Self-Care Ideas

Self-Care is a thing that often ends up in the backlist of people thought it is really important to keep up and maintain in your day to day. That’s why I decided to dedicate this whole month to self-care and self-love so that maybe we could all start and maintain our journey in taking good care of ourselves and live a more positive and fulfilling life. In this blog post, I jot down self-care ideas for four individual categories. I hope you find these ideas helpful and useful to have amazing self-love and care days.

Mindful and Creative Ideas

One of the best things I like to do is learn and develop myself creatively and I find that setting up a blank canvas and working my way without boundaries set in place and leaving perfection out of my mind is a nice way to give myself some self-care and enjoy my time mindfully and creatively. This also includes getting inspired and admiring other people’s creativity because there is so much art out there in the world that when you think about it, it is truly amazing and beautiful.

• Read= Reading is a must for me when it comes to self-care. I truly enjoy reading and it is one of those things that makes me happy by feeling that I have accomplished a lot throughout the day even if I just spent it reading. I try to read every single day because I found that it is something that positively compliments my day and it helps me to slow down and take a moment to myself when I’m feeling tired.
• Meditate= Meditation is something that I started trying out this month as it is one of my new year’s goals. I’m still trying to be better at it and work as much as I can to completely focus my mind on my breathing or whatever the guided meditation tells me to do but I still find it quite difficult to not stress and think about things I have to do and stuff like that when meditating. When I have managed to mostly complete a full ten to fifteen-minute meditation I fill that it sort of gives me a fresh start for the day and that’s why I recommend you to try it out and if you have, feel free to comment down below how has your journey with meditation been and what are your tips for people like me who are trying to make a habit of it.
• Coloring/ Activity book= I have a love-hate relationship with coloring books. Sometimes I like to color them in and sometimes it stresses me out to figure out the colors that I want to use. A lot of people find coloring books relaxing and therapeutic. What I like are activities in coloring books, I find them fun and entertaining and that’s actually why I included one in my Comfort and Positivity Box.
• Creative/ Art Journaling= I recently found out about the amazing world of creative and art journaling. It is one of the best things to do on a self-care day at least in my opinion. I set up my favorite art supplies and just start painting and doodling whatever comes to mind once I selected a sort of theme or prompt to focus on. I don’t always have a theme but when I do I find it easier to just go ahead and start the creative process. 5 Creative Self-Care Journaling Prompts
• Writing/ Journaling= When your mind gets crowded it is a great idea to just pick up a writing utensil and start writing your way out of your thoughts. When you jot down your ideas and thoughts into a piece of paper it gives you a better grasp and understanding of them as well and just let go of them if you need to and move on with your day.
• Doodle/ Draw= This goes in hand with the creative and art journaling. I find art is a great outlet of emotions as well as a great way to spend time with yourself and give your creative mind a little love.
• Discover/ Get Inspired= Your mind sometimes needs rest of creating and do a refresh and restart to continue to move on. One of the things that I love doing to get inspired is going to Pinterest and social media platforms. You can feel inspired by anything surrounding you whether it is the way a building was built or the way you see the flowers bloom on the surface of the earth.
• Garden/ Go out to the World= I’m a homebody and I don’t like getting out of the house much though I must admit that I love the idea of traveling around the world and wish to one day have visited everywhere I wanted to. Gardening and getting out of the house can be a great way to rest even though you are not resting as in laying down. What I find about these two things that let you rest is the act of getting out of the routine of doing the same thing every single day and see something new and with gardening, you get to see the amazing nature show its beauty by blooming and working out its wonderful magic.
• Cook and/ or bake= This is a tricky one and not a lot of people may have mixed feelings about this. I have mixed feelings with it myself because I love the idea of baking but I don’t love the idea of washing the dishes afterward and I know you are supposed to wash them as you go but… I kind of find a way to procrastinate in that part. A lot of people love cooking and baking and I find it is a great way to just cook yourself a delicious meal or bake a little something now and then in a pampering way just for you.

Physical Health Ideas

Something that I used to a still does find myself doing is considering self-care a mindful thing only and in reality, is the combination of both emotional and physical health. My physical health is something that I’m tracking in my bullet journal habit tracker putting some of the following things to track in my day to day life because they are important to develop a healthy lifestyle.

• Sleep= I struggle with this one the most because I often have insomnia and I’m more of a night owl when it comes to my sleeping schedule and I am conscious that that is not very healthy for me. For someone like a nurse or doctor or anyone who has night shifts, this may not apply much but for me, as a senior high school student, it is very important to wake up early and develop a sleeping routine to accommodate the lifestyle that I’m living.
• Eat healthier= I am not the best at eating healthy though I should because no matter how young I am it is of great importance that I eat healthily so that I live my life feeling better and with the least health problems as possible. I know that I won’t just start a full-on extreme diet right away because that’s not healthy for me either and I still will like to eat junk food. But by slowly but surely implementing healthier meals to my day I know that I will be able to live happy and healthy.
• Exercise/ Yoga= This month I’m trying yoga and I will make sure to keep you guys updated about it in my social media and if you would like me to make a whole blog post about it make sure to comment on it in the comment section down below. Exercise in a way that is better for you and your health is another important thing to work alongside eating healthier. When I talk about yoga I’m not saying that right away I will be doing yoga every single day for thirty minutes or anything like that. I will probably do yoga 3-4 times a week 10-15 minutes depending on how I’m feeling.
• Drink More Water= Water is so but so important. Sometimes we forget to drink water though it is of great importance for one’s health. I find that I drink the most water on a busy day if I carry my water bottle with me from the start of the day and fill it up every time I finish it. For some reason, I get thirsty when I’m productive but if I don’t have my water bottle with me I will just ignore it so please try to drink more water because it is good for your health.
• Skin Care= your skin is part of your body (no… Really? I know, I discovered something amazing…) Skincare is something that you kind of figure out by trial and error as we are all so different and have different skin types and such but I would recommend you to start whenever you can knowing that you don’t have to go all fancy in it and that with a little bit of research and trial and error or success you will be good to go.

Productive Ideas

This is for those times when you have so much energy but don’t know what to do and feel overwhelmed by everything you have in your to-do list and goals. Here I put my favorite things to do at times like that.

• Fold your clothes= I’m not a fan of washing clothes but I like folding them and seeing one second the big amount of clothes messed up and the other everything neatly folded. I recommend you try folding your clothes in the KonMari way, it is the only way in which my clothes will fit the drawers and I just find it therapeutic to do.
• Change your bedsheets= There’s nothing like a set of bedsheets recently washed on your bed. It kind of has the same theme as folding the clothes but it is different.
• Clean up your living area= This is the last one regarding the act of cleaning and house chores. Mixed feelings about this one too because I sometimes like cleaning but most of the time I just like organizing and designating a place for everything and knowing where it is for when I need to find it. I love crafting so it’s good that I like organizing because after every crafting session that I have there is a total mess surrounding me and I’m glad that I enjoy cleaning it up.
• Learn something new= I love learning new things whether it is something digitally creative like web design or audio production or things like how to create a notebook and learning a new language. Learning is something that I try to make time for as I need to gain knowledge about things in life I want to know about even when they are small things like creating a little notepad and such.
• Plan/ Get Your Life Together= You guys may know that I love planning by the few posts that I have published about my bullet journal and planners. When I am feeling overwhelmed with life, one of my go-to to do’s is planning and sorting things out through lists in my bullet journal and other planners. It honestly helps me to put my mind at ease by just having a plan or at list sorting everything out in lists.

Winding Down Ideas

Sometimes, you just need to rest to keep up with life. You want to avoid burn out as much as possible and that’s why it is okay to have some days in which you just rest so that you can have some downtime because at the end of the day you are not a machine and you need rest.

• Watch TV Show= Watching a TV show or movies are a great way to wind down, I would even consider this educational because you learn from the stories since its sort of like a book that is in the storytelling department. Television has art and you learn from it so you don’t have to feel bad for watching it and really, you don’t have to feel bad for giving yourself love and being you because you are the only one who can truly know where are your limits and when you need to rest.
• Pampering= I try to give myself at least 1 pampering day a week in which I spent it washing my hair, I shave my legs and paint my nails and just feel relax. You can do some skincare and anything that you feel like doing to take care of you and just wind down for a full day and appreciate the beauty of just living.

I really really really hope you found this blog post helpful as I had a lot of fun writing it. If you want to take your self-love and care to the next level I encourage you to check out my previous posts as well as subscribe to my email list so that you can get weekly newsletters on the content posted and get the workbook I made just for you on everything regarding this month’s theme of self-love and care. Do you have any favorite self-care activity?

Be Yourself, Be Happy, Be Human.
xoxo, Patrick.