either a massagea session of running on a daily basis or the activity we choose should be connected with our needs at a given moment in order to make us feel good because otherwise, it will lose its value when it comes to providing us welfare. This does not mean that a bath or a yoga session are bad or have benefits for your health. This is what the psychiatrist talks about Pooja Lakshmiauthor of the book Real self carewho affirms that it would be essential to detect if our personal self-care routines chosen really serve us for something or are we falling into the trap of “false personal self-care”. To detect it, you should ask yourself the following questions, is what you choose motivated by you or because others say it is right? The psychiatrist recommends taking a second to determine what drives you to choose your self-care practice. That is, ask yourself if you are going to practice yoga because it gives you time and space in your life to slow down and focus on your breathing and your body or have you signed up just to take the selfie in the obligatory mirror and upload it to your social networks and enter into that kind of competition with your friends and colleagues for who does it better, challenging your limits. According to the expert, if you motivation comes from real enjoyment of the activity it is much more likely that you will feel better and more renewed after practicing it.
When it comes to achievement and not self-care
Self-care is born from listening and connecting with what gives you peace and helps you feel good.
And common mistake that confuses us when it comes to knowing if it is self care staff is consider this as a form of achievement. For example, you go to a spin class twice a week but instead of using the 45 minutes to “sweat it off,” you’re hyper-focused on where you stand on the leaderboard, or you’re just thinking about how many classes you should be going to that week? practicing it which causes you the most stress. Or like when you force yourself to get a number of steps a day so that your mobile application tells you “good job” when in reality you are exhausted. In addition, the psychiatrist, an expert in women’s health, also maintains that We also don’t need bubble baths to beat exhaustion. because they are easy paths that do not improve or address our stress or our anxiety daily. “We live in a society that makes it really difficult for you to prioritize your mental health and well-being, so we are constantly fighting against the grain,” she said. And the alternatives she suggests are “real self-care” tools, requiring some soul-searching to find the ones that work best for us. But if you are not sure, don’t worry because we have compiled the best guide to find the self-care that suits you.
Do yoga only if it makes you feel good
Do yoga if it really makes you feel less stressed but if it becomes just another thing you need to do to fill the time or you are obsessed with the achievements of the tasks. postures or all you want is to get likes on Instagram, let it. Yoga is effective when you don’t have to do the most difficult asana right at the start of class or you feel guilty about taking that time away from your family. Or because maybe what you had to do instead was write or spend time doing other creative activities you like.
Self-care is not another task on your list
If you think of self-care as a goal, it becomes another task to cross off your to-do list, and it doesn’t work either. But when you think of him as own and real decisionYes, it can have a profound impact on the quality of your life. In addition, and as stated by the expert in personal self-care and beauty, Eva Villar, author of the book Self care for all seasons (Ed. Zenith), “no obsession can be called self-care. Self-care born from listeningof the self knowledgehaving done the exercise to connect with what gives you peace, that helps you feel good and that fits into your life to make it more authentic, fuller and healthier for you. The moment the word requirement, obsession or demand appears, we are stopping taking care of ourselves”.
matter of priorities
As Dr. Lashkmi says, the hard part is figuring out what we want when we have so many tasks to do. The objective is begin to balance work and family life in a way that allows us live according to our values. And this inevitably also means saying no to many things. Remember that “any activity in which you need validation is not chosen from a genuine need because what you choose from your own being will never need validation from anyone other than yourself” Eva Villar clarifies.
The importance of self-awareness
The wellness expert also insists on the importance of the path of self-knowledge as the main tool. “Each one of us is different and we need different care that also changes and evolves at different stages of life. It is useless to copy or acquire habits foreign because it is possible that they do not fit as one needs” points out Villar.
4 commandments to discover the form of self-care that suits you
- Connect with your interior and ask yourself questions to know if you really enjoy when you paint, read, go on a trip, spend time with your partner… The enjoyment of that emotion is what will mark us when we do things that we really choose from our inner being and are activities that charge our batteries and that They provide energy by being grateful for the time we can dedicate to them.
- Ask yourself if your body needs to do sports to be well, Eat Healthy, rest, make decisions… because all these activities must be chosen from a kind place with yourself. For example, if doing a table of exercises every day and it is very hard for you, it is better that you go for a walk for half an hour or choose another activity that helps you move your body without this being a punishment, because then it will no longer be beneficial for you because it is an enormous effort to carry it out.
- Same with eating healthy. establish a way of eating that is simple and comfortable for you without making it unfeasible in the medium or long term.
- Try, discard and find those habits that do work for youi, that are viable within your daily life and with which you can commit yourself in the long term from a friendly place and with a degree of enjoyment implicit in each one of them. If not, they won’t work.
Why Fitting Into Society Won’t Bring You Happiness
“Fitting into society is not going to give us the happiness” affirms Eva Villar. In addition, the expert recognizes that not only that but that “it is necessary to connect with our true needs and make drastic changes in our lifestyle and not all of us are prepared to leave our comfort zone”. For this reason, nothing How to have the courage to want to know yourself.
Doing nothing is also taking care of yourself
as it aims Amagoia Eizaguirreauthor of the book The little book of healthy habits (Ed, Encourages), “we must begin to listen to each other more and stop looking so much to the outside and decide what to do or not do in our free hours.” The first thing we should do is stop, simplify life much more and leave us with so many complications and seek a balance to be comfortable with ourselves. Even accept that “doing nothing is also an option but every day it is more difficult for us to stop and simply rest”. It is important to have fun with what we do and “leave ourselves of so many obligations outside of the work environment”, he points out.
Other questions you should ask yourself to take care of yourself
As Amagoia Eizaguirre recommends, to find our form of self-care that suits us, we should also ask ourselves these questions:
- What brings us peace of mind?
- What activity do we really disconnect with?
- What do we enjoy?
- What makes us feel comfortable with ourselves?
- What activity does time fly by?
Although the answers depend on each one of us, there will be people who prefer a book, others prefer to walk in the park… And if there is someone who does not know how to answer these questions, the ideal is to try different activities and see which one is used. It’s the one he enjoys the most. “Sometimes we are so disconnected from ourselves that we don’t even know what we like, so it is important to try new things to see if they add to or subtract from us” concludes Amagoia Eizaguirre.
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