REAL Self-Care
/Radical Extreme Amazing Life Changing Self-Care
We have been talking about this notion of self -care. I have been meditating and working to create a program for self-care that really resonates with the vision I have in my head and it is coming together but still a work in progress. It is an awesome thing to consider working with and it keeps popping up in my path which makes me sure I am supposed to create around this topic.
Areas of Self-Care
Self-care encompasses all areas of our life. It means taking care of ourselves- body, mind and spirit. We can start learning to do this by looking at our health, what we eat, if we exercise or keep our weight in a healthy range. It means looking at your inner thought patterns and seeing if they serve you, it can include finding a power greater than yourself to connect to and with and use for guidance. These are just a few examples of the internal work of self-care. There is exterior work as well. It includes looking at your surroundings both at work and home and where ever else you may be on a regular basis. Do they represent you as you wish to be seen and feel? Are they spacious or cluttered increasing the clutter in you head? Do you have free space for energy to flow and move and bring new into your life? It means looking at those people in your life and really evaluating if they are serving your best interest and does having them in your life help you work towards reaching your soul’s contract? How do you talk to yourself? Inner conflict or an inner bully can destroy all efforts of self-care. Do you expect respect from others in your life and do you treat yourself with respect? Do you have a bucket list or a vision board? Do you have boards on Pinterest full of things you expect to have one day? I want you too expect and truly know in your inner goddess and higher self that you deserve and should expect to treat yourself like the goddess you are.
Start where you are- taking care of ourselves
Let’s evaluate… I encourage you to pop over to Kristen Neff and her self compassion page and take her self-compassion test to get a feel of where you are. If you have already healthy and strong self-compassion congratulations and please share some tips on what you do to nurture yourself. For those of us who not as high on the self-compassion scale as we would like it give us a place to start. For example if you scored high on being judgmental about your flaws you can start there. If you feel inadequate when you fail that is a good starting point. Do not use this as a reason to beat yourself up. Being rough on yourself for not scoring what you would like on a self-compassion test defeats what we are working towards and is quite ironic actually. This is going to get your started on the internal self-care that is of utmost importance. I hope you have a journal by now, if you do not, please get one and record your scores from the self-compassion quiz so you can not only know where to start but can look back at the end of this journey and see how far you have come. This step will start you our on self-care for for your mind. We will move on to body and spirit and then the external work that goes along with creating a comprehensive self-care program. Please share in the comments if you are comfortable doing so how you are doing with self-compassion.
Take away tip- If you do not truly and deeply connect to yourself and love yourself it will be impossible too truly accept and give love to others. Look at you! Look into your eyes in the mirror as many times as you can throughout the day- don’t look at the “flaws” you don’t like but really look into your eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul and the soul is YOU. Look into your eyes and say to yourself “I love you- notice your beautiful eyes and the expression and depth of them” Say “I love you” over and over as long as it takes for you to really feel and believe this. It is amazing what this one step can do for you. Try it.
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