Self-care involves activities supporting physical, emotional, and mental well-being, tailored to individual needs. This lesson looks at key areas of self-care that include physical health, relationships, work-life balance, emotional awareness, and spirituality. Effective self-care requires self-awareness, adaptability, and a personalised plan. It helps manage stress, maintain health, and promote overall well-being through meaningful and supportive practices.
In saying all that, I’ve heard people say: “I don’t need another job to do!”. This is a fair point. Self-care can sometimes feel like something we should be doing in a particular way at a particular time, in a way that is proposed by social media, or even pressure from the knowledge we have accumulated about self-care in general.
During this course, we want to stress (no pun intended) that this is NOT another job for you to do. It is about being curious about yourself and learning to manage your life in ways that feel right for you, taking in consideration the different aspects of personal responsibilities, your goals and personality. You get to choose and change things around.
The only encouragement is to be experimental and curious about yourself, and how you best manage all the elements that make up your life.
Below is just a short (and stereotypical) overview of self-care for you to scan through before we move to the more substantial parts.
Self-Care is a Resource for Well-Being
Before we skim over some elements of self-care, let’s just consider the term well-being, because ultimately, self-care should add value to a person’s sense of well-being.
Well-being is a nuanced and multi-faceted concept that involves many aspects of life so it is challenging to define. However, the Dodge et al. (2012) dynamic concept of human well-being is useful. The authors understand well-being as a balance point between an individual’s resource pool (psychological, social, physical) and the capacity to meet respective and changing challenges (psychological, social, physical).
This dynamic definition assumes there will be a constant shift between the two points: resource pool and challenges. The individual has an active role in shaping their own well-being to meet challenges.
This concept is represented in the graphic below. Although “well-being” is beautifully balanced in the middle in the graphic, that is rarely, if ever, possible. So what “well-being” represents in the centre is a goal to, in a way, be well, by learning to balance your resources and challenges. It will tip back and forth, as sometimes you have more challenges and fewer resources, or the other way around.
The encouragement is to frame self-care, not as another job, but as a developing skill that you have in your personal resource pool to meet challenges, ultimately for your ongoing well-being.
Diagram developed by Kelly Burstow based on work by Dodge et al. 2012
Adopting Self-Care
In this course, self-care is framed as a skill, and just one part of managing your life.
Life in mind defines self-care as:
“Self-care refers to activities that preserve and maintain one’s physical, emotional and mental health. It is an ongoing commitment to look after yourself through helpful behaviours that protect your health during periods of stress. Paying attention to what is happening to your body, both physically and emotionally, helps you to identify when something is affecting you. It is important to take time out when you need it to reduce feelings of stress and protect your mental health. There is no formula for self-care. Each self-care plan will be unique and change over time. Ultimately, self-care is identifying activities that support your wellbeing.”
While self-care is highly nuanced for the person, it broadly consists of elements from the following categories:
1. Physical
- Getting enough sleep
- Eating nutritious foods and a balanced diet
- Moving the body, e.g. stretching, walking, playing sport, gardening
2. Relationships and connecting with others
- Spending time with family and friends
- Joining a group or taking part in community activities
- Recognising when help from others is needed and reaching out for support
3. Work
- Communicating with supervisors to ensure workload is manageable
- Implementing organisational or time management practices or tools
- Taking regular breaks and allocating time outside of work for enjoyable activities
4. Thoughts and emotions
- Being self-aware and practising mindful reflection, e.g. journaling, mindfulness
- Using gratitude to focus on positive emotions
- Understanding that negative emotions are normal and can be worked through, but recognising when support may be needed to manage them
5. Spirituality
- Taking time for regular spiritual practice
- Meditating
- Spending time in nature
- Connecting with places that help to feel calm and safe
Your self-care journey must be relevant to your own needs in all these domains. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to self-care and what works for you may not work for anyone else. For that reason, it is important to develop a self-care plan that is uniquely yours. During the next sections, you will get to develop your own self-care plan.
Further resource
This video titled “Self-Care Planning: Working Towards Wellbeing” offers practical guidance on developing a personalised self-care plan to enhance overall well-being. It emphasises the importance of self-care in maintaining mental and physical health, and provides strategies to identify and implement self-care activities that suit individual needs and lifestyles.
In the next section, we will look at other important health pillars of self-care.
Reference
Dodge, Rachel, Daly, Annette, Huyton, Jan & Sanders, Lalage 2012, ‘The challenge of defining wellbeing’, International journal of wellbeing, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 222-235.