Self-care is something of a buzz word these days. It’s starting to be widely discussed – and accepted – as something we all need to do. Yet despite all these discussions about self-care, there are three essential self-care tips that are too often overlooked. These three tips should be the core foundation of why we self care. And they have the largest impact on your wellbeing when compared to the many other self-care ideas out there. Let’s have a look, and see if we can improve how we treat ourselves.

Tip 1: Get Enough Sleep, and Get Enough Rest

Everyone knows sleep is crucial to good health and wellbeing. But there’s a difference between sleep and rest. First, remember that sleep is for recharging your body. Adults should get between 7 – 9 hours of sleep every night. 5 hours is too few, and 10 is too many, especially if you sleep that many hours on a regular basis.
It’s worth noting too, we often sleep less during busy periods of life. Even though it’s during our busiest times that sleep becomes more important than ever! Sleep has a significant effect on the rest of your day whether you’ve slept well or poorly. So make sure you stay at maximum strength by prioritising sleep every day.

Now, rest is different to sleep. Rest is about recharging your mind. You can’t rely only on sleep to give your mind a break. Instead, do something that helps you relax. You should try to rest a little bit every day, and not just on weekends or on holidays. Give your mind a chance to recover from its daily work. Some people need a rest ‘activity’. They need something to focus on, in order to let their mind rest. If this is you, you can try things like watching TV, reading, or exercise. (Yes, even exercise can be restful for your mind). You could also try gardening, or something creative. Whatever you choose, just remember to not let it turn into work. The goal is to rest and recover your mental energy.

Tip 2: Feel Your Emotions

This might sound a little scary for some people. But emotions are perfectly normal, and we grow in maturity every time we learn to process them in a healthy way. The first step towards feeling you emotions is to identify them. We’re going to use a bit of psychology here to help you learn how to name emotions. First of all, your emotions already exist in your subconscious mind. Think of it like ‘the background’ of your mind. Your emotions are constantly there. You just don’t realise it. Usually, we only notice our emotions when they burst through into our conscious mind, i.e the front and centre of our mind. This happens when we feel an emotion that’s particularly strong. There is some danger to only recognising emotion when it bursts out of us. Our subconscious emotions can build up without us realising, like heat under a volcano. The trick is to identify your emotions before they build up. Practice looking for the emotions in the background. Look into your subconscious mind, and bring the emotions forward into your conscious mind.

Next, name your emotions without judgement. There are no bad emotions. Just some emotions that we don’t like as much. So name your emotions without condemning yourself for what you’re feeling. Admit to yourself what is already happening right now in the background of your mind. Finally, once you’ve named that emotion, let yourself feel it. This can be scary. Some emotions can hurt. That’s why it’s important to feel them before they build up. Feeling your emotions is the healthy way to process them. Because once you’ve felt them, you can let them go. This level of self-awareness takes time and practice. It’s not something that everyone is comfortable talking about. But it’s a crucial part of self-care that we should all practice, in order to become happier, healthier people.

Tip 3: Make Self-Care a Habit

Too often, we only take care of ourselves when things start to fall apart. We only take a break, or let ourselves feel our emotions, when we’ve worked too hard or let things go too far. The trick is to make self-care a habit. Take care of yourself every day, even if you already feel great! Self-care is a little bit like exercise. If you don’t do it for a long time, you can lose the progress you’ve made. And it becomes harder to start doing it again. But if you do it regularly and consistently, you’ll get much better at it. So don’t wait until you’re at your wit’s end. Practice self-care a little bit every day. Treat yourself with kindness and respect, the way you deserve to be treated.

We hope this has reminded you of your worth and your value as a person. Remember that everyone struggles with taking care of themselves sometimes. You’re not alone. Don’t give up. Keep practicing self-care, and you’ll grow into a happier and healthier individual. If you’d like to gift yourself a Medispa treatment as part of your self-care practice, give us a call or send us a message to get started.