Self care is a conscious act you take to promote your physical, mental, and emotional health. Engaging in activities that promote your wellness helps build resilience when you’re in stressful situations that you can’t eliminate. This means (and please read this twice, girl) self care is a priority, not a luxury, to enable you to be as well-equipped as possible to handle the challenges life brings your way.

Physical Self Care

Physical self care covers everything from what you’re eating, how much exercise you’re doing, how much sleep you’re getting, and staying in charge of your physical health by taking any required medications and visiting your doctors on a regular basis. Reviewing these specific areas of your daily routines can give you a roadmap of how to engage in more physical self care.

Mental Self Care

Mental self care covers keeping your brain engaged with learning, staying mentally healthy, and even maintaining a positive mindset. Making time for the things that stimulate your mind and practicing the things that create good mental health (gratitude, compassion, self-acceptance, forgiveness, etc) can increase your ability to deal with life’s challenges. Examine these areas to decide what you can improved upon to engage in more mental self care.

Emotional Self Care

Emotional self care covers the things that create a stronger emotional intelligence such as having healthy coping skills to deal with strong or difficult emotions, as well as being able to express your emotions in a healthy way. Setting time aside to process your emotions in a healthy way can help you build your emotional self care practice.

Creating A Personalized Self Care Plan

Everyone should be practicing self care to enhance their well-being, especially during stressful times. The key is to create a plan that best serves you and your needs. What I do for self care may not resonate with you – and that’s ok! You may also find that as your situation changes, your self care needs will change also.

Take time to review your life, starting with the physical, mental, and emotional aspects listed above. Where do you need to incorporate more attention in your life? Go for it – rely on your gut for this one, girl.

Just choose one small step towards change. There’s no need to change everything at once – that’s way too overwhelming! The important thing is to choose one thing that make you feel good. Make the time to do that one thing on a regular basis. As you incorporate that one self care item into your daily life, you’ll find your ability to deal with everyday challenges and stressful situations much easier.

I’d love to hear what you normally do for your own self care, as well as what you’re planning to incorporate into your life over the next few weeks. Please leave a comment below.

P.S. If you’re looking for some specific self care ideas, fill out this form to download a free cheat sheet of examples: