Personal Development: Self care and the importance of your intentions
Don’t forget to hold space for yourself, too…
The term “self care” takes on many meanings for different people. In general, self care is an assortment of actions that people engage in order to promote their health and sense of well-being. For some, it’s about engaging singular actions that help them to relax, brace for, and recover from life’s daily stressors. For others, it’s about developing structure: having routines and rituals that promote consistent practice of activities that promote positive mental health, wellness, and healing from more chronic, deep-seeded forms of stress. For many, it’s a combination of the two and then some. Regardless of the role that self care plays in your life, your practice is going to be as effective as your intentions behind it.
How do you manifest your intentions for self care, and how do you create opportunities for your desires for wellness to come to life? Here are some points of reflection to help you hone in on setting and manifesting your self care intentions and cultivate sustainability in your wellness practice.
Reflect on your “why.”
Regarding your self care goals, it’s important to think about what you are ultimately trying to achieve. What is the reason/are the reasons behind your effort? Clarity around your “why” helps you to reinforce what you are trying to actualize. It supports you in taking actions that are meaningful and in alignment with what you authentically want and need. It’s easy to have goals and desires that are influenced by what other people want or think is important. There’s no shame in acknowledging the power other people’s influence or judgment have on your behavior, especially if you are setting goals that go against the rigid expectations of your culture or society at large. Getting familiar with our “why” does a number of wonderful things for us as we pursue our self care goals:
It nurtures our authentic needs and empowers us with choices that support those needs.
It gives us so much information about ourselves (like our need for nourishment, boundaries, and safety, e.g., physical and emotional) and the things we need to persevere on the road ahead.
It helps us to determine our priorities and whether or not our goals are truly conducive to our health, well-being in the present tense (needs do change from time-to-time after all).
It gives us the language to advocate for ourselves and to share our vision with others, (particularly our allies and the people who have our back).
It’s important to take the time to develop a sort of self care rapport with yourself. When you consistently check-in on your intentions and reasons for seeking out mindful self care, you’re more able to recognize your needs and respond to them in ways that truly fulfill you throughout the many seasons of your life.
Reflect on a plan.
Take the time to reflect on what you want your self care experience to be like. Put yourself in the moment. Visualize yourself living out your intentions and your goals. What do you want to experience? With yourself? With others? What do you want to feel like? Round out the full image of what you want to accomplish and experience in a given situation. It could be a meeting at work, a creative project, or a tough conversation with a friend. How do you want things to go? What if things don’t go the way you hoped? How do you want to respond if you run into a barrier? How do you want to show up for yourself? These questions will not only help you get in the best mindset for tackling something new or stepping out of your comfort zone, they will also help you to nurture your commitment and accountability to things that you believe are important.
Once you’ve had a chance to do the mental and emotional preparation, get specific about what you want to accomplish. Identify the when, the where, the how many, the who. Do you want to meditate first thing in the morning or after work? Do you want to get your steps in at the gym or at the park? How many chapters of that book do you want to get through tonight? Who do you want to celebrate your personal wins with? Make sure you understand the bar you’re setting for yourself so that you can achieve goals that are realistic, and again meaningful, to you. Create protected time to do the things that will bring you closer to your wellness and joy, and then do the things!
Reflect on what happened.
After you’ve had the chance to take action on your self care, take time to reflect on how things went. Did you say that thing you wanted to say to your coworker? Did you attend that art class you’ve been interested in trying? Were you able to get some journaling in this past week? Whether or not you were able to do the thing you wanted to do, think about how the presence or absence of that activity/decision affected you. Do you feel more rested? More restless? Where are you now compared to where you were yesterday? A week ago? Last month? Keeping track of how you feel after completing or pursuing acts of self care helps you to stay connected to the process and be a witness to the real changes that are taking place in the body, mind, and spirit.
And if you weren’t able to see your intentions through, ask yourself what happened. This dialogue isn’t about shaming yourself for missing the workout or not preparing those healthy meals last week, it’s about having compassion for yourself and understanding your barriers so that you have the clarity you need to overcome them. This self care thing isn’t about perfection, it’s about progress, and giving yourself time to think about the real challenges to doing self care can help you overcome them at your own pace and in ways that work for you.
Celebrate your effort.
Regardless of what you were able to accomplish, take the time to celebrate yourself. Whatever you did was likely one step closer to your vision for personal self care than you were prior to pursuing your intentions. The fact that you put effort and energy into progress and transformation is something worth celebrating. Claim that work! Express gratitude for your abilities, your mind, your creativity, your energy, all the things that it takes to cultivate intention, to generate motivation, and to move with purpose. It takes a lot of effort to get going and it takes even more to keep going. Build on your momentum, bit-by-bit, and keep trying. Celebrating yourself and expressing gratitude for the things that brought you to this present moment are great ways to reinforce your effort when things feel hard and futile. No matter how small your actions might feel, you are traversing a journey of self love at the end of the day, and that is major.
We work really hard to pursue our goals, self care and otherwise, but we don’t always give ourselves the grace to adequately prepare for and process the actions involved in our progress. It’s time to disrupt our patterns of go-go-go with a little bit of reflection and self compassion.
Are you ready to make moves on your self care journey?
Want to learn more about strengthening your self care habits? Let’s connect!
