What does self-care look like?

Self-care can look like a million different things. It really depends on who you are, what your life looks like, and how you want to feel. For some busy moms, self-care looks like a 15-minute nap. For others, it looks like a yoga class or a spa day. It doesn't really matter how small or big your self-care activity is, what does matter is that you sprinkle it in throughout your week and stop neglecting yourself.

We already know that a burnt-out mom is not a great mom. We go to bed at the end of the night replaying our day and rating our parenting on a scale of 1 to 10. Was I a Robo-mom today or was I actually present, cool, calm, and fun mom? My aim is to be somewhere in the middle the majority of the time and sprinkle a few 9s and 10s every week or so. It's not realistic to be a perfect mom every day but it is realistic to have mindful moments throughout the day to the point where we can have a good rating at the end of the night.

If you don't go to bed rating yourself, then I guess I'm the only one lol. But this post still applies to you since you clicked on the link based on the title. So I want to talk about what I consider self-care and my 3 investments in myself. Note that these are MY 3 investments, yours will be different from mine. But I'll show you how I came up with these. The way I arrived at these three is by asking myself the following questions.

Questions to Ask Yourself

1. How do I want to feel?
2. How much time do I have weekly?
3. How much is this going to cost me and does it fit my budget?
4. How is this going to help me be a better mom, partner, business owner, person in general?
5. How much time will it take me away from my responsibilities?
6. Can I delegate any responsibilities, can I get rid of, or can I pause any responsibilities to make time for myself?
7. What would happen if I didn't do this activity?

These questions helped me see that some 'responsibilities' were actually chores that could wait until another day and the world was not going to implode if I didn't take care of it right away. Some other 'responsibilities' I delegated to my daughter or my partner. Other's were not that flexible but it turns out my 3 self-care activities didn't take time away from those responsibilities.

These 3 self-care investments have paid off big time for me.

1. Personal training - to learn to take care of my body and get rid of low back pain. I had been suffering back pain due to bad posture for about 22 years. Until I hired a personal trainer and he helped me correct my posture and lose some weight. Many things have happened from this one activity.

• got rid of my excruciating back pain
• gained confidence
• got more energy
• started doing more fun things with my daughter like going to the beach, hiking, and doing fun dance competitions at home
• ended dating the personal trainer & now we own a personal training studio together 🙂

2. Life coaching - to help me learn to set and reach my life goals. Also to learn to gain confidence, love myself, and respect myself. With life coaching, I learned to forgive myself and accept myself. This helped me start my blog and youtube channel. Everything I have learned I am passing on to you.

Not only did I hire a life coach years ago but I am not a certified life coach myself! I love helping people breakthrough whatever is holding them back from living the life they want. Fear and doubt are usually what stands in the way but everyone is different so I'll tell you that what was standing in my way is not loving myself and having no confidence in myself.

3. Meditation Courses - to become mindful and learn to take moments to breathe and deal with stress or negativity instead of hiding from it or letting it subsume me. Meditation has taught me to handle stress on the spot instead of shutting down or overwhelming myself. It also helps me when my anxiety starts flaring up or when I can't go to sleep at night. I focus on my breathing, take a few deep breathes in and out, and next thing you know I am out like a light 🙂

I am not saying you need to do everything I am doing to take care of yourself. I didn't do these three things all at once. I actually did one and the rest followed months and years later. The goal is to take small actions each day to help nurture yourself. You deserve a moment to breathe. You deserve a hot shower. You deserve a nap. You deserve a killer workout, a listening ear, and comfy blanket, and a great book. You make the world go round so take care of yourself because the world needs you. I don't say this to overwhelm you but to make you realize that you are too important to neglect.

Check out this video

Hopefully, this list helps give you some ideas of what types of things may help your self-care journey too! Let me know what you are doing to prioritize your self-care and how you are taking care of yourself.

Thanks for reading!!

xoxo

Nancy