Why Self-Care Matters. It’s so important to make sure you take good care of your body, mind, and soul every day, not just when you get sick. Learning how to eat right, reduce stress, exercise.
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Why Self-Care Routines for Solopreneurs are Essential Danielle Corcione. Danielle is a freelance writer with bylines in Teen Vogue, Esquire, Vice, and more and runs a blog, The Millennial Freelancer. Or: Why do I feel I need to spend more time with my family? That’s how you can boost your energy and get ready to serve and help others—your customers, your business partners, your family and other people around you. You can’t pour water from an empty bucket. So, make sure your self-care bucket is always full to be able to share it with. Self-care improves our lives in different areas and in different ways, all of which are important to our overall health. Practising self-care can have remarkable effects on our self-esteem. When we take care of ourselves, it affirms our self-worth. By taking care of ourselves and our needs, we’re telling ourselves, ‘I deserve this’. Self-care has taken on a whole new meaning in recent weeks. A cross the world, people’s lives are c hang ing dramatically, and it’s normal to feel unsettled as a result. This makes looking after yourself, and following a routine, more important than ever until this period of uncertainty is over.
It’s easy to forget that our daily routines of washing, dressing, and eating healthy food are all acts of self-care; steps taken to maintain or improve our physical, emotional and mental health.
Self-care also encompasses time taken socialising, ‘me time’, sport, family outings and any other activity that relaxes, refuels and reboots us.
Looking after ourselves is integral to improving our mood and reducing our stress, allowing us to be more effective parents. Instilling self-care routines in our boys can also help them to manage stress in the future.
We know if we don’t take care of ourselves, we won’t be able to help our loved ones. Yet, even for us, self-care can be hit and miss. How can our boys grasp this concept when we sometimes struggle with prioritising self-care?
By practising our own self-care routines, we role model to our boys that wellbeing is fundamentally important. Talking regularly about looking after ourselves, and preparing our own Mum and Dad care lists, are simple preliminary steps.
Starting boys early in setting self-care habits makes it normal and therefore easier to maintain.
The following 8 tips can help your son set up a self-care routine:
1. Make it visible
Start with a small self-care task list so progress can be easily tracked.
For younger boys, tasks could be teeth cleaning, getting dressed or hand washing before meals. For older boys, homework, downtime and bedtime schedules could be planned.
2. Encourage independence
Let your son use his own language and autonomy over his list. Give younger boys the option of drawing their lists.
3. Model the process
To start the ball rolling, transpose items from your list to his list e.g. pack lunch
4. Encourage regular upgrades
Just like apps, checklists are ever evolving, like personal growth.
5. Sleep on it
Remember that sleep is a self-care activity – it energises us.
Why Self Care Routines For Solopreneurs Are Essential Businesses
6. Boys love routine
Remind him that evening routines mean extra time for him in the morning and allows the brain to relax at night.
7. Nobody is perfect
Show your son that we are all fallible and that self-criticism has no place in self-care.
8. There’s always a curveball
Most importantly, gentle reminders that sometimes life gets in the way of our own routines, as it may (and will) for our boys, and that is okay.
For boys to truly take on board their own self-care routine, they must be doing it for themselves for their own advantage, without the notion of reward or punishment. Having interest from mentors on how these self-care habits are evolving can help with this.
Self-care is a crucial aspect of setting up our boys for success in life. By equipping them with grounding skills for when life doesn’t go to plan, because the fact is, life can be messy.
Further Reading:
Clear, James (2018) Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.
Penguin Random House. penguinrandomhouse.com
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How do you develop an effective self-care practice as a solopreneur or coach?
Self-care. We all know we need it. But what exactly is it? Bubble baths and spa days? True self-care goes much deeper than that, especially for those of us who run our own business.
Developing a self-care practice is beneficial for everyone, but especially important to highly sensitive types, empaths, caretakers, perfectionists, high achievers, and people-pleasers. The more your work relies on your personal time and energy, the more self-care you need.
But how do you discover the best self-care practice for you? The most effective self-care practice is one based on your own intuition: tuning in to what your inner self already knows and taking action from that place.
Why a regular self-care practice is important
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Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you’ll ever have. And like any relationship, it needs to be nurtured in order to stay healthy.
The best kind of self-care helps you maintain your energy so that you can show up more powerfully in the world. It allows you to rest and recuperate so you don’t experience burnout and fatigue.
An effective self-care practice is one that gives you what you need in order to be of service to others. After all, you can’t help someone put on their oxygen mask if yours is nowhere to be found.
When it comes to taking care of yourself, consistency is key. A regular practice helps you feel more centered, relaxed, and focused over time. And like yoga or meditation, a self-care is exactly that — a practice — that requires constantly returning to yourself.
The type of self-care matters
When people hear the word self-care, they think of spa days and bubble baths or pedicures and haircuts.
While your practice may include those activities, self-care is not just about your body or outside image. Complete self-care means nurturing yourself from the inside out; not the other way around.
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An effective self-care practice includes paying attention to your body, mind, and soul. This requires checking in with yourself on a regular basis and developing a keen awareness of what you need.
Keep in mind, your most effective self-care isn’t necessarily the same from day to day. The activities will change based on what’s going on with you. Some days you might need a quiet walk alone, other days you might need a sweaty workout, other days you might need a nap or time in meditation.
How you can create your own personalized self-care plan
These 5 steps can help you create an effective self-care practice personalized to your needs by tuning into your body and intuition, and taking the necessary actions to best support yourself.
1. Find a way to check-in with yourself on a regular basis. Carve out time each day to check in with yourself. Get still, get quiet, and observe what’s coming up for you. Even if it’s for 5 minutes a day, build this time into your daily routine. Commit to making it a regular practice, and create the time and space to make it happen.
2. Acknowledge where you’re at in that moment. How are you feeling? If you’re sad, be sad. If you’re angry, be angry. If you’re frustrated, be frustrated. Whatever you’re feeling, acknowledge it. It’s much more therapeutic to allow your feelings to come up and pass through you rather than to stuff them inside or pretend they don’t exist.
3. Listen to what your body, mind, and soul is telling you. What is calling out for your attention? What has been neglected that needs to be brought to light? You might notice anything from a persistently sore muscle to nagging resentment over an argument. If you can’t quite hear what your intuition or your body is telling you, stay the course. Practice sitting in solitude on a regular basis until something does arise.
4. Based on the messages you receive, what action do you need to take? If you feel the need for rest, your action could be a cat nap or planning fora day off. If you detect resentment, your action might be to call the person you feel resentment toward and share your feelings. If you sense physical tension, your action might be to get a massage. If you feel stagnant in your life, your action could be to move your body. Maybe the best action is to sit in solitude.
5. Take action. (This is important!)Whatever you sense you need, give yourself the time and space to do that thing. Although having awareness is a great first step, it’s not enough on its own to give you the relief you seek. You must take the in order to feel better.
When you repeat this sequence on a regular basis, you’ll develop a heightened sense of self-awareness, be able to identify the best self-care practices to support yourself, and create the time for those activities.
Creating an effective self-care practice gets easier over time and it’s worth taking the time. Cultivating this type of intuitive self-care as a solopreneur will help you maintain your sense of self, source of energy, and feeling of centeredness and peace.
Do you want help creating your intuitive self-care practice? Download this free Self-Care Planner and Tracker to get started!