4 Steps to Making Your Self-Care A Priority – And why it matters

17 Feb 4 Steps to Making Your Self-Care A Priority – And why it matters

By Anita Horry

“I can’t find time for myself. It’s so hard as I’m always there looking after others. I just feel guilty about taking time out for myself and feel ashamed I have to put my clients, business and family after me. I’d feel so selfish if I had to do that.  How can I get over that feeling?”

Caring for yourselves takes patience and time, and while our modern lifestyles often force us to neglect our physical and mental health, we need to make a conscious effort to spend time looking after our bodies, minds, and souls.

Self-care should never be an afterthought and should be a high priority for everyone. Simply setting aside time to take care of yourself is the first step to prioritizing self-care.

Can you relate?

In fact, it’s common among intelligent, action-oriented, go-getter women to feel this way. We think we’re supposed to be Superwoman, ignoring signals from our body (i.e., exhaustion, foggy thinking, headaches, weight gain, etc.) in order to take care of everyone else’s needs. Though we know better, we rarely stop long enough to take care of our own.

Yet, the more we ignore those signals, the louder they become, until we reach a breaking point and have to make a choice. We have to slow down or stop in order to tend to our health. None of us really wants to let it get to that.

What are the five types of self-care?

From taking a few minutes a day to meditate, to eating healthily, to getting enough rest, self-care comes in many shapes and forms:

• Emotional – To understand our deeper selves, what we want in life, and how we plan to get there, we need to reflect on our emotions. This type of self-care helps us to connect to and process our emotions. Writing in a journal and engaging in a creative hobby are examples of emotional self-care.
• Physical – Managing our physical health has a ripple effect on our mental wellbeing. Physical self-care ideas include practising what you teach or join another fitness class, sleeping enough, and eating healthily.
• Mental – Stimulating our minds by reading, educating ourselves, and interacting with interesting people is essential to our overall well-being.
• Spiritual – Thinking of the bigger picture by engaging in meditative practices and spending time appreciating nature forms a big part of our understanding of the world and our place in it.
• Social – We should spend time with those we love and care for to enhance our social relationships.

Is it selfish to prioritize yourself?

While it might seem selfish and counteractive to take some time for yourself rather than spending it on someone else, it’s in fact highly productive and will help your relationships in the long run in a variety of ways.

1. Spending time focusing on and improving your own mental and physical health improves our general wellbeing and makes us more pleasant to be around.
2. We are less likely to resent our loved ones if we feel we aren’t forced to always do what they want, on their time.

If you struggle with Superwoman Syndrome, here are four things you can do that will help you start prioritizing your own needs and self-care, even with a packed schedule.

1. Take an honest, objective inventory of your beliefs

Take a few minutes to write down the top five reasons you are unable to pencil in some time for self-care in your schedule. Examine this list carefully.

Does your list look a little (or a lot) like this ?

1. I don’t have time to prep healthy food to take with me for lunch.
2. My kids have so many activities that it feels like I’m rushing around to be there for them from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep.
3. Things are super stressful at work, so I barely have time to pee, let alone fit in a workout during the day.
4. My spouse/partner works long hours, so the bulk of the at-home responsibilities (cooking, cleaning, childcare) rests on my shoulders.
5. I’m so mentally and physically exhausted that all I want to do at the end of the night is sit down in front of the TV or the computer and unwind for a few minutes before I have to do it all over again.

Whatever is on your list specifically, and as real and immovable as it may all feel, recognize that they are simply very powerful beliefs that you hold about yourself and your time.

So often we get stuck looking at our responsibilities and commitments and believe that just because this is the way we’ve been living for a long time, it’s the only way it could ever be.  Changing things is either not even a consideration, or feels too disruptive to everyone else and you can’t bring yourself to do that. That belief results in frustration, unhappiness and resentment toward the very people we love and care for.

What if you choose to prove these beliefs wrong?  If the way your life is currently going doesn’t align with the way you want it to look and feel, you have the power make different choices.

Sometimes just realizing you have that power is enough to start shifting toward a new perspective. What if you:

• communicate your needs?
• ask for help, or lean a little more on your spouse, family, friends, community?
• delegate or outsource certain tasks at work or at home?
• say “no” to commitments that don’t absolutely light you up?
• invest your time more deliberately (instead of doing things because somebody else expects you to or because you feel that it’s expected of you)?
• prioritise your own workout time as your FIRST priority when organizing your weekly schedule?

One of the greatest gifts we could ever give our loved ones is to be a role model for what it looks like to be an empowered human being who creates her life with intention.

Role model what it looks like to take responsibility for your happiness, be independent, resourceful, solution-oriented, and create the life you want.

Sometimes we might find ourselves taking care of our spouse’s needs at the expense of our own, and we begin to feel resentful because we’re not getting the same in return. There’s a big difference between giving unconditionally without attachment or expectation, simply because it feels good, and giving for the sake of validation or reciprocation.

If you’re going to give, give from inspiration and unconditional love rather than from a need to feel needed, or an assumed sense of responsibility where there might not really be a need for it.

2. Journal your short term goals

When we talk about goals, we often refer to long-term plans. It can be daunting to think about where you might be in 5 years, and when prioritizing our self-care routines, it’s more beneficial to focus on our short-term aspirations.

Consider what you would like to achieve at the end of each hour, day, and week. Journal these thoughts and add them to a weekly planner. Research shows that keeping a weekly or monthly calendar or a to-do list helps you manage your time better while improving your productivity levels. It can also be a great stress relief to check things off your lists.

When we write down our hopes and dreams on paper, we are more likely to seriously consider them in our daily activities and are constantly reminded of what steps we need to take to make our goals a reality.

It’s important to pay attention to how you feel and reflect on your progress, making sure not to put extra pressure on yourself and prioritize your health over your career and social aspirations.

We make time for the things on which we place the highest value.

Start a new list. This time, write down your top five priorities in life, the things you value most.

Maybe your list looks something like this:

1. My kids/my relationship with my spouse.
2. My health.
3. My family and friends.
4. My profession.

With this list in hand, pull up your calendar and evaluate whether or not your schedule and commitments reflect the order of what’s on this list.

In other words, if your top priorities are your kids, and your relationship with your spouse, and your health, does your calendar reflect that, or do you see potential for change in how you spend your time?

3. Don’t “compare and despair”

Looking around, particularly on social media, it can feel like everyone else is doing so much better than us. It’s easy to look at others and think, “Boy! So-and-So really has it together!” based solely on what they are putting out for you to see online, or what they share with you in casual conversation. But you never really know what anyone else is going through until you’ve walked in their shoes.

We think that because So-and-So works hard, runs a tight home, and never seems to take time for herself, but looks happy and energized all the time, that we must hold ourselves to this same standard if we want to be successful in our own life.

Do you even really want what So-and-So has? And do you think that what you see is all there is? Most of the time we compare ourselves to people who we may admire from afar, without really seeing the whole picture. Not only is there enough success and happiness for everyone, everyone’s success and happiness looks different.

Give yourself a break and stop comparing yourself to anyone else. Celebrate others’ successes, but honour your life’s priorities. Find a pace that works for you.

Ask yourself, “When will enough be enough? When will I finally allow myself to relax and take care of me?” The most frequent answer I get from most people I work with goes something like this: “I don’t know. I guess I never really plan time for myself because there’s always something else that needs to get done.”

Remember: we make time for those things that matter most. You are a bright, strong, empowered, and caring person. Make sure you matter to you the way you matter to those you care about most.

4. Pay attention to the way you feel and switch up your schedule

While habits can be comforting and convenient, it’s important not to become complacent in our daily activities and to continue to challenge ourselves to be the best we can be. The best way to do this is to explore new ways of doing things by adding, removing, and switching our daily schedules.

Doing things differently helps to take us out of our comfort zone and activate different parts of our bodies and brains. Changing our routine can help us figure out how to better achieve our goals by learning from experience.

What are good self-care ideas?

• Practice your Pilates, but don’t overdo it.
• Meditate daily.
• Try a self care shower routine –Joseph Pilates mentions it in his book ‘Return to Life through Contrology’. He writes a whole section about “Bodily House-Cleaning with Blood Circulation’.
• Engage in a creative outlet or hobby to get your creative juices flowing.
• Make sure you get between 7 and 9 hours of good quality sleep each night.
• Laugh every day.
• Spend time outdoors and in the sun. Experts state that getting between 10 – 30 minutes of sun exposure each day can increase our vitamin D levels.
• Make time to cook and eat healthy and nutritious food.
• Spend time with people who bring you up and avoid those who bring you down.

Final Thoughts on Making Yourself a Priority

The day you decide to put yourself first is the day you will start making real progress towards your goals in life. The values and beliefs that matter most will propel you to make the changes you need in order to prioritize yourself.

Whether your self-improvement goals are changing by the day, or stern and steadfast… putting your needs, goals, and priorities ahead of others is a challenge you’ll have to accept if you want to live your best and most happy life.

^{About the author:  Anita Horry}

Pilates Master trainer, Wellness and Business Coach Anita Horry is the Creator of Anita Horry Academy and co-founder of Pilates Centre and Amanaya Retreats, a premium Pilates and Yoga retreat centre. Anita’s passion is to help wellness entrepreneurs to become their best version of themselves and lead a successful business without the hassles and stresses traditionally associated with it. To learn more about Anita visit anitahorryacademy.com and follow her on Instagram, and Facebook.