Self Care

When life gets overly busy or chaotic taking care of one’s self is usually one of the first priorities to be overlooked. While many people recognize the importance of maintaining one’s health and wellness, it’s become common place for self-care to be neglected in this modern age. Excuses are made for avoiding self-care such as there are more important areas of attention right now or it’s only temporary until a deadline is met. However, over time the habit of not fulfilling one’s own needs due to outside forces becomes a part of everyday life. Fortunately, the opposite is true as well, developing a plan for self-care and incorporating it into a daily practice can become habit-forming. Self-care has turned into a “buzz word” of sorts transitioning into the new cultural fad, but the importance of self-care should never be minimized. Self-care can simply be defined as taking the time and energy to regularly engage in activities that promote a healthy lifestyle and overall well-being.

Types of Self-Care

  • Exercise (walking, jogging, hiking, sports, etc.)
  • Diet and Nutrition (diet high in nutritional value)
  • Sleep (8 hours, daily routine, prioritizing)
  • Relaxation Techniques (grounding exercises)
  • Mindfulness and Meditation
  • Hobbies and Activities (journaling, crafts, reading, etc.)
  • Social Relationships
  • Self-Care Visuals

There is no predetermined method for advancing self-care, rather self-care is based on an individual’s interpretation of what self-care should look like and how it should be enacted into their lives. Please review the resources and tools below for more information on self-care, making a self-care plan, and self-care tips and ideas.

Self-Care Articles

  • “Self-Care: 12 Ways to Take Better Care of Yourself” – By: Tchiki Davis

    “Self-Care: 12 Ways to Take Better Care of Yourself” addresses some of the misconceptions and challenges of self-care emphasizing its importance to wellness in a realistic fashion. Tchiki Davis, an expert researcher on well-being, portrays how some reasonable accommodations to one’s lifestyle can support self-care and advance satisfaction in experience. These tips offer readers some insight into developing their own self-care plan which is tailored to their unique circumstances and personality traits.

  • “Practicing Self-Care is Important: 10 Easy Habits to Get You Started” – By: Noma Nazish

    The Forbes magazine article, “Practicing Self-Care is Important: 10 Easy Habits to Get You Started,” gives beginners some guidance and advice on the fundamentals of self-care. This article defines some of the common elements found in effective self-care plans, while portraying a concise list of actions that can coexist with and fuel its occurrence. Each habit is clear enough to avoid any ambiguity in its meaning but also broad in its potential for application, making it easily integrated into anyone’s daily life.

  • “50 Ways to Start Practicing Self-Care” By: International Bipolar Foundation staff                                                                                                  The International Bipolar Foundation developed “50 Ways to Start Practicing Self-Care,” to make the mental health benefits of self-care more available to populations. This article offers a wide variety of self-care options for readers with each specific idea being related to a key concept. For example, it relates an action step, such as “avoid triggers” or “learn to say ‘no,’” to the self-care principle of “avoid stress,” (International Bipolar Foundation staff, 2019). 
  • “Emotional Self-Care Checklist” – By: Anna Lindberg Cedar
  • “Why You Need a Self-Care Plan” – By: Shelly Tygielski

“A Self-Care Action Plan”

The How to Adult video, “A Self-Care Action Plan,” takes an informative and sometimes humorous outlook on self-care, giving viewers step-by-step instructions on developing a customized plan of behaviors. Self-care can seem like a daunting or impossible task due to the need for planning it into one’s everyday activities. The video displays some basic advice on getting started and it offers some helpful suggestions for refining one’s current routine. 

Developing a Self-Care Plan

The Berkeley Well-Being Institute developed a quiz for assessing one’s current state of self-care and devised methods for making future improvements to one’s health and well-being. The quiz measures multiple dimensions of self-care to determine which areas are seen as strengths and where further focus could be beneficial. After completing the quiz participants are given a written review of the findings and are directed to various targeted online resources. This tool could prove to be a great opportunity for starting a self-care plan and generating ideas as well as an avenue for evaluating one’s progress along the way. Take the “Berkeley Well-Being Institute Quiz”