever will happen. Your level of self-confidence will be higher, you will be more NSYNC with your mental and physical health and you know how to coach yourself through tough times because you know what kind of self-care works for you!
The Self-Care Checklist
To help you find out what works for you, I developed a self-care checklist (download it right here). This list includes topics that a variety of people found helpful in increasing their well-being (this information is gathered from research in the psychology field and my personal clients).
This is not the holy grail to happiness or to a perfect life. It’s meant to create awareness about what’s important to you and how much space and time you have for it in your life (and if it needs more attention in your life). There might be things on this list that won’t contribute to your self-care and there might be topics that are very important to you. That’s why I added an extra column where you can emphasize the importance!
Luckily there are beautiful moments in life, which make us happy. We have to cherish these moments and be grateful for them. Besides that, we can implement habits of self-care which will help us to savour these happy moments even longer.
Would you like to discover how to increase your self-care habits and how to handle the “things that get in the way” of practising self-care?