How to Practice Self-Care

By: Baylee Maust

Taking care of our mental health is just as important as maintaining our physical health. However, the importance of mental health awareness often gets overlooked and even ignored by many. Eating your fruits and veggies and regularly working out are going to help you stay in good physical condition, but if you constantly overwork your mind, it could lead to unhealthy feelings of stress, anxiety, depression, or other negative feelings, and could have a lasting impact on your physical health.

Practicing self-care activities is important to achieving a mindfulness attitude. Don’t worry, you don’t have to chant positive affirmations to yourself or analyze the state of your emotions if you don’t want to. Part of the practice of self-care is to involve yourself in any activity that helps you de-stress, escape, and stay more in the present moment. A self-care plan can look different for everyone, so if you don’t know where to begin on your mindfulness journey, take a look at these self-care tips that you can do alone or with loved ones!

Hobbies are a great way to practice self-care because they are activities that are often unrelated to work or school. When regularly practiced, they are a great way to decompress from the stress of daily obligations. However, sometimes people feel pressure to pick up new hobbies, or they may not know any hobbies for themselves. But there are no rules to discovering your own happiness! A hobby can be any activity that you find fun.

Some recommended hobbies are reading, exercising, painting, cooking, and journaling. This study even says that a daily routine that incorporates your hobbies has been known to decrease stress, low mood, and depression.

One of the easiest self-care practices you already do every day is sleeping. The human body needs sleep almost as much as healthy food and clean air to survive. Without it, you face an extreme likelihood of falling into depression and damaging your emotional health.

Getting adequate sleep is a good self-care practice to prioritize to maintain your mental health and a healthy life. You'll feel refreshed, alert, and focused for your next big day of responsibilities after a long night's rest.

A beneficial act of physical self-care is to incorporate more exercise into your daily routine. Moving your body just a few times per week can drastically improve your mental well-being, as well as reduce your risk of developing heart disease, high blood pressure, and chronic pain.

Even though some people dread exercising and would not look forward to this form of self-care, starting off in small ways and working up to more challenging physical activity will immediately have you feeling like you're taking better care of yourself. Following along with online yoga class videos or practicing mindfulness meditation, as well as practicing deep breathing exercises are all fantastic wellness activities that will leave both your mind and body in excellent shape.

Finally, to boost social self-care, it's important to surround yourself with a loving emotional-support team. Social distancing has made interacting with the ones we love very difficult, and time away from our loved ones can inflict deep emotional pain. If you are unable to be physically with the people you care about, you can always set up a time to call friends and family, have a Zoom hangout with a friend, or meet with someone at a park while wearing masks and practicing social distancing.

When we surround ourselves with a devoted support team, we feel more gratitude and compassion, and boost our emotional self-care.

Incorporating these self-care practices into your daily routine is a great way to become more emotionally present and achieve mindfulness. It's important to create time in your day for activities that you enjoy. Self-care practices will give you something to look forward to, while also improving your physical health and mental well-being in the long run.