Do you struggle to find time for yourself? Are you too busy for self-care? It’s time to make time for you!
Perhaps one of the toughest challenges you face with self-care is finding the time for it. When you have a busy lifestyle, it can seem almost impossible to find extra time to look after you.
But why put yourself first and practice self-care? Here’s why:
A lack of self-care can lead to an unhappy life.
And who wants that?!
Here are some signs that are shouting from the rooftops that need to take care of yourself:
You feel stressed and exhausted
When you aren’t taking care of yourself, you’ll often feel stressed and exhausted. This can lead to burnout and a feeling of resentment. For example, maybe you’re exhausted from taking care of everyone else’s needs. Over time, if you don’t factor in self-care, you could end up resenting your loved ones. You’ll become irritable and snappy, or retreat into yourself and withdraw from others.
When you’re constantly exhausted and stressed out, it’s impossible to maintain a positive outlook. Self-care helps to combat stress and boosts your energy levels. Win-win, eh?
Personal hygiene suffers
A side effect of not following a self-care routine is that your personal hygiene could suffer. This is especially true if you’re going through a ‘feeling the blues’ stage. When you’re depressed or feel low, self-care can be the last thing on your mind. In severe cases, you could spend days in bed, failing to do even basic self-care tasks, such as taking a shower or brushing your teeth.
The trouble is, failing to take care of yourself leads you to feel even worse. Maintaining self-care is crucial for your personal hygiene and mental health.
You’ll seek unhealthy distractions
Another thing that happens when you lack self-care is a tendency to seek unhealthy distraction. You could overindulge in junk food because it makes you feel (temporarily!) better. Binge watching Netflix. Endlessly scrolling through social media. Scoffing the entire chocolate bar. Or extra wine or too much gin, which is not so much ‘cheers,’ but definitely more tears.
When you turn to unhealthy habits for comfort, it’s going to lead to additional issues. You’ll feel unhappier, particularly if you drink in excess. Alcohol is a depressant which can leave you feeling a l-o-t worse than you started. And frankly, you’ll look a mess too, which will leave you feeling like crap.
Plus, let’s be honest here, all these distractions can take up so much time, right?
You never feel good enough
Self-care is something you do because you are worth it. Therefore, if you fail to take care of yourself, you can end up feeling like you’re never good enough. As you’re constantly tired and juggling life’s responsibilities, you may feel you’re a failure, or you simply don’t measure up to others.
Even worse, if one of your distraction habits is scrolling through Instagram, seeing other peeps showing their best sides, best slides and best lives can compound the sense of not being enough. It’s as if you’ve done ten boxing rounds of lack of self-care with yourself, then look at the Insta-lies or Fakebook and beat yourself up even more. Enough already!
These are just some things that can happen when you don’t follow a self-care routine. The effects can be severe, causing you to lead an unhappy and unfulfilled life. If you’re looking to lead a happier life, now is the time to focus on your needs and making self-care a priority.
So, how can you balance practicing self-care with a busy lifestyle?
Schedule it in
A good tip you can follow to ensure you can fit self-care into your busy routine is to schedule it in. Think about it, you schedule in everything else, so why not self-care? When you set a time to focus on yourself, you are much more likely to stick to it. No matter how busy you think you are, there’ll always be time for self-care somewhere in your schedule.
Establish a morning routine
If you are struggling to find the best time of day to practice self-care, you might find it easier in the morning. If you’re super busy, you might disagree here, but think about it. In the morning, you could just get up just 20 minutes earlier - and voilà! This can be the perfect opportunity to practice self-care.
Alternatively, if you’re definitely not a morning person, you could focus on self-care in the evenings. It doesn’t take long to practice self-care, so you should always be able to squeeze it in somewhere.
Look at automating daily tasks
There are all kinds of tools and gadgets that can automate various aspects of our lives. If you are constantly busy, you’ll find automating certain tasks can be a total game-changer.
For example, you could switch from driving to the grocery store and order groceries online. If you have items you frequently purchase, add these to your favorites list, making it easier to add them to your order next time. Doing your grocery shopping online can free up a lot of free time during the week for self-care.
Have a think right now. How can you automate – or delegate to someone else – some of the daily tasks that seem to take over your day?
Start small
You don’t have to start by completely overhauling your lifestyle. Instead, you can start small with self-care. Begin by taking just 10 minutes out of each day to focus on a self-care activity. Focus on developing one positive self-care habit at a time. Once you have mastered that, you can move on to the next task.
By starting small, it makes it easier to fit self-care into your busy life. Many people mistakenly think they need to begin with at least 30 minutes a day. The truth is, however much time you can free up for self-care is enough.
Once you get started, you’ll find it easier to focus more on self-care because of the benefits you experience. The self-care habit becomes easier the more you practice it!
Overall, balancing practicing self-care with a busy lifestyle isn’t easy. However, the tips above can really help.
Remember, self-care is essential to your health and wellbeing. So, no matter how busy you are, you should always make time for self-care daily.
Start now. Create a ‘to-do’ list each day and put a ‘self-care task’ right at the top.
“Self-care means giving yourself permission to pause.”— Cecilia Tran
Journal Questions for You:
Where did the belief that your self-care should come last originate?
List 20 ways in which taking good care of yourself will benefit others.
What daily tasks do you carry out that don’t really need to be done daily?
List 10 self-care items you could do for yourself that would only take 10 minutes each - but would x10 your happiness levels!
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