Top 10 Takeaways from the 31-day Easy Self-care Challenge

One of the biggest lessons every caregiver learns is that in order to take care of anyone else, you need to take care of yourself first. It’s simply impossible to pour from an empty cup!

But how do you find time for self-care when there just doesn’t seem to be any extra time? During our 31-day Easy Self-care Challenge, it was easy to see where I was falling short – and where I was doing well. I feel I did pretty well overall, but it was an effort to stay focused and keep up with even the bare minimum foundational elements of self-care, such as getting enough sleep, eating nourishing food and staying well-hydrated, taking some time for myself, and making sure to get in some body movement every day.

Thinking back on it, following are the top 10 takeaways from the challenge; I’m trying to carry these forward into this shiny New Year so this can be my best “self-care year” ever!

• Make a commitment and set your intention … It was great to have one month in which to focus on self-care, and I can feel my commitment slipping a bit without that direct focus. Just yesterday I signed up for a new 21-day program for “Face Yoga” because I wanted to get myself back on a routine.
• Choose some easy (yet effective) ways to show yourself you care … It’s important to feel a sense of achievement, so don’t overload yourself with unrealistic expectations. Even easy to do self-care actions can have a big impact on the quality of your life – like drinking warm lemon water every morning. Or drifting off to sleep to a favorite diffused essential oil. Or stepping outside for a short walk 3x a week. Taking the slow and steady route towards incorporating new habits into your routine is far more likely to result in success!
• Anchor your new self-care actions to existing behaviors …. Many of our challengers found that combining NEW self-care actions with EXISTING self-care actions helped them to stay on track. One example is drinking an extra glass of water in the morning (before or after your coffee or tea), and again in the evening (before or after brushing your teeth). Or adding some relaxing music to the background while you brush your teeth in the AM or PM (or both!).
• Layer your self-care actions to get double- and triple duty out of them … One challenger walked her dog while joining our weekly chat via telephone, and the next week, she did a facial mask while joining our weekly chat. Bravo! You could also meditate while diffusing essential oil, or mix essential oil into your everyday body lotion, or do a foot treatment pack while watching a movie. Have fun finding new ways to care for yourself despite having a shortage of time!
• Acknowledge the self-care actions you take … While you’re being creative, be sure to acknowledge that you have proactively done something nice for yourself, no matter how simple it may be. It could be choosing to listen to some favorite tunes while driving, and enjoying that moment (rather than doing business calls on your ear buds while you drive). Or just stopping at the end of day to take a break, put your feet up, and admire the sunset. You did it.
• Practice saying “NO” … No to short deadlines. No to requests that can easily be pushed into next week. No to time-sucks that take you off your course and keep you from doing what you know you need to do for your own peace of mind.
• Morph any negative self-talk you may have into a positive … It’s easy to get down on yourself when you don’t meet a goal or can’t keep up with a crazed schedule, but it’s more productive to think about it from another viewpoint. Specifically, you are part of a grand experiment of your own design, and you are learning, little by little, how you can make self-care a focal point in your life. It’s not meant to happen overnight!
• Objectively observe where you have challenges, and build your self-awareness of where you need to focus going forward … I absolutely have a problem with getting 8 hours of sleep every night; I’m a night owl and always have been. I’ve started sneaking in little naps during the day to make up the difference – and that is a total revelation to me. I’ve also had to up the ante on my water intake, since I seem to need more as I get older (we all do). If I don’t drink enough water, I have painful leg cramps at night. That only took me about two years to figure out!
• Be part of a group … I can’t say enough about how much it has helped me on several occasions to have support from others who are trying to do tbe same thing. Great for information sharing, great for camaraderie, and just plain fun.
• Never give up … If you really want to improve your self-care, you can – even while you are caring for others. It will take focus and determination, and it will probably take more effort than you thought it would. One of our challengers told the story of how she had once participated in a whitewater rafting trip in Colorado. She didn’t know how to swim and was quite nervous about the whole thing. The guide gave her group fairly extensive safety training before the trip began, but he closed by telling them that the most important point was this: you have to participate in your own rescue. I just love that!