The Importance Of Self-Care
How much time do you spend taking care of yourself? Self-care has been blown so out of proportion that I think most people picture multi-hour long evening routines that must include a bubble bath and couldn’t possibly work for anyone with a regular nine-to-five job, let alone someone with additional responsibilities like kids. I’ve grown to hate the term “self-care” due to that connotation, but I can't think of a better one to explain the act of taking care of yourself. Despite social media influencers pushing the overblown version of self-care, I’d venture to guess that most of us in the real world spend an incredibly small amount of time focused on taking care of ourselves.
Most likely everyone has at least one self-care activity that they partake in such as working out, eating healthy, getting enough sleep, meditating, or any number of leisure activities. I’m curious how much time is spent on these activities in a given week. I noticed that while I have quite the list of self-care activities that work for me, the amount of time I spend on them is incredibly small. Even knowing that these activities are useful tools for making myself feel better doesn’t seem to be enough when it comes to choosing between responsibilities, chores, work, or self-care. Self-care always seems to lose.
I can confidently blame part of this on society, especially American culture. There is a huge emphasis in our society on the social construct of focusing on work and cutting into self-care time to do it. Think about all the times you’ve heard someone humble brag about how little sleep they got so they could finish an important project or how they haven’t eaten all day because they were too slammed at work. College is a great example of this. I have so many memories of my classmates and I attempting to one-up each other with our tales of crippling lack of attention to our health in the pursuit of better grades and making more money at work.
Lately, I’ve started to notice the toll that minimizing self-care has on my mental and physical health. I’ve concluded that I can’t keep making excuses for not taking care of myself. No responsibility or work project is worth the pit of anxiety and overwhelm I fall into when I ignore my own needs. Whether I like it or not, I’m someone who needs self-care time to stay happy, healthy, and functioning. From sleep to journaling and everything in between, I have to stay on top of my mental and physical health. As I started to make this transition I noticed a funny thing happen. All of a sudden it doesn’t seem so hard to meet my deadlines at work or get chores around the house done. Turns out I’m a lot more efficient when I feel good. I know, mind-blowing. Do you spend enough time on self-care? What self-care activities work best for you? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below!