The How of Self-Care & Mindfulness

SELF-CARE

Self-care is any restorative activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health. Self-care isn’t a selfish act. It helps us sharpen our mental and physical health through better self-esteem, stress and emotional management, and overall well-being.

MINDFULNESS

The practice of mindfulness helps us notice the disconnect between building the concept of “self” on a foundation of ever-changing beliefs and feelings, while simultaneously believing there is something fixed and unchanging about it. Mindfulness is a caring, compassionate, non judgmental, non reactive awareness of our thoughts, emotions and physical sensations, and what is going on both internally and externally.

Research has consistently demonstrated that increased mindfulness is associated with a wide range of positive outcomes. The benefits of mindfulness include:

• Increase focus and productivity

• Improve memory

• Stress reduction

• Reduce rumination

• Relationship satisfaction

• Decreases emotional reactivity

• Increased compassion

• Improves functioning of your brain

• Increase immunity

THE HOW OF SELF-CARE & MINDFULNESS

• Bring your attention to your breathing when you wake up, instead of letting your mind spin off into yesterday or tomorrow

• Do one thing at a time

• Pay attention to how you eat

• Pay attention to how you walk

• In the shower, notice how the water feels on your body

• Read something you would enjoy

• Listen to a new podcast

• Discover a new hobby that makes you happy

• Watch the sunset or sunrise

• Self massage or stretch to release tensions in the body

• Do a breathing exercise

• Join a guided group meditation

• Share your gratitude (journaling, positive affirmation to self or loved ones)

• Phone/video call someone you love

• Support a small business

• Be kind to yourself

• Be aware of how you talk to yourself

• Make peace with imperfection

• Evaluate how you are doing with all that is going on

• Notice if there is resistance to certain things

• Conclude what has been helpful or less helpful to see if there might be a small thing you can do differently to improve what you do have control over