What is Self Care and Why is it Important for Your Well-Being?
You might hear the term “self care” thrown around a lot but might be wondering…what is self care and why is it important for your well-being? This post is going to define self care and help you understand why it is important for your physical and mental health. This post is also going to show you how to build self care into your daily routine.
Self care is not a fad – it is an essential part of maintaining your overall health and wellness.
While this post is going to talk through a self care definition, keep in mind that self care might mean different things to different people. As you read this post, you’ll be able to define what self care means in your life and answer the question: “What is self care and why is it important?”.
Self care definition: What is self care?
First, let’s define self care.
Self Care (noun): The practice of actively managing one’s own health, well-being, and happiness, specifically during times of stress.
When you hear “self care” you might think of a trendy concept or doing a face mask on Sunday night. However, self care is so much more than that.
Self care is a way to take control of your own health and overall well-being so you can feel mentally, physically, and emotionally strong.
Types of self care
Self care can be somewhat of a general term, so what types of activities are considered self care? Overall, there are six main categories of self care:
- Mental self care
- Physical self care
- Emotional self care
- Practical self care
- Social self care
- Spiritual self care
Mental self care
Mental self care is any form of self care that benefits your mental health through stimulating your mind and intellect. Examples of mental self care activities would be doing a puzzle, reading a book, learning something new, etc.
Physical self care
Physical self care is any form of self care that benefits your physical health. Examples of self care include exercise, skin care, healthy diet, pain management, etc.
Emotional self care
Emotional self care is any form of self care that helps you process and manage your emotions in a healthy way. Examples of emotional self care include journaling, therapy, creating art or music, etc.
Practical self care
Practical self care is any form of self care that helps you manage all of your life responsibilities. This form of self care will help you avoid a stressful situation in the future. Examples of practical self care include cleaning, organization, creating a budget, etc.
Social self care
Caring for your well-being doesn’t always have to involve alone time! Social self care is self care that you can do with others or involve interaction with other people. Social self care ideas include getting a pedicure with a friend, calling a family member, going to a yoga class with friends, etc.
If you are extroverted, this form of self care might be one of your favorite go-to forms of self care! And even if you are introverted, social self care activities can have tons of benefits.
For 17 fun self care ideas to do with friends, read more here.
Spiritual self care
Spiritual self care is any form of self care that helps you strengthen your spirit. This form of self care does not need to be religious, but for some people it might be. Spiritual self care ideas include meditation, spending time in nature, going to a yoga class, attending a religious service, etc.
Why is self care important?
Now it’s time to answer the second part of our question: What is self care and why is it important?
Self care is important for your well-being, mindset, and ability to be the best version of yourself even during times of stress.
In today’s society it’s almost a bragging right to say how busy you are. We are often expected to work long hours and then in the little time we have off we still have to tend to our other life responsibilities and personal relationships.
You might not feel comfortable taking a mental health day or passing on dinner with friends this week because you’re tired – but taking the time you need for yourself is very important for many reasons.
Improve mental health
A key benefit from self care that makes it an important part of your health maintenance is to improve your mental health.
A lot of self care activities directly benefit your mental health like journaling or therapy. Even other forms of self care like physical self care ideas have a large impact on mental health as well. Activities like exercise and a consistent skin care routine have mental health benefits in addition to their physical health effects.
For more information on the mental health benefits of having a skin care routine, read more here.
Maintain physical health
In addition to mental health benefits, self care is also important to help you maintain physical health. Taking care of your body through health eating, physical activity, doctor’s appointments, etc. are all important aspects of self care.
When your body doesn’t feel good, your mind and whole being do not feel good either. If you struggle with chronic pain for example, finding activities that help you manage that will also help benefit your whole self as well.
Prevent burnout
A really important reason to practice self care is to prevent burnout. Symptoms of burnout include exhaustion, physical sickness (headache, stomach pain, etc.), feeling irritable, and neglecting your health and self care routine.
Burnout can result from stress caused by work, health issues, personal relationships, or basically anything in your life that is draining your energy. Self care activities are a great way to both recover from burnout and prevent burnout from occurring in the future.
For 7 ways to prevent burnout, read more here.
Achieve better work life balance
Self care is important in maintaining work life balance. While some may like to joke that work life balance does not exist, I think it definitely can – you just need to make self care and time for yourself a priority.
Taking vacation days, having a healthy lunch during the workday, stretching throughout the day, getting up and walking around, etc. are all great ways to practice self care for work life balance.
And in general, all self care activities that you engage in during your time away from work will help you be present and actually enjoy the time you have off, rather than finding your mind wandering and worrying about what you have to do at work the next day.
Be more productive when you need to be
While you shouldn’t have to feel pressure to be productive at all times like you often might, when you need to accomplish something you do want to be able to be productive. After all, productivity will help you accomplish a task effectively and efficiently.
Self care is important to help you be productive when you need to be. Self care will help you return to tasks fully refreshed and mentally sharp to get things done like a boss.
Strengthen your relationship with yourself
Self care is also important to help you strengthen your relationship with yourself. You’ll be able to do a lot of self reflection through self care that can help you process emotions, heal from past trauma, and get to know yourself better.
Being more in tune with yourself will help you notice signs and symptoms of burnout, stress, etc. ahead of time so that you can address it early.
Strengthen your relationship with others
Lastly, self care is important because it can help you strengthen your relationship with other people. Self care helps you do this in a couple of ways.
First, self care activities that you do with other people can help you connect with them in a deeper way that you otherwise might not have. Social self care ideas are great to help you connect with the people you are close to.
Additionally, self care can strengthen relationships with others because it will help you be the best version of yourself. While you might worry self care is selfish, I am the first to tell you that is NOT true.
Taking the time you need for yourself will allow you to be the be at your best when you do need to help others. Anyone who truly cares about you will not only understand when you need some time for self care, but they also want to see you be your healthy and happy self that self care helps you become.
How to build self care into your daily routine
Now that we have talked through what is self care and why is it important…let’s talk about how to actually build self care into your daily routine.
A self care routine is more beneficial than just doing random self care ideas whenever.
A self care routine will help you establish self care as a habit meaning that you will do it during the day without spending a lot of energy thinking about it. So when you get crazy busy, you’ll still fit in self care to your day because it’s second nature.
Building a self care routine also allows you to be intentional with your self care choices. If you are super busy, you probably don’t have time to spend all day thinking about self care. So when you do engage in self care activities, they should be ones that will have the greatest impact on your well-being.
So how do you build self care into your daily routine?
Don’t bite off more than you can chew
Whenever you read about self care, you might be tempted to try every single activity on the list. But that is not realistic.
Trying to cram 30 self care activities into your already busy day would be impossible. However, maybe there is a couple of self care ideas that would fit into your existing schedule and will benefit your health and well-being.
Give yourself helpful reminders
Once you have chosen the self care activities you want to practice consistently, set reminders for yourself to stay on track. For example, if you want to meditate everyday, set a reminder on your phone for a certain time.
Set yourself up for success
Setting yourself up for success is really important when you build a self care routine. If you fail right off the bat, you’ll likely get discouraged and stop trying to incorporate self care.
Setting yourself up for success might look different for different people. Set an alarm in the morning that gives you enough time to accomplish your self care activities without feeling rushed.
Do yourself a favor by planning ahead of time. For example, if you want to go on a run before work, set out your workout clothes ahead of time. Or plan a running route so when you wake up you can just go!
This post has helped you answer the question, “What is self care and why is it important for your well-being?”…Now what??
Self care is a term thrown around a lot, but it’s helpful to really think about what self care means and how it can be defined in your life.
Use the tips in this post to understand what self care means to you, why self care is important, and how you can add self care to your daily routine.
Now that you understand what self care is and why it’s important for your well-being, take that knowledge to build a killer self care routine and stay motivated because you know that it will help you be the best version of yourself.
Comment below with what self care means to YOU!
I really appreciate how you acknowledged that the whole mentality of bragging how much work a person has gotten done or how busy they are is actually not a great thing. I completely agree, I think the whole ‘work, work, work’ lifestyle has removed mindfulness and enjoying the simpler things in life. Before you know it, years have passed and it still feels like you haven’t accomplished anything because you were never present in the moment. Practicing self care regularly will give meaning to life, and I like how you have very clearly listed the many ways to practice it.