We talk about self-care a lot. You’ll hear about it on the radio, the TV, the news, in magazines, in ads, on social media, at work. Self-care is a constant topic within our lives. What is self-care though?
By definition self-care is “the practice of taking action to improve and maintain one’s own health”.
I know, that definition is incredibly vague and can mean a lot of different things depending on who you’re talking to. So let me phrase it in a way that might be a little easier for others to understand, a way I’ve used in both my personal and professional life.
Our day to day lives are run from the power of multiple different batteries. There batteries are broken down by the different domains of our lives such as physical, social, emotional. Self-care is the action that helps to recharge our batteries, allowing us to keep going about our day to day lives.
Depending on who you talk to or what you read, the number of categories of self-care vary. In order to make it easy for you I’ve compiled a list of eight of the most well known and talked about acts of self-care, breaking them down to help you understand why they mean. At the end of each category you’ll also find some activities that fit into each type of self-care, maybe even some you can add your routines.
Now, I’m not saying that in order to “take part” you have to always be engaging in all eight types. What I am saying is that knowing and understanding all eight types can help us choose the right type of self-care for us and find a balance. This balance is key in helping to ensure that our batteries remain fully charged so we can keep living our lives.
It’s important that while reading this, whether you’re a practitioner or not, to remember that everyone is different. Self-care activities are not a one size fits all.
If you’re interested, I’ve also attached a worksheet I’ve made. The worksheet can be found here. Feel free to use them for yourself or print them off to use in your professional life.
Self-care can include bubble baths and face masks but it is also so much more than that. Hopefully this post can help you, whether you’re looking to pursue self-care yourself or use in it your professional life.
Physical Self-Care
Physical self-care is one of the most common forms that we see and talk about. This form of self-care is all about being able to take care of the physical aspects of our body. This can include our weight, our muscles, our heart, our blood and our skin.
When we think about physical self-care we normally associate it with:
- Going for a run
- Lifting weights
- Go on a hike
- Yoga
- Playing sports
- Dancing
While these are actions that can be involved, physical self-care is so much more than just physically moving your body. We have to remember that not all parts of our body can be treated by simple moving them around a couple of times a week.
Physical self-care also includes:
- Eating balanced and healthy meals
- Getting the right amount of sleep
- Drinking lots of water
- Taking vitamins
- Limiting our alcohol intake
- Limiting the level of coffee or caffeine we drink/eat
- Regular doctor and specialist visits
- Breathing exercises
- Putting on moisturizer
- Maintaining a healthy sex life
- Taking an ice bath
- Doing a face mask
Emotional Self-Care
Emotional self-care has become a growing topic of conversation since we’ve seen an increase in discussion about mental health. This is because these two things go hand in hand, with emotional self-care being the best way we can take care of our mental health.
When we are talking about emotional self-care, we’re looking at understanding our feelings, finding ways to express ourselves, stress management and self-awareness. What’s unique about this type of self-care is that a lot of the actions you do for other categories, often fit into this category as well. An example would be working out, while it is normally viewed as an action that supports physical self-care it can also be something we use as a coping mechanism.
Emotion Self-Care activities might include:
- Going for a run
- Seeing a therapist (This is completely normal and nothing to be ashamed of)
- Taking prescription medication
- Taking a stress management class
- Meditation
- Journaling
- Create a vision board
- Looking at yourself in the mirror and telling yourself that you are beautiful
- Writing positive notes
- Talking about your emotions and feelings with those in your life
- Turning your phone off
- Take a mental break from everything going on in your life
- Taking a hot shower
- Painting your nails
- Going for a drive
- Going for a run
- Talking with friends and family
Mental/Cognitive/Intellectual Self-Care
When a lot of people think about mental self-care, they think of it as being the same as emotional self-care. This isn’t necessarily the only way to look at it though. Some people choose to view emotional self-care as being strictly about aspects of our lives that impact mental health and mental self-care as being strictly about the brain and mind. For the sake of this post, this is how I’m going to be addressing both in this post.
Like I said above, mental self-care (sometimes called cognitive or intellectual self-care) focuses on how our brain works. This can include our cognitive processing, intelligence, giving the brain a break and pushing brain functioning to a new level.
When we take part in this form of self-care we’re looking at ways to advance our brain functioning, which for some people can seem like the complete opposite of self-care. This is because a lot of the activities that fall into this category do involve some level of putting our brain to work but, it comes down to perspective. For example, running falls into physical self-care but the act of running can also involve a lot of work.
Mental self-care is important because it focuses our attention on taking care of our brain. It can help slow us down and act as a guide in ensuring that we’re taking care of one of the most important organs in our body.
Mental/Cognitive/Intellectual self-care activities might include:
- Reading a book
- Taking an online class
- Writing poetry
- Complete a project
- Take up a new skill or hobby
- Attending a workshop
- Watching a TedTalk
- Create a vision board
- Listening to a podcast
- Taking a personality quiz
- Write a list of goals you have for the future
- Make a realistic plan to achieve those goals
- Asking questions
- Have thought provoking discussions
This definitely isn’t a form of self-care that everyone enjoys but I highly suggest giving in a try. Think of an activity that you already do that involves some element of using or improving your cognitive functioning. Next time you find yourself taking part in that activity, try to focus in on how its helping you take care of your brain. One small step at a time and who knows, maybe you’ll really enjoy it!
Social Self-Care
Social self-care is exactly what it sounds like, self-care that involves socializing with other people. It’s all about interactions, connections and building relationships. This form of self-care is more than what meets the eye though, it goes a lot deeper than a lot of people realize.
While socializing is a key element to social self-care, it has a lot of moving and smaller parts. It is in this category of self-care that we look at support systems, social boundaries and our social needs.
While all of these ideas probably aren’t new to you, you may not have realized that focusing on them is actually an act of self-care. Having a good support system allows us to feel more comfortable, more confident and provides us with vital assistance when dealing with life events. Learning about and discovering our social boundaries and needs is incredibly important in understanding when we need to socialize with others, the type of people we need to socialize with and when we need a break.
Social self-care activities might look like:
- Calling a relative
- Talking to a therapist either by yourself or with someone else (couple, family, parent, ect)
- Texting your best friend
- Positive social media use
- Taking a workshop
- Talk with your significant other
- Asking for help when we need it
- Playing a board game with your family
- Girl’s night video call
- Attending a support group
- Slumber party
- Playing a team sport
- Volunteer at a food bank
- Say no to attending a large party
- Team building activities at work
- Learn about conflict resolution
- Talk about your feelings
Spiritual Self-Care
This one can be scary for some people to think about so my goal here is to remove some of that fear. You do not need to have any religious or cultural beliefs to take part in spiritual self-care. While faith can play a part for some people, it isn’t essential.
Spiritual self-care is all about being able to connect to something larger than yourself. While for some people this may be their church or their god, it doesn’t have to be. Something larger than ourselves can also be our family, our community, our country, our world and even space as a whole.
The second element of spiritual self-care allows us to look more deeply at our personal values, principles, morals and beliefs. When taking part in spiritual self-care we are looking for activities that allow us to explore ourselves while helping discover and uphold what matters most. This can be our belief in helping others, setting boundaries, discovering our faith and just discovering what is more important to us.
Spiritual self-care activities might include:
- Taking a walk in nature
- Volunteering
- Travelling
- Attending church or a bible study
- Going camping
- Journalling
- Researching other religions and cultures
- Going on a yoga retreat
- Meditation
- Writing a gratitude list
- Horticulture therapy (planting a tree, maintaining a garden, ect)
- Writing appreciation letters
- Taking part in a community clean up
- Positive self-talk
While all forms of self-care are personal, this one can be touchy for some people. It is important that if we are taking part in this form of self-care with others that we are remembering to respect not only our own boundaries but also theirs.
Spacial Self-Care
Spacial self-care is a category that often time gets forgotten. This isn’t because it isn’t important but because it just isn’t a topic a lot of people openly talk about.
When we look at spacial self-care, we’re looking at, reflecting on and respecting the environment around us. Our environments might include specific rooms, our entire house, our community, our workplace and other spaces we might spend significant amounts of time. From here, we also reflect on our safety, stability, security and organization while in these spaces.
Spacial self-care is incredibly important because our surroundings can impact our ability to take part in other forms of self-care. An example of this might be if we live in a community where we don’t feel safe, we may not be comfortable attending church or socializing with those around us.
Spacial self-care activities might include
- Cleaning the kitchen
- Moving to a safer community
- Redecorating our bedroom
- Organizing the office
- Working
- Going for a walk in your community
- Moving furniture around
- Painting a wall
- Researching your community
- Living in a place you can afford
- Choosing to live by yourself or with someone else
Financial Self-Care
While a lot of people know about finances, very few know about the concept of financial self-care.
Financial self-care is the category where we focus in on money and its about a lot more than just saving up to buy a house. Financial self-care has a lot of moving part to it, saving money being just one of those parts. It also includes knowing what money you have, looking at where the money is coming from, having a plan for how to use it and being mindful of where our money is going.
Money doesn’t buy happiness but being in control of our money bring us some level of happiness. It’s important that we’re taking the time to look at our money circumstances and be aware of what is going on. It’s important that we focus on building a healthy relationship between ourselves and our money.
Financial self-care activities might include:
- Talking to a financial advisor
- Investing money
- Making a shopping list
- Living within your means
- Price matching
- Taking up a side job to make a little extra money
- Making a checklist for when you need to pay bills
- Set up a savings account
- Budgeting
- Spoiling yourself sometimes
- Make a plan to pay off any debt
- Make a plan for the future
Professional/Work Self-Care
Yes, you read that right. There is a category of self-care dedicated just to your work and professional life.
Professional self-care allows us to reflect on, observe and be mindful about the different aspects of our work life. It’s important that you look at all aspects of working life individually in order to determine what is working and what we may need to change in order to be happier and healthier. This can include our own work habits, what we do for work, our work environment and the people around us.
You’ve probably heard the quote “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. This quote is a great one to use in helping guide you to a healthy and happier working life.
Professional/Work self-care activities might include
- Taking a vacation or a personal day
- Finding a new job
- Talking to your boss about something that has been bothering you
- Going back to school, even part-time
- Practicing good time-management skills
- Taking a workshop on a skill you want to learn more about
- Making lists
- Staying organized
- Re-doing your office to make it more efficient
- Reporting a co-worker
- Asking to change departments
- Asking for a raise
- Knowing your value
- Being mindful about your work to home balance
- Setting boundaries
- Saying no
While this form of self-care is fairly new, I wanted to include it in this post. I think as our lives change with the use of technology more and more of us are going to need to pay attention of this one.
Social Media Self-Care
Social Media self-care is becoming increasingly more important and its importance will continue to grow. While we practice social distancing, a lot of our social connections are occurring online.
While no formal definition has been set, social media self-care is all about the act of taking care of ourselves while online. As the presence of technology increases, we need to remember to look after ourselves. This category of self-care looks at setting boundaries, goals and being mindful about our online presence.
What it might look like:
- Set a time limit
- No endless scrolling
- Keep interaction purposeful
- Unfriend people who bring you negativity
- Turn of commenting on posts
- Hiding certain content from your feed
- Avoid comparing yourself to those on your feed
- Making new friends
- Connecting with people
- Building a support system
- Learning about privacy settings
- Reporting a post
- Being mindful about the purpose of your online presence
This was a post I really enjoyed writing. Not only did it give me the opportunity to help provide some support and direction to all of you but it helped me as well. I learned about more activities that I can try to find a greater self-care balance!
If I missed an activity that you want added to one of these lists, drop a comment below or send me a message. I’d love to keep these lists growing!