Practicing Meaningful Self Care
Do you practice self-care? What does your practice look like? How has it been most useful? How could it be better?
HOT TAKE ~
Self-care is more than self-soothing and meeting your basic needs!
A fresh way to look at self-care…
Life Pie exercise, adapted from Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way”
Grab a sheet of paper and draw yourself a pie with 5 sections. Best if it’s imperfect. Label each section with the important aspects of your life … use the categories outlined above or adjust them to better fit your own priorities.
In each section of your life pie, plot a dot to represent how fulfilled you are currently feeling in that area. Put the dot closer to the center of the pie if you are feeling depleted or underwhelmed in that portion of your life, or closer to the outside edge if you are feeling satisfied. Connect the dots and notice where things may be a bit lopsided.
IMPORTANT!
It is expected that you will feel less satisfied in some parts of your life than others at any given moment. The goal is not complete fulfillment. This exercise serves as an opportunity to check-in and assess which aspects of your life may need attention. Check-in regularly and adjust your self-care accordingly!
Self-care means more when we care about ourselves, not just for ourselves.
Without a solid relationship with self, self-care rituals fall flat. Self-care becomes another meaningless to-do, another chore, another thing we have to plan. Who really needs more chores?
When grounded in a positive self-concept and genuine appreciation for ourselves, self-care transforms from meaningless activities into into acts of radical self-affirmation.
JOURNAL PROMPT: If I truly cared about myself I would…
- Speak up / Ask for what I deserve
- Say no / Set boundaries
- Accept my weaknesses and limitations without judgment
- Allow myself to halt production and rest
- Forgive myself
- Seek out help when I am struggling
- Surround myself with supportive people
- Nourish my body
- Dress more joyfully
- Play!
- Dream
Western culture doesn’t reflect our value to us. Work culture asks us to regularly ignore our body cues, push beyond reasonable limits and put our basic needs on the back burner. Working lunches, all-nighters … we’ve gone so far as to pride ourselves on the denial of basic needs for the sake of performing dedication and productivity. Rather than genuine moments of self-care characterized by employees noticing and attending to their cues in a mindful way, breaks become little more than a CYA for employers.
Self-care is an act of resistance.
Outside of work we are forced to contend with the expectations set by the normative culture. People with less privilege or living outside of expected norms experience even more difficulty accessing quality, meaningful self-care. For some, the world is so unsafe mere survival requires constant repressing, hiding and editing a portion of themselves for protection. How are people expected to care for and about themselves when the world around them consistently shows them hate?
Self-care is a means of survival.
As I’ve discussed, self-care goes beyond the tasks we engage in to self-soothe and recover from whatever battles we’ve fought during the day. This is especially true for my fellow normative culture misfits. For us, self-care means finding methods of fiercely affirming who we are. Asserting our boundaries, standing up for our rights, fighting for systematic change that reduces harm, frequenting environments that allow for bold, authentic self-expression, affirming ourselves in our identities, T A K I N G U P S P A C E and holding our chosen family tightly may be some of the most meaningful self-care we can engage in.
Take care out there.
