We all want to be better about self care.  But let’s face it.   Establishing a self care routine is hard work.   Especially if you’ve lived for years without one.   Below are 3 common mistakes to avoid about self care and what to do instead. 

Don’t Let a Lack of Self Care Accumulate in Your Life

At some point, because it’s an additional responsibility for you to tend to, you’ll probably take a day off or so from sticking with your usual self-care guidelines in favor of doing more work or getting something urgent done.

At the time, you’ll feel like this is fine, and it might be a necessary sacrifice every now and again. However, if you start to make a habit out of giving up your self-care, you’re going to find yourself in a less than desirable state rather quickly.

The first aspect of self-care that seems to go most often are workouts or anything having to do with physical fitness and well-being. People often find this to be the least enjoyable part of self-care, so if they need a little extra time, they’ll skimp out on this most often.

This could mean missing a few workouts or getting some unhealthy fast food instead of cooking at home. On a rare occasion, yes, missing a workout isn’t going to be the end of the world for you.

But you need to be careful, because it’s so easy to turn that into a long running habit that can tank your health. One week you just miss one workout – the next week you miss a few more – the week after that you don’t work out at all – but you promise yourself you’ll get back in the gym soon.

The problem is, it gets harder to make the commitment again. This same thing goes for dieting. People will frequently turn towards an unhealthy diet, making it gradually more frequent over time.

They also lose sight of their mental health goals as well. It can become a serious problem quickly, though people tend not to be too upset about it until it’s too late. You might think that you can get away with focusing a lot more time on work, and you might feel fine about it at first.

However, over time, whether you recognize it or not, you’ll start to wear yourself out, and you won’t even realize it until you’re feeling overwhelmed. Then you’ll realize the strain you’ve put yourself under and you’ll regret the decision to slack on your self care.

Take an objective look at how much time you should be spending as a bare minimum on self-care and never dip below that. No matter how good you feel at that time, you always have some room for improvement, so don’t let yourself fail to try. Continue to strive for a better version of yourself.

Don’t Let Self Care Be About Short Term Relief

One aspect of self-care that’s often forgotten is how to solve your long term problems. When people try to engage in self-care, they only focus on one or two things that they think will help them feel a little better in that exact moment.

They don’t appropriately plan for anything else going in the future. This can lead to ineffectiveness over time, because you’re still burdened with the same issues, despite your short term self care efforts.

When people think they’re engaging in self-care, it tends to be pretty surface-level stuff that doesn’t help you a whole lot in the long run. It’ll be something like taking a long bath with some relaxing music or eating a healthy meal that day.

While these things can indeed help you feel better, they’re very short term options. They’re great to do on a weekly basis to help decompress or let go of some stress, but if it’s just something you do every now and then, it hardly helps you at all.

Consistency is the key to long term self-care. Even if they’re little things like relaxing baths, as long as you keep on doing it on a consistent basis, you’ll probably be seeing some long term results.

This is what sets your self-care routine apart from the ones that just give you some temporary relief. As long as you can keep up with your routine and don’t stop doing it, you’ll be able to better work out your problems.

Another important thing to remember is that while doing the simple, small things is a good start, it’s not enough to sustain you for a long period of time. Pair these types of activities with something more serious in order to improve in more areas with more efficiency over a period of time.

The main thing to take away is that you can’t expect to solve deep-rooted issues in your life with something that simple. It would be nice if that were the case, but unfortunately a lot more effort is required to properly rid yourself of not only one or two problems you’re facing, but a multitude of life issues.

Short term measures like that will only scratch the surface of your problems, addressing your symptoms but not the actual issue itself, leaving you vulnerable to being affected by it again and again. If you want to properly stop that cycle, you’ll need to dig a lot deeper.

Don’t wait until It’s Too Late to Indulge in Self Care

One common mistake in self-care is waiting until it’s too late. People will wait until their life is falling apart and they’re at their breaking point before trying to start solving any of their problems, instead of doing things ahead of time or just as they’re starting to get uncomfortable.

You don’t need to, and in fact shouldn’t, wait until the last minute to start getting into self-care, because it won’t help you nearly as much once you’ve reached that breaking point.

For some odd reason, people like to backburner their self-care for another time. They assume they’re too strong for it, and they’ll just power through their problems. Some see it as a sign of weakness to have to take care of yourself, which is simply absurd.

You should be willing to take care of yourself even if everything is going well, and you should definitely be taking a step in that direction if you’re feeling a bit rough. If you let your stress go unchecked for extended periods of time, it can have many adverse effects on your life.

You can start to see it physically in the form of hair loss, weight fluctuation, nausea, and even rashes or aches. Mentally, you can certainly feel the effects, with it bringing on anxiety, depression, and possibly even thoughts of hurting yourself if the situation is extreme enough.

Before you ever get to this point, you should be on some kind of self-care routine. You don’t need to wait for times to get tough before you start. You can start as soon as you want.

In fact, it’s usually better to start early on so that you’ve already built a support system for yourself when the hard times do come around. Even if you feel great, start doing the basics of self-care.

Start getting on a workout routine and meditating for your mental health. By doing this, you’ll start to develop a great foundation that you can work off of in the future, making it far less difficult to handle stressful situations. You won’t need to lay the groundwork, because it’ll already be there.

If you really think about it, what’s the worst thing that could happen by getting into a self-care routine? Worst case scenario – you won’t get stressed out and you’ll just happen to be a slightly happier, improved version of yourself.

Plan a Mini Retreat to Dive into Self-Care

If you have fallen into any of the 3 common mistakes above, all is not lost.   Sometimes you just need to take a bit of time off for yourself – time where you can be away from any stress factors you might have, and time where you can just relax and take care of some basic needs that you have to fulfill.

It doesn’t have to be an extravagant or expensive vacation, though. A small retreat in the comfort of your own home could be just what you need. A mini retreat doesn’t require a lot of set up or money.

It just requires a few days at most of free time. You can plan this out in advance to ensure you’re actually doing what you set out to do during this time, and it’ll benefit you greatly to do so.

Essentially, during your mini retreat, you want to have time to engage in your self-care routine, practice and try out some new self-care, and reflect on what it is you want to see in terms of results.

You want to make sure you’re in a somewhat casual environment. Wear comfortable clothes and have some snacks on hand that you enjoy. Play some light background music and build a scene that makes you feel comfortable.

This will help you feel more open and hopeful about your future and help spark ideas of what you want to do to improve yourself. When it comes to planning, you want to make sure you have all the bases covered.

You don’t want to just focus on a workout routine. You want to focus on physical health as a whole, while not forgetting about mental health in the meantime. If you only plan for a workout routine but not for a diet, recovery days, or anything related to your mental well-being, you’re likely not going to be setting yourself up for a whole lot of success.

During your time, think about the model person that you want to be. Perhaps it’s to be more in shape, or maybe it’s to be more mentally strong – or even both. Think hard about what that person, a stronger you, would look like and act like, and use that as a basis and a goal that you can formulate your plan around.

Finally, take some time to practice a bit of what you’re planning. Don’t be afraid to take a few minutes to try out meditation if you’re thinking about adding it to your routine. It’s always good to have a bit of experience with something before you try to plan your whole schedule around it.

On your mini retreat, make sure you maximize your time and don’t allow yourself to get distracted and waste the precious hours you’ve taken to devote to your own needs. You might have many people pulling you in all directions, but it’s important that you block off this time for yourself.

If all this talk about establish a good self care routine has gotten you excited, you may want to check out our latest ebook, Self Care is Not Selfish. You can also visit our YouTube Channel.