The theme of self love and self care has been permeating social media over the past few years. I myself have also been an advocate of it. My observation working with hundreds of women is that it is often lacking on levels we are not even aware.
Here is the truth.
Most of us all practise basic self care on a daily basis. It could be as simple as:
- Taking a shower or having a bath – essentially, ensuring you wash and clean yourself
- Brushing your teeth
- Washing your hair when it becomes dirty
- Getting dressed
- Drinking enough water
- Cutting your toe and finger nails
- Remembering to eat
- Sleeping 7-8 hours a night
And if you want to make it a little more advanced:
- Making time for boring medical appointments – get to the dentist, book your cervical smear, get that lump or rash checked out.
- Making time to keep your home environment how you want your head and heart to feel – take out the trash, keep things organised and tidy, do your laundry
- Do your grocery shopping so that you are not only remembering to eat but you have a fridge stocked up with food that is going to keep your energy and vibe high
- Move your body each day and maybe get outside when you can
Basic Reality Check
If you are doing the above most days, you are probably doing pretty good to survive life with some sort of basic sense of well-being.
It is pretty natural as the demands of life increase that often our self-care decreases to accommodate the demands on our time and energy. This might sometimes mean that when life get’s really busy, maybe you skip lunch without noticing, you forget to drink enough water and you compromise your sleep. Your hair maybe goes an extra day before you wash it. You delay those important but not urgent medical appointments and maybe instead of a grocery shop a few ready meals hit the microwave.
For a few days we can all probably cope with this, but when this becomes the norm we may find ourselves not too happy in our lives.
Moving From Surviving to Thriving
The women I work with are not just interested in surviving, they are interested in thriving.
This for many includes experiencing joy and happiness on a daily basis. Embodying what it means to be confident and happy in their skin. It might also mean stepping up and being a leader whether that is running their own business, climbing the corporate ladder or being a role model at home.
To embrace this, we want to be uplevelling how we care for ourselves.
Which brings me to my level 2 list of self-care needs. What often happens at this level is that we jump to life’s pleasures; a morning coffee, a monthly massage, a trip to the hair dresser, a pedicure, scented candles and bubble baths.
These are some of life’s pleasures and by all means I love it when my clients feel worthy of enjoying life and embracing pleasure.
I wanted to write this today to fill the gap between basic self-care and pleasure. I wanted to highlight the importance of our “under-cover” self-care needs. Unless you nail this level of self-care, no amount of massages and bubble baths will fill the hole.
Over-Doing It
Many women I work with fall into the trap of “over-doing it”.
And before you think this sounds judgy I can recognise this in my clients because I have been there too and occassionally take a trip back to visit from time to time.
This often looks like:
- Over-committing
- Over-exercising
- Over-dieting
- Over-working
- Followed by numbing with food, alcohol, Netflix, online-shopping, or dating someone you know isn’t for you just because you don’t want to be alone.
Most often than not this is coming from a place of wanting to feel enough, to feel worthy, to be noticed, to feel significant, to be liked and ultimately to be loved. Most likely because, somewhere along the lines we misunderstood a message that we couldn’t be enough just as we are (this is why the massages and pedicures don’t quite fill the hole).
So the under-cover self care looks a bit like this:
1. Getting To Know You:
Before you can look after you, you have to know what you like, what you don’t like, what your values are, what your limits are, what you stand for, what you will not tolerate and where the boundaries are. Looking after you is honouring you, all of you.
The trend I see in many of my clients is that they’ve spent to0 long pleasing, perfoming, proving and perfecting that somewhere along the lines they lost the instruction manual to their own hearts.
Getting to know you means spending time with you, alone. It includes slowing down the busy, the numbing and spending some time reconnecting. And when you know you, you can…
2. Say “No” When Something Doesn’t Feel Right To You:
Even when you worry that you’ll be letting someone down, or you’ll be perceived negatively. This also means checking your social circles and who is really lighting you up and allowing you to shine and who is bringing you down and keeping you stuck.
Being true to you reinforces your worth to yourself and when you realise that most of the time the world doesn’t end, it gets easier every time. The more you learn to listen to your intuition and follow it, the more you establish a trusting relationshop with yourself.
3. Talking Kindly To Yourself:
You wouldn’t bully, tease and verbally abuse your own child, niece, nephew or little brother or sister? So why would you do it to your own inner child? When you talk kindly to yourself you build a trusting relationship between your head and your heart. When both are happy and on the same page and working towards a common goal, life gets so much easier!
4. Looking After Your Physical Body:
I mean really looking after it. Not in a way that you disguise restrictive dieting as “being healthy” or continue to eat foods that react in your gut and actually cause you physical discomfort and pain. Not in a way that you cover up regular over-drinking or over-eating as love and connection. Learn what your body really needs and meet those needs most days allowing for some humanness.
Exercise for fitness, blood flow and strength and be able to take days off guilt free. Learn what your unique body thrives on and give it those tools. Book those medical appointments you keep putting off, get that ache or pain checked out. Get to bed on time and allow for rest and recovery so that you can show up as the best possible you each day.
5. Scheduled Restorative Time:
Down time is not just making sure you hit a yoga class and get your 7 hours of sleep. Each day we want to be thinking about how we can tip the scales from sympathetic (nervous system) dominance to rest, recovery and restoration of the parasympathetic system.
This could start simple like taking a 5 minute break every 55 minutes at work, going for a short walk outside in your lunch break, skipping social media scrolling for a good book before bed or booking a restorative yoga class instead of a high intensity one.
6. Unleash Your Inner Child:
When we embrace a creative state our brain waves return back to those we had when we were a child. This allows us to become more resourceful, to think creatively, be in flow and find joy -it is the opposite of living in stress. When was the last time you let loose and allowed yourself to create for creations sake? To just be silly and play? To laugh until you cried?
7. Do Less Than What You Think You Can:
And rest more than what you think you need… Just because you can fit 1 million things into a week, doesn’t mean you should.
This is a lesson I have had to learn the hard way. When I started my online business I would fit clients in morning, noon and night, because I could. I would reply to emails and Facebook posts at all hours, because I could. I would work on the weekends and build membership sites, create content and respond to enquiries, because I could.
What that left me with was my “feelings of inflammation”;fatigue, pain, low mood and lack of joy, confidence and self worth. I was burnt out!
It would be easy to beat myself up about it but I don’t have to because I’m learning the lesson instead. I know my limits now. I know how many clients I can speak with each day and what can be achieved in a week. When I honour this I show up as the best version of me. In showing up as my best self everyone wins.
8. Manage Your Time and Money:
Time, money and energy are some of our most precious resources. I have, at times been scarce in all three.
This very last week I felt like I had allowed my diary to get out of control and I had to spend two days in bed as a result recovering. Not only does my failure to self manage zap my energy, take away my time, but it ruins my productivity which has an impact on my finances.
Having “never had a real job” – aka I’ve always worked for myself – I’ve had to learn to manage my money because unexpected things happen and people let you down or expect you to share the burden of their financial mis-management. Getting your finances in order is incredibly freeing because it enables you to shift your entire energetic state from one of scarcity to one of abundance. There is no better way to say “I am worthy” than feeling worthy to receive.
Quick Exercise
So here is a quick challenge for you. Grab a pen and paper and do this:
- Draw a circle on your page.
- Draw a line to divide the circle in half, then a line to divide it into quarters and then into eight segments.
- Read back through the “Eight Crucial Elements of Self Care” and rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 for each element (One being the worst it could be and ten being the best it could be).
- Optional: If you want to really go deep you can also write a definition of what life would look like if you were 10/10 for each component – this will get you clear on what you want and are working towards.
- Then, if the centre of your circle is 1 and the outer edges of the circle is 10, draw an arc in each segment which represents the level you rated your self-care component. For example, if you rated yourself 5/10 for component one you would draw an arc half way between the centre and outside edge of the circle for the first segment.
- Do this for each component so that all segments have an arc and shade the segment from the inside out.
- Now look at your circle. If this was the wheel of your car, how smoothly would it be running? Where is there room for improvement. Remember, its not about getting all the segments to 10 out 10 but to make it better than before.
Need more help?
Knowing yourself and caring for yourself is the first step to anything you want in life. So many of my clients find that as they work on themselves, their confidence grows and they are ready to take the next step.
Whether that is starting the business they have always wanted to create, climbing the career ladder, taking time out for themselves to travel the world, go on their first date in years or just let go of all the plates that were spinning and realise that it doesn’t fall apart.
I created the Grounded Goddess Group Progam to help women get to know and therefore love themselves.
This is a 16 week program starting on September 3rd 2018. You can drop me a message if you would like more information about how to be part of this incredible journey.
