The Types of Self-Care and How to Practice Them

Self-care for all areas of your life.

You probably already know that I have so many self-care articles on this blog. I always like to emphasize that self-care is called self-care because it’s for you… it’s for yourSELF.

Self-care means taking care of yourself.

Self-care has its pictures – most have thought of self-care as relaxing and having fun. Your stereotypical self-care is your bubble bath and day at the spa. However, self-care is many things. You take care of yourself in many ways besides having a bubble bath and spa day.

This blog post will talk about self-care actions for every area of your life. This includes your physical health, mental health, your relationships, your finances, and your learning. You’ll see that self-care is more than just what is glamorized on social media. You’ll see that there’s so much more that goes into self-care and taking care of yourself.

Physical Health Self-Care

This is where the self-care is all about taking care of your physical health… your mind and your body.

You may have already heard the saying “Health is Wealth” and that is true in many ways because if we have poor health, it’s a lot harder to do the things that we want to do.

That’s why self-care for our physical health should never be neglected, and why it’s the most important. Most importantly, when you take care of your physical health, it will translate to all other areas of your life.

Examples of physical health self-care:

1. Exercise

This is a very important physical self-care activity! Exercise is so easily accessible!

You have your gym membership, but even if you’re tight on money financially, exercise is still accessible to you.

You can go outside your house and take a walk or a run.

You can go on YouTube and search for workouts. You can either choose an intense workout or a more laidback workout. The possibilities are endless! There’s no excuse to not exercise when you think about it.

2. Healthy Eating & Meal Prepping

You may not think of this as self-care. However, when you think about it when you take steps to take care of your health and your body, that is self-care in itself.

When you feed your body with healthy food, not only do you contribute to your health greatly, but it improves your mind and how you feel. Whether we like it or not, the food that we eat contributes to how we feel. How do you usually feel after you’ve eaten too much dessert or too much junk food? I know that when I eat a bag of chips or ice cream before I begin to start work again, I feel sluggish. Feeling sluggish then affects my work performance.

So how do we make sure that we eat healthy every day? By meal prepping. Meal prepping is our big time saver and money saver! Not only do we save time during the week to prepare meals, but we also save money from impulsively buying takeout or fast food during the week. We prepare healthy meals ahead of time, and that is a great way to self-care!

3. Moving around every 30 minutes

Yes, you may think that this is the same thing as exercise… it’s not really.

It’s really important to exercise at least 30 minutes a day. We already know it. It’s healthy for us, it’s good for us, it’s good self-care.

However, it should not be the only movement of the day.

Imagine having a job where you work 9 to 5 and you never get up once. Imagine what’s that going to do to our body and our overall posture.

That’s why on top of our daily exercise, it’s important that every 30 minutes to an hour, we move around. We get off our seats and walk around for a bit, even if it’s just for five minutes. This is so we don’t spend hours on end just sitting on a desk.

This may not sound like self-care to you because it’s not a “one-off activity”. But as we have said, if it contributes to our health, it’s self-care.

4. Drink 2L of water a day

I’m sure it’s known that it’s important to drink water.

However, it’s surprising how often we forget to drink water!

Being hydrated all day is going to be good for you. If you’re not hydrated, you can’t expect to be focused that whole time. That’s why it’s important to be drinking water throughout the day.

To make sure you don’t forget, make the water bottle visible! Make sure that you see it so it reminds you to drink it. If your water is nowhere to be found, we’re not going to have that reminder. The only exception to this is that you have power memory and you know exactly when to drink water and know exactly where it is.

Drinking water is self-care because it also contributes to our overall health, both physical and mental health. When we feel good and better, self-care has done its job!

Other examples include:

• Adequate Sleep
• Regular checkups at the doctor
• Digital Detox

Mental Health Self-Care

This is an important area of self-care and it’s our mental health. It has everything to do with our minds and how we deal with everything in our lives.

This is a big one because our mental health should be cared for just as much as our physical health. Yes, we want a healthy body, but we also want a healthy mind as well.

That’s why self-care for our mental health should never be neglected as well, and it’s just as important as our physical health! Just like physical health, when we take care of our mental health, it will translate to all other areas of our lives. Imagine not taking care of both our physical health and mental health, what is that going to do to our work, studies, our business, or our relationships?

Examples of mental health self-care:

1. Reading Books

This is a good replacement habit if you’re always finding yourself scrolling through social media. Even if you don’t have that habit, reading is still a good habit to have!

I always recommend non-fiction books on this blog such as the personal development books because they are extremely helpful in helping you improve in a certain area of your life.

However, for this blog post, I’m also going to recommend reading fiction books as well! And yes, I’m talking about Twilight, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter…. all sorts of books.

Whether you’re reading a fiction or non-fiction book, reading is a good habit for your mind. When you are reading, you immerse yourself in the material and you feel relaxed. It’s also good for your mindset as well, limiting any clutter that you have.

So when you get the chance, pick a book that you’ll enjoy reading, and then have a read.

2. Listening to podcasts

In this blog post, I also recommend listening to podcasts because they are so convenient!

They are hands-free, you can consume them hands-free, and you can listen to them anywhere at any time. (well, when you’re doing something mindless and you’re not doing anything important)

Podcasts are a really good self-care activity because of how easy it is. You can even combine it with another self-care activity. For example, if you’re doing a self-care activity when you’re cleaning or decluttering your room, you can listen to podcasts while you’re doing it! If you’re cooking a meal, listen to a podcast! If you are just walking outside, listen to a podcast!

The fact that you can also learn from them is a big bonus. It can turn anything that seems like a waste of time into a learning time. For example, commuting is probably a bit of a time waster, but if we use it to listen to podcasts and learn something new, that commute time will be turned into learning time. And when you think about it, since listening to podcasts is also self-care, you can turn commute time into self-care time!

3. Social Media (hear me out!!)

Okay, I may sound a bit like a hypocrite right now. For starters, when we were discussing the reading habit, I was talking about how it’s a good replacement for scrolling social media. Just hear me out here.

What I mean by using social media as a form of self-care is intentionally scrolling with motivational, inspirational, and educational content. I’m not talking about using social media where you go on your news feed and see the posts of all your friends, family, and even celebrities… that’s the type of social media activity we want to limit.

So how do I even make sure that my feed is filled with motivational, inspirational, and educational content? Do I unfollow or mute everyone? No not really, BUT you can create a separate account just for following educational and motivational accounts. Instagram is quite smart, when they see the posts that you engage with, they will give you more of those posts on your explore page.

If you’re always engaging with posts on people living luxurious lives, or just general posts of sharing of their life, Instagram will give you more of that on your explore page. If you always engage with posts that are motivational and educational, Instagram will give you more of that on your Explore page.

Once you have an account that’s only filled with motivational and inspirational content, then you can scroll through it BUT it has to be intentional. You don’t want to make it a mindless habit, you want to make it a habit where you decide to intentionally use it.

4. Gratitude & affirmations

Gratitude & affirmations are good self-care exercises for both good days and bad days.

When we have good days when we’re feeling our best, we feel grateful for everything, and it’s easy to say our affirmations because we believe them!

But even during days when we’re not feeling our best, we still do gratitude and affirmations! We need it more than ever. It’s during the bad days when gratitude can really help us see the bigger picture of what we still have. During tough times, it’s hard to look at the good, so maybe seeing what we already have could help a bit.

With affirmations, when we’re not feeling our best self, affirmations are a good exercise to help remind us of who we are. If we are feeling low confidence, and we affirm that we are confident, we can use that affirmation. If we’re feeling lost, and we affirm that we already know where we are going, we can use that affirmation.

This is a good self-care activity to do throughout the day, or just spending 15 minutes on it. It’s quite convenient to do!

5. Journal about anything

Speaking of which, you can do gratitude and affirmations by writing in a journal. But you don’t just have to write in a journal for affirmations and gratitude.

You can journal about anything, you can write your thoughts. There’s something about writing your thoughts that relieves you of the pressure and makes you feel better.

Journalling is a good self-care activity for our mental health because it allows us to write down whatever is on our mind, and put it into paper. It helps us decrease the chatter in our head, and clear our mind.

6. Digital Habits

Having good digital habits is one important mental health self-care activity.

I have written a previous blog post on digital habits for your personal growth and I recommend that you read it!

It’s important to have good digital habits set in place so that you are mindful when you use your phone, and you have intention with the technology around you.

Whether that is limiting your social media consumption, or not going on your phone in the morning, having digital habits where you’re intentional with the use of it allows you to control your digital life instead of letting it control you.

When you can control your digital life, that is a great way to self-care. Since self-care is about taking care of yourself, digital habits are a great form of self-care for your mind.

Other examples include:

• Watching your favorite comfort TV show/movie
• Mindfulness practices
• Creative outlets such as puzzles, drawing, painting, and cooking.
• Engage in your favorite hobbies

Emotional Self-Care

Similar to mental health, your emotional self-care is all about understanding your emotions and addressing them in a healthy. When you take care of your emotional self-care, you build resilience and even improve your relationships along the way.

Examples of Emotional Self-Care:

1. Any of the mental self-care habits!

As emotional and mental self-care are interdependent with one another, anything you do for your mental self-care can help with your physical self-care!

Social Self-Care

I know what you may be thinking…. how can it be self-care if it’s going to involve other people? Doesn’t self-care mean it’s just mySELF?

Yes, you’re right about that, self-care is about doing things for yourSELF. Doing things for yourSELF means many things, but it mainly means doing things that will help you and benefit you.

And while having time for ourselves to take care of our physical and mental health like what we have discussed so far is so important for us, having time to invest in building relationships and meeting people is important as well.

Because when you think about it, when we invest time into building relationships that are going to help and benefit us in our life, that is self-care. When we build the right relationships and invest time into them, that is self-care. When we help the person we are interacting with, that is self-care. How? Well, what feeling does that give you? A really good feeling.

Of course, you want to always put yourself no matter what, and take time for yourself regularly. When you feel refreshed and ready, check out a few examples of how to care for your social self-care.

Examples of social self-care:

1. Invest in your social life

I had mentioned in a previous blog post on how to invest in yourself, that it’s important to invest in your social life.

First, you can invest in your social life by investing time into the relationships you already have, whether they are your family or friends.

You want to invest in spending time with them and creating memories. Because at the end of the day, when you look back at your time with them, you’re going to be remembering first the memories and time you spent together, rather than the gifts you got for each other.

Second, you can invest in your social life by meeting new people outside your regular circle of family and friends. Meeting people to expand that circle and do many great things for you. If you have an interest in sports, then go find an event where you can meet people with that same interest. If you have a business and looking to network, find networking events.

You never know who you’re going to meet and you never know who you’re going to connect with. You never know how you’re going to impact the person you meet, or how the people you meet could impact you. You need to take that initiative and meet people, and then everything will take care of itself, you’ll know when you’ve met a person who could be another person in your regular circle and can contribute to some area of your life.

2. Weekly catch-up with a friend

At least a minimum of once a week, it’s also great to catch up with a friend (or family member). Just like we had mentioned previously, we want to invest time into the relationships that we already have.

While there are many ways we can keep in touch and maintain a relationship with a person, the best way to grow that relationship is an actual catch-up where it’s just you and them.

3. Attend social events where you get to meet people

As mentioned in the point on investing in your social life, it’s great to invest time into meeting people, because you never know who you’re going to meet.

An app that is good for finding events is Meetup and Eventbrite. Whether you find an event that suits your interest or something you’ve never done before, along the way you never know who you’re going to meet, and you’re never going to know what you’re going to like if you do something new.

When you try something new, it may become something that you like, that may be a hobby then a passion. The bonus is that you get to meet people along the way.

So give it a try, you never know who you’re going to meet!

Other examples of social self-care:

• Volunteer work
• Connect with new people on LinkedIn.
• Join online communities
• Attend free classes

Financial Self-Care

Yes, your finances count as self-care! What’s the number one stress in life if you Googled it? Money.

So it makes sense that managing your finances and keeping track of them is a good form of self-care. Since managing your finances allows you to keep track of them to make sure you’re not overspending, it relieves stress. Because it relieves stress, it’s self-care.

That’s why there is a such thing as financial self-care. You want to make life easy on yourself by no procrastinating on taking care of your finances. Because remember, we don’t want to make life harder on ourselves later on.

Examples of financial self-care:

1. Cut down unnecessary costs

This is where you cut down costs on things you don’t use. This is the time to reflect on whether you’re currently investing your money into the right things.

Reflect on whether you use that streaming service subscription on that newsletter membership… is that something you use? If you don’t use it, then just cut it out. You may feel a lot better!

2. Weekly Finance Routine

I’ve got a previous blog post on a weekly finance routine that you can use because managing your finances regularly is a form of self-care.

The weekly financial routine includes:

1. Noting down your expenses.
2. Noting down your income.
3. Create a spending plan each week to make sure that you’re not spending more than you are earning.
4. Make sure that you save – IMPORTANT!!

When you manage your finances, you save yourself from a lot of stress. When you save yourself from a lot of stress not just now but in the future, you do yourself a huge favour.

3. Invest in your passion project

There’s been big talk about investing in your money. While I won’t be discussing that, I’ll be discussing something I’ve personally invested in that was worth it… investing in my passion project.

Your passion project could be anything… as long as you’re passionate about it. Since self-care is all about doing something for you because you love doing it, doing your passion is self-care.

That’s why, if you have a passion project that you really want to pursue, and you know it’s something that you want to do, then maybe invest in it. Maybe the fact that you can’t stop thinking about it is your sign to just jump in and do it.

You never know where your passion project could go. Think about the amazing things that could come out of it, instead of worrying about what could go wrong. You would rather give it a go and see it didn’t work out, than live your life wondering what would’ve happened if you gave it a go.

Intellectual Self-Care

Yes, intellectual self-care is a thing! When you invest time into learning something and grow your knowledge, it counts as self-care!

Your learning isn’t always just studying in high school or at university. Your learning is lifelong and you can learn from a variety of different ways. You have your life experience, but also from resources that you actively found such as books or podcasts.

You never know where that knowledge will take you, but you can imagine how practical it would be to invest time into your learning.

Examples of learning self-care:

1. Buy Books

This is the first obvious way to learn… buy books!

Reading is one of the ways to take care of your mental health self-care, and as you can tell there are many benefits!

You can kill two birds with one stone here… take care of your mental health self-care and also your learning self-care!

2. Watch YouTube Videos

Maybe everyone will like this one or maybe not, but you can learn from very informative and educational YouTube videos, especially if the one making the video is an expert in what you’re learning about!

YouTube videos are a good resource for learning. You can easily search for what you’re looking for because YouTube’s search engine is like the Google search engine – search something up and you may find what you want.

3. Enrol in an online course

This is an extra step you can take if you’re serious about what you want to learn.

I’m going to say that online courses for me have been worth it. I took a course when starting this blog and it helped me save a lot of time in finding resources myself.

Online courses are a great way to save time from trying to find the resources that you need because they all have it in one spot, along with practical information to help you further. While there is a monetary investment, if you do go and try to find the resources yourself you still invest in something… your time!

Think about what you prefer to do. You can go and find your resources yourself and you will spend time. Or you can purchase that online course created by someone who is an expert in what you want to learn about, and save time. Yes, it costs money, but online courses also include some of the mistakes that person has made. Some of those mistakes include financial costs. It may be worth wanting to save ourselves from making those same mistakes by learning from someone else.

Other examples include:

• Visit a bookstore or library and get a new book.
• Do some crafts
• Online quizzes/brain teaser games
• Read blogs or articles
• Watch documentaries

Fun Self-Care

– the “known” self-care

Last but not least we have the fun self-care… where the self-care involves us just relaxing and having fun.

This is the type of self-care everyone knows. It seems that whenever we do an activity that allows us to relax and just chill, it counts as self-care.

So this list of examples will include self-care activities that are for the sake of us relaxing, enjoying ourselves, and having time for ourselves. This is the self-care that you probably already know are self-care activities!

Have a Self-Care Routine

You want to make sure that self-care is a regular part of your life, that’s why there’s a routine for it! It involves setting a non-negotiable time for it, and knowing exactly what you’re going to do to recharge yourself regularly.

You can read the blog post on the steps to creating a self-care routine, so that you will have that self-care to give you more motivation and drive to do the things you usually do.

Steps to a self-care routine include:

1. Setting your non-negotiable time – treat it like an important appointment that you will never miss!
2. Know your love language – because there are so many self-care activities out there, you can narrow down those activities based on your love language!
3. Brainstorm and keep a list – this is so that you never run out of self-care activities to do when the time comes for your self-care. Refer to the examples below so that you can include them in your list!

Self-care activities that you probably already know about so I don’t have to explain how to do them 😂

• Take a bubble bath – you probably already know this!
• Mini spa day – you don’t even have to go to the actual spa, you can do one at home!
• Skincare – this counts because if you feel good about your skin, you feel good. When you feel good, it means that you’ve done your self-care.
• Buy yourself a gift – but make sure that you’re not overspending on your budget!
• Give your room a makeover
• Declutter your spaces – you want to feel better about your spaces!
• Do a DIY project – also can be learning self-care because of the skills you learn along the way!
• Cook yourself a meal or take yourself out! – you already know that cooking your own meals may be the healthier option for your physical self-care .
• Binge watch a TV show or have a movie marathon!
• Jam out to music that makes you dance or have a mini concert.
• Use Pinterest – a great place for inspiration!
• Explore your city – be a tourist in your own city, you probably have a few places that you’ve never been to!

You are your number one asset

You can spend time helping other people through your jobs, studies, business, volunteering, or just in general BUT at the end of the day, you are your number one asset.

The person you should be taking care of first is you. The person whose needs you need to take care of first is yours. The person who should be taking care of your physical and mental health is you. YOU are an asset. What do you do with actual assets? You care for them like crazy.

And when you think about it, actual assets are important because they have value and you have very HIGH value. So care for yourself, and be kind to yourself, you’re number 1.

-Lauren 😊

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