Do you make these 7 self care mistakes?
As busy women, we can often make simple self care mistakes. Building habits that zap our energy instead of replenishing it. In this post, I’ll share some of the most common self care mistakes and how you can fix them to create your own personalised approach.
Mistake # 1 - Comparing your self care habits to others
When trying to improve your self care, it’s all too easy to look at what everyone else is doing and try to imitate them. Maybe you see the latest trend is to do an hour of meditation first thing in the morning or hot yoga three times a week.
You’d love to follow suit but you’ve got young children to look after and/or a thriving business to take care of - feelings of inadequacy start to creep in. You start thinking about what you “should” be doing and endeavour to cram in that hour’s meditation, despite the fact you don’t even enjoy it.
Solution: Make self care personal - instead of looking at what others are doing and comparing yourself, why not take inspiration from them but make your self care habits your own?
Identify what self care means for you - if you don’t enjoy meditation, don’t do it. Instead, find things you do enjoy, that does replenish your energy, and build those into your daily/weekly routine.
By making self care a truly personal experience, you’re more likely to fit it into your day and, most importantly, enjoy it.
Mistake # 2 - Putting self care at the bottom of your to-do list
Self care is usually the last thing on our to-do lists - with so many other things to get through, we put ourselves right at the bottom. It seems almost indulgent when there are lunches to make, emails to answer and proposals to finish.
Even if you start with good intentions, it’s often your self care that gets moved around or cancelled at the expense of what others need. Before long, another day goes by and you’ve done nothing to look after yourself.
Solution: Self care is like putting your own oxygen mask on before helping others. By making it a priority, you’ll have more energy and headspace to help others in a meaningful and productive way.
Regular self care that nourishes and energises you also means you’re at your optimum - emotionally, physically and mentally. You’re more able to deal with unexpected challenges and find the necessary solutions.
Mistake # 3 - Making your self care habits too big
When attempting to change an aspect of our lives, embracing new habits is an important part of the process. But all too often, we believe that in order to make these big changes, we need monumental new habits. Habits that show the world we mean business.
In a bid to take your self care seriously, you commit to running every day or completing 30-minutes of journaling every morning without fail. You read the Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod or The 5 am Club by Robin Sharma and decide this is how you’re going to live your life. But after the first couple of weeks, you’re more drained than when you started.
Solution: What if the secret to successful behaviour change isn’t to ‘go big or go home’? What if it’s actually the complete opposite? Instead of big new self-care habits, you look for tiny changes to implement, ones you can stick to consistently. Ones that suit your lifestyle and your self care journey
If you’re looking to build a daily journaling practise, start with writing three things you’re grateful for each morning, rather than committing to writing five pages. Tiny habits, done consistently, lead to big changes - the compound effect in action.
Mistake # 4 - Being rigid in your approach to self care
While consistency is key to building lasting behaviour change, it can become all-consuming. You begin to see the desired effect of better self care habits and so you make them an integral part of your daily routine. If you miss a walk or your daily reading, you begin to berate yourself and feel a sense of disappointment
And while creating non-negotiable self care habits has its benefits, having too many can leave you feeling even more frazzled than before.
Solution: Try to leave room for flexibility. Work out your non-negotiables, e.g. taking daily supplements or drinking enough water, but let your other self care practices become less rigid. Whether it’s flexibility in terms of the time of day you do a particular habit or the habit itself, allow self care to remain personal to you.
Listen to your instincts, pay attention to how you feel in the moment. If you don’t feel like going for a walk and would prefer to curl up with a book and a cuppa, do that instead. You’ll feel calmer and in control of your daily self care.
Mistake # 5 - Thinking you don’t have time for self care in your day
With a busy home and working life, building self care into your day can feel like an impossible task. You know the benefits, but when you think about it, you can’t imagine how you’ll fit it in. Even if it is at the top of your to-do list.
Our daily commitments can put untold pressure on us and time management is a skill in itself. Adding new things to an already busy schedule can make you feel stressed - which is the complete opposite of what healthy self care looks like.
Solution: As well as making new self care habits as small as possible, stacking them onto habits you already have is a great way to build them into your daily routine. Habit stacking is something behaviour change experts BJ Fogg and James Clear advocate, as they realise the power of using existing habits in order to build new ones.
So why not look for empty moments in your day? When the kettle is boiling, you could do 10 squats or a minute of mindful breathing. When you’re waiting in a queue, you could think of three things you’re grateful for. Using these empty moments means you don’t have to add yet more items to your daily schedule.
Mistake # 6 - Making new self care habits hard to remember
When you first start a new habit, you’re full of motivation and excitement. It’s why you buy new running shoes when you first sign up to Couch to 5K or a new notebook when you commit to journaling. The prospect of positive change is an exciting one.
But after a while, new habits become mundane, even hard to complete. The initial excitement wears off - your new notebook is left unopened and the trainers are at the back of the cupboard gathering dust. Moreover, you feel disappointed in yourself, irritated that you never seem to stick with anything new.
Solution: By making self care habits tiny and fitting them into empty moments in your day, you’re already two-thirds of the way there. The final step is to make your new tiny habits easy to remember by using habit prompts. Doing so helps your brain remember to do your new habit long after willpower and motivation have left the building
If you want to write three things you’re grateful for when you get into bed every night, leave your journal on your pillow. If you want to read a page from your book with your morning coffee, leave it by the kettle. Doing so helps your brain pick up the new habit and develop new neural pathways. Eventually, you’ll no longer need the prompts.
One further way to keep motivation high is to use a habit tracker. Ticking off those new daily habits each time you perform them is a great way to log your progress and maintain consistency. (I have an awesome new weekly planner in the Self Care Survival Kit Shop that has a Habit Tracker that is pretty awesome, just saying 😉)
Mistake # 7 - Putting pressure on yourself
We’re often our own worst critics. When we don’t do something we planned to do or complete something in the way we’d hoped, we’re quick to feel disappointed with ourselves. Even irritated. The negative way we speak to ourselves is never the way we’d speak to friends or family.
Ironically we can do this about our approach to self care - we know the behaviours we want to do, but when we don’t do them, we judge ourselves more critically than we’d judge anyone else.
Solution: Take the pressure off yourself. Allow for days when things don’t get to plan. Sometimes the best self-care is doing nothing at all. Just sitting and being present in the moment or enjoying your favourite cup of coffee. Give yourself permission to do what feels right.
Each day and each week will be different. Even each season. You may find you enjoy different self care habits in the winter months than in the summer. A seasonal approach can also reflect the stage of life you’re at too – our interests change over time, so our self care practices should reflect this as much as possible.
Personal self-care - next steps
Self care is about making sure the best version of yourself is out there to achieve what you want to achieve in your life - and to help others live their best lives too. It’s about having a positive mindset and giving yourself permission to put self-care at the centre of your daily life.
Try these small next steps to help:
Add a self-care section to your vision board. Take the idea of a personalised approach and add images/words that resonate with you.
Consider your self-care on a scale - what would 10 out of 10 look like? Where are you now on that scale? What would you need to do to move one step closer to that 10?
What simple self-care habit could you stack onto something you already do? Remember small and simple is the key to success.
If you are in need of some guidance when it comes to self care, join me for a Self Care Coaching Hour where we can work through what you need, what’s right for you and how to bring more self care into your life
