Creating My Self-Care Plan
Do you find that daily you spend your time rushing around and at the end of the day you feel exhausted? You’re not alone feeling like this, there is so much pressure on us to be the perfect employee, wife/husband, parent that we never seem to achieve everything or be as successful as we wish to be. I have talked with friends, family and clients who often tell me that doing something for themselves is selfish or self-indulgent. However, I disagree with this sentiment, and these are the reasons why.
If you have ever travelled on a plane and listened to the safety instructions, you may remember that they will tell you to fit your own life jackets before helping others. I believe this to be true when it comes to a selfcare regime, if you are not looking after yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally how can you expect to be successful or to be of help to others?
So, what is a self-care plan? The simplicity in this is that it means taking care of yourself so that you can remain healthy, happy, focused, and can achieve for yourself and others. Research shows that since 2015 that the number of people using the search term “self-care” has doubled. That’s pretty scarry as it means we are not putting sufficient effort into ourselves and are suffering because of it.
Creating My Self-Care Plan
The benefits of a self-care plan include improving your physical health, anxiety and stress are reduced, relationships improve, as do confidence and self-esteem, concentration will be better, and you are less likely to experience mental health issues.
What makes up a self-care plan will vary between individuals, but should support better health, social activity, emotional wellbeing and if it’s important to you spirituality. I would recommend an excellent book by Dr Rangan Chatterjee called the “4 pillar plan” this book changed my thinking about taking time for myself and has certainly improved my self-care regime.
If this all seems daunting for you right now, then how about setting small steppingstones to begin? I would like to set you a challenge, for the next 4 weeks allow yourself to have 15 minutes a day to just to something for yourself, read a chapter of a book, phone a friend who you haven’t spoken to for a while, take a bath and play loud music, just sit in peace, and quiet and enjoy. I guarantee that you will feel better for it, and you can then look at building your self-care plan further. Let me know how you get on as I would love to hear from you.
Thank you for reading this blog – Creating My Self-Care Plan. If you would like more information or to get in touch, please fill in the form on the Contact Page.
Look out for the next blog.
Gerri
Dream Life Coaching
