19 Ways To Improve Self-Care In Your Life

Today I have a list of 19 ways to improve the self-care in your life. Self-care is “the practice of taking action to improve one’s own health“.

That means that self-care is individual to each person. Feeling good everyday should be your goal, because it improves overall quality of life.

The 19 tweaks in today’s post are all amazing and can really boost your mental health. We will cover:

• Goals & objectives
• Making self-care easier
• Adding self-care to your time-blocking
• Self-care morning ideas
• Evening self-care ideas.

Hello and welcome to Fearlessly Holistic.

My name is Irma and I want to share my journey to improved health by eating whole foods, moving my body and eliminating stress as much as possible.

It is my hope to inspire you to make daily changes. Why? Because eating fresh, seasonal food and getting some sunshine is the best way to increase longevity. But you do not want just a long life. You want a quality long life.

My blog posts are my opinion and the results of things that I have tried that either worked for me or didn’t. My opinions are for informational purposes only and are not intended as medical advice. Medical advice should always be obtained from a qualified medical professional for any health conditions or symptoms associated with them. As well, there may be affiliate links in this post. Read more here.

 

4 Self-Care Goals & Objectives

When it comes to self-care, some of the activities people often think about first include bubble baths.

But there are other things that you can do to improve how you feel daily.

Self-care is more about what you choose to do for yourself. It should definitely bring more relaxation, but also a sense of happiness and fulfillment. Consider these ways to practice self-care in your life.

1. Waking Up Early to Improve Your Productivity

Yes, just doing something like waking up early can help with self-care! This is going to work as self-care for multiple reasons.

When you wake up early, you:

• Give yourself more time to dedicate to yourself
• This might mean an hour or so of alone time in a quiet house.
• Create the perfect time to focus on your self-care.
• Improve your productivity because you have that extra time to plan your day.

This alone can be considered self-care since it is something you are doing intentionally and for yourself.

2. Choosing to Add Exercise to Your Routine

It is important that it is exercise you actually want to do, not something you are forcing yourself to do. This is why it can be a slippery slope when you use exercise as a way to change your body, and try to double that as self-care.

If you truly want your exercise to be self-care, it needs to be something that provides an emotional or mental health benefit, in addition to the physical benefits.

Think about how you feel when you go on a relaxing walk.

You know it is good for your physical health, but more than that, it probably helps you clear your head and take a few minutes for yourself. This is what exercise can do for you with the right mindset going into it.

3. Allowing Yourself to Say No

This was hugely helpful for me! As someone with depression and anxiety, saying “no” seemed like a betrayal to other people. I would get such anxiety at the thought of disappointing people, whether real or imagined.

But sometimes, it is in the simple decisions you made that count as self-care.

If you are someone that agrees to everything, saying no can be the best thing for you.

It is far better to be honest with people that you do not have time to participate. Or that the event does not interest you. And you will feel better not going to something that you don’t really care about.

4. Buying Something You Love

There is a fine line between splurging and excessive spending. There are also times when we should buy ourselves something nice. These are:

• When you really need that item, such as a new winter coat when your old one worn out
• If you have saved money specifically for something you need
• You plan for something and it comes on sale before you’ve finished saving for it

I am that person who is always taking brand new stuff to the thrift store because it was bought on impulse.

If you are like that, I recommend the book “Living Well, Spending Zero“. After doing the 30 days, twice in a row, I did a complete 180 to break that habit. There is a review post coming!

Thanks to following that book, I consistently have more money to spend. And I am updating things that make me feel good, like a new duvet set and pillows and a super nice pair of Birkenstocks.

5 Ways To Make Practicing Self-Care Easier

People can get overwhelmed when adding self-care to their life,because there are so many ideas and options to choose from.

Choose simple activities that resonate with you and that are going to help improve your physical and mental well-being.

These can be things you do alone or with other people (road trips!), as long as they help to improve your life and happiness. Consider these points when choosing activities:

5. Keep It Simple

You want your self-care routine to be done with little effort. This means it can be done:

• Quickly and easily
• Without needing to spend a lot of money
• Does not require an elaborate set-up

If you have to dig out your treadmill, change clothes, and find your music you may be less motivated by the time you get set up. Choose activities that you can do when you feel like it. When you’re mentally stronger, go for the more “nit-picky” activities.

6. It Brings You Peace of Mind

Your self-care activity should bring you relaxation, not stress. Self-care activities should enhance your life, not create new problems or worries.

Focus on how you feel before, during, and after your self-care routine to determine where things go on your list of “helpful” activities.

If it relaxes you and reduces anxiety, it’s working great for you so keep doing it. If it’s more trouble than helpful, shove it to the bottom of the list; re-visit it later if you like.

For 75 Self-Care Ideas Read my Related Post: Who Needs Self-Care? You Do!

7. You Look Forward to doing it

#bubblebath

As you test out new ideas for your self-care toolkit, be sure to prioritize items that you know will help you feel better. If you know that Massage Therapy is helping you, try to schedule it more often.

On the other hand, if going swimming makes you feel self-conscious maybe incorporate more activities that boost self-esteem before hitting the pool.

Tweak your list so that you are trying new activities often while also pushing unhelpful activities off your list. Keep your list handy so that you can do something for yourself when you have a spare block of time.

8. You Enjoy It

Another thing to look for in your self-care activity is something you actually enjoy. It is really important that you find a self-care activity that makes you excited and happy.

• Activities that your friends enjoy immensely, might not be the right fit for you.
• Journaling is great for some people, but other people feel like it’s a chore.
• Others like listening to music and practicing mindfulness as their self-care, while their best friend or sister might hate it.

9. It Fits in With Your Schedule

Your self-care routine should fit in nicely with your schedule.If you have trouble prioritizing your self-care, consider time-blocking it (more on this below).

In some cases, you do need to make a little room for it, but it shouldn’t come in the way of any of your responsibilities and priorities.

How you choose to fit it in will depend on your schedule and what works best for you.

If you use a type of block schedule where you like to see what you are doing during each block during the day, then you can schedule a 15-30 minute block for your self-care.

In other cases, adding it to your nighttime routine might work better.

3 Ways to Add Self-Care to Your Time-Block Schedule

A block schedule is one where you block off time during the day for each type of task you plan on doing, in order to use up just about every hour of the day.

Google Calendar and Trello are both excellent free apps that can assist you with time-blocking.

Scheduling can help you stay on track and get everything you need, but should also leave room for your own personal time. Consider these time-blocking tips:

10. Create a Daily Block for Your Self-Care

The first and most obvious way to add self-care to your block schedule is actually making a block for it.

It can be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or longer, depending on what you plan to do. But adding it as an actual block lets you schedule time for it every day so you don’t miss it.

Self-care really doesn’t need to take much time, so if you have just a 10-minute time block in your schedule, then that’s where it should go.

11. Use A “Free” Block of Time for Self-Care

If your schedule has any free blocks of time, try to squeeze in some self care.

Sometimes you have a little free block that you leave open so that you can decide at the time what you want to do. This is a great spot for your self-care routine.

Free blocks allow you to choose what you want to do without getting in the way of the rest of your responsibilities.

See if you can have a short block (or multiple ones) every day in between other tasks so you can choose those for your self-care.

12. Add it to Your Morning or Nighttime Routine

You can make room for self-care is by adding to either your morning or nighttime routine (see below).

This would often be part of these daily routines, making it an easy transition into adding more activities you do for yourself.

Sometimes all we need is to tweak our schedule just a bit to start squeezing in self-care blocks, but it’s worth it.

4 Ideas For A Self-Care Morning Routine

Here are some different ways to practice self-care in the morning.

Starting your day with positivity and a feeling of well-being will improve the whole rest of your day.

13. Quiet Time with Morning Pages

In the morning, when your day first begins, try doing morning pages. Morning pages are a style of journaling where you don’t think about what to write, similar to stream of consciousness.

You want to write what is on your mind and get it out of the way before you do anything else in the morning.

Morning pages provide quite a few benefits for you:

• You are doing something good for yourself first thing in the morning, which really sets you up for the day with self-care.
• It helps you get any worried thoughts out of your mind in the morning, before you have to focus on other responsibilities.

14. Move Your Body in a Gentle Way

It looks different for everyone, but for you this might mean:

• A simple morning stretch routine,
• Beginners or light yoga
• Walking your dog,
• 5 minutes of moving your body in whichever way you find the most relaxing and enjoyable.

15. Take Care of Your Physical Health

The morning is the perfect time to focus on your physical health and get your day started right. This includes:

• Drinking water to help re-hydrate your body after sleep.
• Eating something healthy as your first meal of the day.

After that, you can then choose to have your coffee or follow your regualar morning meal/plan.

16. Get Outside as the Sun Comes Up

Watching the sun rise or set can be mesmerizing and quite relaxing.

If you have a spot where you can watch sunrise while enjoying morning coffee…well, nothing is quite like it for creating inner peace.

Later in the day, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. try to get outside for 10 or 15 minutes of Vitamin D. You only get Vitamin D naturally at this time and it is only created when UVB rays can touch exposed skin, so avoid sunscreen until after.

3 Tips For Your Self-Care Evening Routine

Self-care is easy to add to your nighttime routine. Lot’s of self-care activities are perfect for when you are winding down from your day.

Here are a few tips for adding some self-care activities to your nighttime routine.

17. Analyze Your Current Nighttime Routine

Look at your current schedule to see where you have some time available. There is likely a short window of time where adding self-care will work perfectly.

Check your list of activities for ones that work well for evening, like:

• Journaling
• Bubble baths (you might think I’m obsessed with bubble baths, but I rarely take them lol)
• Meditation
• Stretching

You don’t want your routine to inconvenience you. It’s harder for you to gain the emotional benefits from self-care if it feels too forced.

18. If You Have It, Give Yourself an Hour of Alone Time

If you have less than that, it’s perfectly fine, but make sure you are making yourself a priority. Interruptions can make it harder to focus on ‘you’.

Try to fit in some alone time, even if it’s just when you take your bath or shower at night, go through your skincare routine, or have a few minutes to write in your journal.

Practice affirmations for self-worth and self-esteem, reminding yourself that you deserve the best life possible!

This can be so much more therapeutic than you might think.

19. Choose Relaxing Activities You Enjoy

Remember that self-care should be enjoyable and something you look forward to, not something you dread doing.

This is not the same thing as flossing your teeth at night or doing chores during the day.

Don’t consider every little thing part of your self-care routine, but instead those activities that are not expected of you.

Instead choose additional relaxing activities that are intentional and will improve your mood and your life.

It can help to start with a list of everything you enjoy doing. Anything you can think of can go on the list.

Think about what makes you feel happy or joyful, what relaxes you, what you do on a sick or rainy day, what you like to do alone or with friends or family.

This list can often help you pinpoint what would be best to add to your nighttime self-care routine.

Conclusion

If you missed it, my previous post on self-care has 75 ideas for activities that you can add to your self-care toolkit. Have a few ‘old favorites’ and add in new items to try.

That means that you are improving your self-care while simultaneously discovering what you like or don’t like. #goodtoknow

Keep what works and discard what doesn’t for more peace of mind.

Holistic approaches never just address symptoms of specific health problems, but instead aim to return or keep the patient in a state of balanced health between mind, body, and spirit. Holism targets overall wellness, and when we are well, we only get better with age.

Please share this post with anyone who can benefit from it. Sharing is caring!

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Until next time, here’s to our health!

-Irma