7 Essential Self-Care Habits For Times of Stress
- Amy Holguin
- Sep 30, 2021
- 4 min read
Looking for ways to increase your wellbeing? These simple self-care habits can easily be added into our daily routine. As a result of practicing them ourselves, we felt more energetic, more positive, and focused.
We hope that this blog helps you introduce a bit of stress relief into your everyday lives.
Regardless of where your stress is coming.
1. Practice Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is all about realizing your imperfections and being kind to yourself. It is the ability to recognize our imperfection as humans, maintain a sense of mindfulness and awareness of them even when they cause us pain, and have the ability to treat ourselves with kindness and not harsh criticism.
Self-compassion in recent years has been explore through much research and in-depth studies. It has been proven to increase our resilience and motivation to make positive changes in our lives.
When we have compassion for ourselves and treat ourselves with kindness, we will be more oriented to do the same for other people. When you start there everything radiates out.
“Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.” Brené Brown
2. Reduce Time Spent on Your Phone
Is your phone the first thing you see when you wake up? Is it the last thing you see before you sleep?
A constant influx of information, text and social media alerts can take an emotional toll on our mental health.
In today’s society most people have no bounties between themselves and their phones. The cell phone has taken up constant residence in our lives.
It may be impossible and impractical to ditch your phone altogether. However you can reap a great deal of benefits by setting some boundaries and taking small breaks from using your phone.
Some of the best ways of doing this are
- Set up screen time alerts
- Turn off notifications during certain times of the day
- Set time in your calendar to turn off your phone for a period (maybe even a day)
- Take a break from social media for a few days
The benefits are well worth it. It’s incredible how caught up we can become in the media and scrolling purposelessly through social media. It’s good to turn off from it all and give yourself the attention instead.
3. Acknowledge When You Need Rest
“Hard work is the key to success, right?” but how can you work hard if you cannot rest. We all know that we need rest, often we realize it but do nothing about it.
The fact is that the right amount of rest can actually boost your productivity . And even boost your immune system.
Whether it’s 5-minutes of breathing in-between working on projects, or taking a break from screens, taking small breaks and making sure to get 8 hours of sleep each night can make a huge difference in your life.
You deserve to rest, and when you do, you’re able to come back stronger than before with better metal and physical energy.
“Self-care is never a selfish act—it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.” Parker Palmer
4. Move Your Body
Exhaustion is not always from a lake of sleep. Often time, the feeling of drowsiness during the day can come from a lake of movement.
Movement and exercise is a important part of reducing stress levels and increasing your mood.
Movement can be anything from a quick walk to pilates or yoga session or even a run or a hike.
Even if you don’t feel like doing it, just try something small. You will be amazed at your change in mood and the difference that it can make.
5. De-Clutter Your Life
Cluttered environments often increase stress and effect your mental health when your living environment is constantly cluttered.
Taking small steps to clean up the spaces that you live in can promote better mental clarity and a positive mental state.
If you're looking for ways to declutter or reduce to amount of things in your life, check out these blogs and books to help you get started.
6. Nourish Yourself
Food is one of the most important reassures you can give your body, soul and mind.
How you feed yourself matters immensely, and it can radically transform your self-care.
Often when people are stressed, they react in two different ways when it comes to food.
1. We under eat and lose our appetite when we are stressed out or anxious.
2. We emotionally eat and try to reduce our stress by eating comfort food and foods that we are craving at the time (usually sugary and fatty foods)
When you are feeling either of these ways, without judgment, acknowledging how you are feeling. If eating helps you then make the effort to surround yourself with healthy options and nourishing food choices. Emotional eating does not have to negatively affect you. If you can practice being mindful to the way you eat (the amount, and food choices) you can even help to heal your body.
7. Have a Form of Mindfulness Practice
This could take the form of meditation. Mindfulness has been shown in research to help with stress in many ways. It does not have to be a long meditation session either. It can be as simple as taking a few minutes to sit with a cup of coffee and focus your attention on the smell and sensations of that moment.
If there is one thing, I have learned from practicing mindfulness myself, it is that 5-minutes can make a world of differed to my mental state.
“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.” Oprah
Self-Care
These practices and habits are simple enough that you can forget the amount of difference they can actually make.
Don’t underestimate the impact a small step. They can create a lasting and life changing difference in your mental health. Self-care is about creating a sustainable way of living a joyful life with contentment.
“Self-care is not a waste of time; self-care makes your use of time more sustainable.” Jackie Viramontez
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