✔ How to shift your self-care "shoulding" into doing.

Last week, I told you about the one thing that shifts us from talking about self-care versus doing self-care. (Click here to read the post.)

As promised, I'm here to give you two ways to shift out of self-care "shoulding" and into feeling good about self-care doing with two different ways to be self-care aware.

1) Shift your perspective. Give yourself grace and say, “I’m doing enough right now”. Because, if you are eating, sleeping, working and socializing (smiling at the grocery store clerk counts as socializing for introverts), you ARE doing some very important daily self-care. So, go into awareness and stay there, breathing patiently, until you can find the ways in which you ARE taking care of yourself. Then genuinely give yourself credit for those self-care wins. Sometimes it takes a while to feel genuine about the celebration so be patient with the process.

However, if your current coping mechanisms aren’t effectively managing your stress, you don’t feel like how you’re caring for yourself is enough and your level of discomfort is high but you’re still stuck, try this:

2) Hold space to connect with the discomfort. Stop thinking about it and start feeling it. Be present with the depth of the discomfort and maybe even journal a written list of how the unmanaged stress is impacting your life. What are you teaching your kids about self-care? Are you showing up at work and in your family in the way you want? What would it be like to feel healthy from self-care? When was the last time you felt good about how you processed stress? I’m not asking you to wallow in self-pity, dramatics or beat yourself up. I’m asking you to be brave, compassionate and honest with yourself so all of the discomfort your feeling can also be seen.

Here’s the best part… When you do this exercise well, you will not only connect with the motivation to start self-care but the second issue of “where to start” will also likely become obvious.

If you’re having trouble figuring how to do either of these, schedule a 1-on-1 session with me. I’ll guide you through it and we’ll get there together.

Until next time, stay well.
Aimee