Self care ideas - 5 Simple ways to practice Self-care

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What’s up!

Today I want to talk about 5 Self Care habits that have changed my life. Many of the habits I've developed over the last year or two have made a significant difference in my life, reducing worry and improving my physical and mental well-being. They have shaped me to be a little bit more positive. They have also pushed me along the path towards where I want to be in my life.

Self Care ideas that helped me

I am going to dive straight into it.

1. Working Out

The first habit that I have acquainted with myself is, Working Out. I know this seems so basic, but it was really a big deal to me back then. But now that this is something I do consistently. Regular aerobic exercise was as helpful as antidepressants in dealing with mild to moderate depression. This has been recently proved in the clinical research conducted. When I was not working out I kept on saying that mind and body first and that my mental health is a priority to me but at the same time I was not moving my body on a regular and consistent basis.

So, I was just in constant conflict with my values. This is a gross feeling and I think most people know that. When you do not live in length with your values, you feel gross and inauthentic.

In the past, I have had spurts where I would work out consistently, but it would never really last. I also had a period where I was cycling every single day for a few months, I was also doing YouTube workouts consistently.

It finally happened...

Now, for the last seven months, I have been keeping up a regular workout habit and it feels great. My psychological well being is crucial to me. Being fit in my body is also very important to me. I am in a nice, regular pattern of working out three-four times a week. I am not like a gym person yet by any means. But working out genuinely changed the game for me mentally health-wise.

I think it’s been a life-changing habit to have built. In one way it’s building up the belief in myself that it is something that I can do for myself and for my mental health. A really simple workout routine that did not rely on any crazy equipment is really easy to access. And also I got my environment set up accordingly so that everything seems appropriate. So there is a little snow friction between me and sitting down on my mat and starting to work out.

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2. Gratitude

The second habit is a habit of Gratitude. This is something that I have been practising for actually a long time now. I fell off the gratitude bandwagon for a little while when it started to feel like a to-do item to be ticked off. It felt more like a chore than like an activity that was bringing me something.

Then I read Shawn Anchor’s ‘The Happiness Advantage’ and it got me right onto it again. He talked about all the amazing things that gratitude can bring you in your life and he also talked about a different way of approaching gratitude I hadn’t been doing.

And by taking his advice on board, it kind of made me feel like my gratitude practice became more meaningful and it was more impactful to me again. So the two key changes that I made to my gratitude were picking things that I am grateful for but within the last 24 hours as opposed to just in general.

When I picked at random I did find myself falling into that pattern that is so easy to fall into, where you just like to pick things that you are always grateful for like I am so grateful that I have such a loving and beautiful family, that I have this home.

Why Gratitude for things that happened within 24 hours for Self Care?

These are things that I can easily fall back onto in my gratitude practice over and over again. So choosing something from the last 24 hours makes your life seem a little bit more meaningful because you think through those moments again and they are genuine moments that happened within your day as opposed to things that you are trying to think of at the moment.

It also allows you to relive that moment that you are grateful for again when you write it down. I have also tried to integrate the WHY I am grateful a little bit more into my gratitude practice. So, instead of just writing that ‘I am grateful to my boss who gave me good feedback on that project’, I would just add that it made me feel valued and it made me feel like my contributions to my workplace mattered.

That is what matters...

That WHY can make a really big difference in your gratitude practice. It forces you to think about why you are grateful for that moment and just gets even deeper into that gratitude moment. It is said that a regular practice of gratitude for 21 days can turn a lower-level pessimist into a lower-level optimist. And I always find that when I am consistently writing out what I am grateful for I just noticed more of the good things in my life. (We are soon launching a very interesting campaign on this. Do follow our Instagram page @lifenatphil to participate and win exciting rewards!)

And then there are just really weird things that I usually may not notice or be grateful for. For example, wow! it is amazing that this water runs out of this tap and then I have access to that. Or maybe like, I have this device that can smoosh all these ingredients together and make me a smoothie in a matter of seconds. That’s crazy.

So, just be grateful to things you have and take care of yourself!

This is just the first part of the article and the following 3 main important ideas to take care of yourself is yet detailed in Part 2. To read the second part of the article - Click Here

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~ Anushka Barse

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PubMed - United States National Library of Medicine (NLM)

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