What comes into your mind when you think about self-care? Spa days? Self-reflection? Rest? While these are good, there is more to self-care than that. In this article, we will look at the seven pillars of self-care that you should consider.
Self-care is an encompassing term that we commonly associate with relaxation, meditation, and self-appreciation. While this is a fair generalization, there are other particular aspects of self-care that we must also consider.
To ensure proper awareness in this regard, the International Self-Care Foundation then developed seven pillars that we must build our self-care frameworks around.
1. Knowledge and Healthy Literacy
They say that knowledge is power, and being aware of how your body works will give you the power to make informed decisions. This is the cornerstone of your self-care practices, as the ability to take care of your health enables you to take care of every other aspect of your life.
Some people refuse to get yearly check-ups because they carry a fear that they may discover a latent, chronic disease. They don’t realize that the more they run away from this transparency and information, the more that they rob themselves of knowledge that will help them take charge of their healthcare.
As such, it is essential that you open yourself to different avenues through which you can gain greater awareness about behaviors and tools that you may need to attain a healthy body.
2. Mental Well-Being, Self-Awareness, and Agency
Although issues like mental well-being, self-awareness, and agency have largely been neglected in decades past, more recent years have seen them rise as primary considerations for self-care practices.
When you regard this pillar, you take a deeper look into your personal satisfaction, self-esteem, and resilience. One way to do this is to get a journal and just write about the things that you ponder about in your life. Reflect on your experiences, achievements, shortcoming, and assess how they have made an impact on your life. You can also utilize journaling apps like Reflectly, wherein you can just type down your thoughts as they come.
In the process, you get to identify certain mentalities and practices that you need to improve on and address. Still, this awareness would be pointless if you couldn’t act upon them. This is why agency is also clustered in this category. It is critical that you have the freedom and capacity to act on the things that you discover about yourself.
3. Physical Activity
Physical activity is a very important pillar to your self-care, as research shows that even walking for just thirty minutes a day can improve your mental and physical health. Now, there are many ways to squeeze in physical activity into your day. You can regularly go to the gym and lift weights, take yoga classes, go for a run, join zumba sessions, or even study belly dancing! Just find that exercise that works for you, and make sure that you stick to it.
4. Healthy Eating
There’s nothing wrong with eating chocolate or ice cream to make you feel good every once in a while. These indulgences can arguably be included in your self-care routine as well. However, you need to make sure that you still manage a balanced diet, because at the end of the day, healthy eating can keep your body and your brain in tip-top shape. Some days, a little refined sugar can be considered as self-care. But most days, whole grain carbohydrates, vegetables, fruits, and protein should take up the bulk of your diet.
5. Risk Avoidance and Mitigation
This pillar involves avoiding behavior that directly increases your risk for illness or death. This means getting rid of certain habits, like smoking cigarettes, drinking excessive alcohol, and substance abuse. It also includes seemingly mundane behaviors, like not checking both sides of the street when crossing, failure to drive with a seatbelt, and not using sunscreen.
If there are specific, harmful habits that you want to quit, you can use apps like Last, which help you track how many days it has been since you last engaged in a particular behavior. By actively monitoring your progress, you are able to grasp and reflect on how much risk you’ve mitigated.
6. Good Hygiene
Yes, this pillar includes our favorite self-care practices such as long bubble baths or going to the spa. However, that is not all there is to it. Technically speaking, good hygiene refers to the standard practices that you do to preserve your health and well-being. This means that washing your hands, drinking clean water, and properly brushing your teeth are also considered as self-care activities.
7. Rational Use of Products/Services
Self-care involves taking medicine and supplements when necessary, and avoiding them entirely when they’re not. There are some people who use antibiotics when they have something as simple as a headache, thereby building a resistance by the time they need to treat an infection. Meanwhile, there are those who unwittingly utilize traditional medicine and products without realizing that these could be more damaging to their body. Hence, make sure that you only use products that are appropriate and rational for your situation.
Concurrently, your self-care may involve services like therapy and counseling, and so when the need arises, it is important that you learn to seek them out, regardless of the stigma and fear of being judged by others.
Some elements may be hard to do, especially when it comes to their application in your daily life. Still, by ensuring that your self-care practices cover these seven pillars, you work towards increasing your chances to develop a better and overall healthier well-being one day at a time.
