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A SMALL GUIDE TO SELF-CARE
Today, many people, even young teens, are experiencing large amounts of stress in their lives, usually due to societal pressures. It is important to remember that you cannot be your best self unless you take time to care for your physical, emotional and spiritual self. In today's society, eating well, keeping active, and getting enough sleep are constantly stressed as ways to maintain a healthy life. However, this approach can be missing a few steps. Emotional/psychological well being is incredibly important to keep balanced. Along with nutrition, exercise and adequate sleep, there are other simple tasks that can all boost your self-confidence, increase self-awareness, and help you maintain balance and happiness in your life. Listed below are activities that you can adopt into your daily routine to help you feel calmer, healthy and all around better about your self and your life.
Personal and Emotional well being:
- Always set aside time for yourself on a daily basis, even if it is just a few minutes each day. Time to yourself allows you to relax, reflect, or work on a personal hobby that you enjoy. Suggestions: Draw, write, reflect on a great moment you recently experienced and why it made you feel good, make a cup of tea and enjoy it outside or in your bed, read a book that fascinates you, take a walk, stretch.
- When feeling alone, upset, sad, angry, confused, or any other emotion, express it in some form. Do not keep feelings locked up inside. Talk to a close friend, a family member, a therapist, a teacher you can confide in, or even write in a diary. Talking or writing about how you are feeling can help you reflect on the situation and why you really feel this way. Also, opening up to a family member or friend can strengthen the relationship you have with that person.
- If the relationship is not already severely severed, maintain a good relationship with your family, especially your parents. Although, your parents are from a different generation, their advice can be invaluable. They have unconditional love for you and have the ability to help you through any rough patch in your life, whether it is emotional, financial, social, or medical.
- If you would like to, find a social worker, psychologist, or life coach to speak with, weekly, or twice a month. It is important that you find a therapist you like and that you actually want to be seeing a professional. But even if you do not have a diagnosable disorder, speaking with someone who will keep information confidential and allow you to speak freely can be extremely helpful in finding balance and becoming more self-aware. To find a therapist ask your general practitioner, or a close friend for a recommendation, or you can look through the phone book, or online. Therapy can be rather expensive, so if this is an issue, check with your health insurance company, or ask the therapist if they offer a sliding scale (which allows the same therapy sessions for a cheaper price).
- Take time to do relaxation of any sort: meditation, yoga, prayer, breathing exercises*, etc. Yoga is an active way to relax and to connect your body to your mind. If you would like to take a yoga class. Search the web for local yoga studios in your area, and hopefully you will find some listings. A lot of studios offer classes specifically for teens or athletes.
* Breathing exercises: Deep breathing can help you avoid anxiety ad anger in certain situations. A quick way to practice deep breathing: Inhale slowly from your belly (not your chest) for a count of five. Then hold your breath for a count of five. Then slowly exhale through your nose, from the back of your throat for a count of five. Continue this for several minutes. You can lengthen the inhales and exhales, but DON'T lengthen the holding of the breath.
Physical well being - sleep, nutrition, and exercise:
- Be sure to get adequate sleep each night. As a teenager and young adult, this may be difficult. But sleep is incredibly important! During sleep, your body balances itself out. If you do not get adequate sleep, hormone levels are not even and can leave you feeling more hungry, irritable, or lethargic. Pay attention to the hour you go to bed and wake up and make sure to get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep. Oversleeping, more than 9 hours can also throw your body out of whack; so try to stick to getting 8 hours of sleep.
- Eat right. Do not restrict yourself on foods that you love, but cutting out junk food, or replacing certain junk foods with other, healthier options can help you feel more energetic and focused. Instead of chips reach for baked chips, wheat thins, triscuits, rice cakes, soy chips, etc. Instead of cookies or ice cream reach for low-fat pudding, graham crackers, frozen yogurt, yogurt, and popsicles made from fruit juice, fresh fruit, etc. Again, having what people call "junk food" is important because it is an enjoyable treat. Just keep in mind not to have junk foods at every meal.
- Explore new food options. Try dried fruits or nuts. Make a yogurt parfait for breakfast with your favorite yogurt, cereal, berries, and nuts. Try new and different vegetables. Exploring different kinds of food can bring great enjoyment into people's lives. Explore how to prepare food, learn how to cook, make up your own recipes.
- Move your body any way you can. Stretching, dance, walking, running, biking, rollerblading, sports, Pilates, yoga, etc. Exercise can have great physical and mental benefits. Moving our body allows your mind to connect or re-connect with its movements and sensations, which can instill a greater sense of confidence and self-awareness.
Just a few additional and optional tips:
Always repeat one of your favorite motivational or inspirational sayings every day or in a difficult situation or time. Repeating this meaningful phrase or word can be calming and connect you to your mind and put it back to a centered, balanced, and stronger place.
If you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed with work or other various activities in your schedule, make a list. Write down what you need to do, so that you can clear your mind. Then, place the things that need to be done from most important to least important. Take on the most important task first. Take breaks so that your mind does not get tired. Sometimes, if making a list, working on the most fun task first, for just a few minutes, boosts your work motivation so that you can begin to work on the most important tasks.
Remember to breathe, laugh, and live.
To gain or maintain happiness, you must let go and explore life. Experiment with new things; conquer your previous fears or worries. Live in the fun moments and cherish the people around you. Do not let yourself get too consumed in times of stress. You need breaks sometimes, and the whole point of life is to live. So live and do what you want to do.
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