Self-Care Tips: Nine Ways to Better Care For Yourself

We’ve been talking a lot about self-care this past year against the backdrop of quarantine restrictions and financial hardship. However, even if things are more or less “back to normal,” self-care should still be high on your priority list. Need a little help to get started? Browse our list of self-care tips and see which appeal to you.

1. Set Clear Limits

Setting limits is one of the most basic self-care tips for staying sane and feeling in control. Whatever activities you have for the day, set clear time limits on each one and focus only on the task at hand. Our stress is often amplified because we’re thinking about too many things at once and are not really doing anything effectively. Are you working from home? Practice self-care tips like closing the door, turning off social media, and focus only on work until your next break.

Are you spending some time playing with the kids? Turn off your phone and devote 100% of your attention to enjoying the fun. Is it only half an hour until you need to go to bed? Stop eating, turn everything off, and spend some time stretching and breathing. Once you learn to focus completely on the moment, you’ll not only find that you’re more centered and less stressed, but you’ll likely enjoy each activity more.

2. Order Your Environment

As the famous organizer Marie Kondo states, “The objective of cleaning is not just to clean, but to feel happiness living within that environment.” The next of our self-care tips is to order your space enough to enjoy it. Yes, the act of cleaning in itself can be therapeutic if you have the time. But when there are pets, children, or creative projects in the mix, just maintaining some basic order can help.

To help yourself breathe a little easier, decide what your basic minimum is. For some people, making the bed, sweeping the floor, and wiping the table is enough to feel better. For others, it’s important to spend some time each night as a family putting papers, gadgets, and clothing in its place. Whatever you need to feel more grounded, make it part of your household’s routine, and be sure to stick to it. You’ll wake up the next morning feeling happier and much more relaxed.

3. Pay Attention to Hygiene

Sometimes, the self-care tips that we need are simply reminders not to abandon a normal routine. After you wake up in the morning, get up, get dressed, make the bed, and style your hair. This sets a productive tone for the day and helps you feel good about yourself.

Taking this to the second level, it’s also a good idea to shower, wear proper clothing, and smell nice all day long. If you get the chance to go for a walk (or happen to receive a surprise visitor), you want to be ready to seize the moment!

4. Give Your Body the Right Fuel

Eating right is about more than just calories. It’s about nourishing yourself from the inside out. As you begin to think about implementing self-care tips into your routine, take a look at your relationship with food. Ideally, the foods that we ingest should nourish our bodies and please the palate. A good self-care diet will include a diverse range of flavors and nutrients. As we suggested in our article about the Four Types of Self-Care, be sure to include the following in your meal plan:

• Healthy fats, like avocados and oily fish
• Lean proteins, like chicken and legumes
• Complex carbohydrates, like brown rice and quinoa
• Fruit and vegetables, including antioxidant-rich berries and iron-rich greens
• Something fermented or cultured like yogurt or sauerkraut
• Plenty of clean drinking water

If you’re new to dietary self-care tips, begin by adding in some wholesome ingredients and gradually replace processed and refined foods with better alternatives. While your body is adjusting and cleaning out the trash, investing in some quality products can help you support a healthy lifestyle.

5. Feed Your Mind by Learning Something New

Just as we need to nourish our bodies, we also need to nourish our minds. Protect against stagnation and keep those neurons firing strong by reading, studying, playing games, and having mentally-stimulating conversations with peers.

Of all our self-care tips, keeping your mind active is one of the most important ways to protect against cognitive decline. Choose your reading list carefully — you want material that inspires and challenges you, not the latest negative newsreel.

6. Feed Your Soul by Going Outside

Historically, humans have spent a large amount of time outside. For many, it was necessary for survival — think about hunting, gathering, farming, and fishing. Today, going outside is something that we actually need to include in lists of practical self-care tips because much of our work has migrated indoors.

According to research, spending at least two hours per week in nature boosts a person’s sense of health and well-being. This effect peaks with five hours per week in nature and remains stable if you spend even longer outside. If you haven’t been outdoors today, go for a 20-minute walk around the block, take in the views, and breathe in the (hopefully) fresh air. When you can, set aside a few hours on the weekend for a long walk in the forest or at the beach. It might seem like a large time investment but you’ll come back feeling more refreshed.

7. Listen To Music That Makes You Happy

After a few self-care tips that do take time, here’s an easy one for the busy bees: research shows that listening to music can improve your mood and boost your happiness. If you’re feeling sad or grieving the end of a relationship, the authors note that even listening to sad music can help you feel happier compared to no music at all. If you’re already feeling positive, put on some upbeat tunes and enjoy the lift that the music brings.

8. Consider Adopting A Pet

If you’re really struggling with psychological distress — such as post-traumatic stress disorder or depression — media stories indicate that self-care tips such as adopting a furry friend could help. While there are not many randomized control trials as yet, there are several ways in which pets may help lift your mood:

• The act of petting an animal is calming.
• Watching pets’ antics can make you laugh.
• Pets can sense your mood and provide comfort.
• Caring for a pet helps you feel accomplished.
• Pets that need to be walked motivate you to go outdoors and socialize.

Even just looking at this list, you can see that the benefits of having a pet cover several kinds of self-care tips, including exercise, socializing, and emotional health. Whether it’s a dog, canary, or hamster that most appeals to you, an animal could greatly boost your well-being!

9. Priorities over Checklists

The last of our self-care tips should serve as the basis for the rest of our tips: take self-care as a buffet rather than as a checklist. That weekly bath you promised yourself, those two-hour daily sessions of meditation you’d planned — when we make self-care into a checklist, it can become a burden.

To keep your self-care up in the long term, it could be helpful to make a list of ideas and options for every area of life and refer to the list every time that you’re ready for some me-time. This is a more realistic approach to self-care tips — especially if you have a packed schedule! To get you off to a flying start, here is an example self-care “buffet”:

Physical	Emotional	Social	Spiritual
Go for a jog.	Take five deep breaths.	Call an elderly relative.	Reflect on your purpose and how you are achieving it.
Shower and shave.	Make a list of things that make you happy.	Video chat with your best friend.	Spend some time meditating in nature.
Mend holes in clothes.	Smile and laugh.	Go for a family picnic.	Study a passage from a sacred text.
Learn some self-massage techniques.	Visualize success.	Contribute an article to a community newsletter.	Pray or speak out about the things that are worrying you. Then let them go.
Try a new healthy recipe.	Write a journal entry about how you’re feeling.	Take food or medicine to someone who needs it.	Meet up with some members of your religious group if you have one.
Drink some lemon water.	Spot your emotions in a movie.	Spend time alone with your partner.	Spend some time volunteering.

 

Only got five minutes? No worries. Enjoy those five minutes to the fullest with some deep breathing and a glass of water. Every chance you take for implementing some self-care tips will contribute to an overall lift in well-being.

Learn about Holistic Wellness at Kratora

If you enjoyed these self-care tips, head over to the Kratora blog and peruse more articles about holistic living, kratom, and more. As an ethnobotanical extract company, we’re dedicated to natural wellness education and the latest research on vibrant health. If you’d like to know more about our products and whether they might be right for you, browse each product category in the menu and read our glowing customer reviews.

The statements in this article have not been evaluated by the FDA. Please note that none of the products sold on our website are intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition.

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