27/03/2021
Self-Care: Millennial Buzzword or Sound Principle ?
Self-care is a term we increasingly hear flying around the social sphere. There’s self-care books, self-care courses, self-care specialists who sell out seats in their seminars on self-care. Self-care is the new trend. But what exactly is it and how relevant is it to the real world and to real lives ?
Though it may be easy to view self-care as the latest feel good trend to sweep the global market, at its very essence it is essential for holistic wellbeing. When we strip away all the bells and whistles, we find a simple yet crucial principle by which we can manage our lives and the stresses and triggers we encounter.
Self-care consists of the things that we do and the intentional steps we take to look after and promote our physical health and holistic wellbeing.
These activities and/or practices work best when integrated into our daily routine. Activities can be include physical activity such as running, socialising with friends or family, creative expression and artistic pursuits etc. Allowing yourself the time to engage in
non-essential/pleasure activities gives your body and mind room to rest and reset.
When both your body and mind are relaxed, it makes it a lot harder for life and it’s hardships to trigger your stress mechanisms. And that’s not to say that you’ll never be stressed, but you will be able to tackle triggers more effectively because you are in a better space holistically.
Practices that can contribute to self-care include setting boundaries, spending time alone, saying ‘no’, asking for help etc. Self-care is not only active, it also encompasses
the passive actions/practices that we can set in place to reduce our exposure to stressors and negative influences. Whether that means redefining relationships and their boundaries or sharing the workload in a professional/personal setting in order to not become overwhelmed. We all have steps we can take as part of our daily lifestyle that supports us in protecting our joy and reducing the capacity for stress to derail our wellbeing.
Always remember: Self-care is not selfish! We are only as effective as we enable ourselves to be.
