Modeling Healthy Self Care
Ever say to someone you need some self care and they look at you like you just said a 4-letter word?!
Self care gets a bad wrap sometimes. I’ve heard people lump it in with “being selfish.” This couldn’t be further from the truth.
We do self care so that we can be present and caring with others. And when you’re married, it’s important to model self care for yourself and also for your spouse. Helping you be the best version of you for yourself and for your marriage!
Added Self Care Benefit of Teaching Children to Value Caring of Themselves
An added benefit to self care is showing your children the value of doing activities that create life long healthy habits. By modeling self care to your children, you’re helping them learn to care and value themselves so they can know how to handle life’s stressors when they come up.
What is Healthy Self Care?
Modeling healthy self care first starts with knowing what it actually means to you…
Self care is a way of taking care of yourself to help cope with life’s daily stressors and triggers. It can help you turn inward for a bit so that you can have the energy needed when you need to engage with your spouse, children, outside activities and responsibilities.
Finding out what self care activities are best for you is about learning more about your specific needs. What feeds you? Energizes you? Helps you tap into your creative nature? Calms and soothes you?
These are areas to explore and become curious about within yourself to learn more about what healthy self care activities are right for you.
Long Lasting Self Care Choices
One important part of caring for yourself is discovering activities you need that are long lasting and can become part of your daily routine.
Some ways to figure this out are to pay attention to:
- Information you gather on a daily basis. This can be information you gather from media outlets, friends, family,
- What do you actually want to feed your mind with each day. Having some self care routines around what your mind consumes can be extremely important to your well being.
Another example is what does your body need.
- What type of physical activity does your body need?
- Are there types of foods it needs?
- Is your body staying hydrated?
Social Activities
- What are you needing regarding social interactions?
- Are there friends that you want to connect with that “fill your cup” (so to speak).
- Activities you’ve been wanting to try out?
- Book clubs you want to join, art classes you want to take, music lessons, etc. The list is endless and is specific and unique to you!
Self care is such an important aspect to our everyday life. And it has so many beneficial ripples. Like when you throw a pebble into the water and you can see all of the ripples that result. Same too is self care…not only do you benefit but so too does your your marriage, your family, friend relationships…the list can go on and on…
