Ultimate Self-Care Guide for Starters

Everyone has heard of self-care.

The problem, however, is that most people think that self-care is all about the luxurious stuff such as spa days, bubble baths, and shopping. So they spend their money, do the activity, and walk away feeling worse about it than better. This was me by the way!

Here’s why this is the case. Self-care is not about all of that. Self-care is literally about taking care of yourself, and making the time for it.

In this blog post, it will be the ultimate self-care guide. It will give you all that you need to know about self-care, and how to make it as effective as possible. We go through:

• Types of Self-Care
• No-No’s of Self-Care – mistakes of self-care
• How to Create a Self-Care Routine
• Self-Care Tasks to Do
• Ways to Motivate Yourself to Do Your Self-Care

This blog post is definitely for all those who want to make more time for yourself and practice self-care! You can read my past blog posts on self-care.

Let’s dive in.

Types of Self-Care

The first thing we will go through are the types of self-care.

Yes, there are types of self-care.

Self-care is not just limited to “relaxing” time. There are also many other things.

After all, self-care is literally about taking care of yourself… and taking care of yourself is not just through the typical self-care we know of.

Here are the types of self-care:

• Physical Self-Care – self-care for taking care of your physical health. Examples of this self-care is exercising and eating good foods.
• Mental Health Self-Care – self-care for taking care of your mental health. It’s everything to do with our mind and how we deal with everything in life. Examples of this self-care is reading books or journalling.
• Social Self-Care – self-care for your social life. Yes, you may be wondering how that could be a type of self-care if self-care is for yourSELF… here’s how it is. Social self-care is all about spending time with people and building relationships with those who will make you feel happy… a really good feeling. Spending time with people who uplift you and make you feel great, is a form of self-care!
• Financial Self-Care – self-care for your finances. Examples of this is budgeting.
• Intellectual Self-Care – self-care for your learning and knowledge. Examples of this is reading books or listening to podcasts.
• Fun Self-Care – this self-care is pretty much the self-care that everyone knows… relaxing and having fun!

Now, to see every actions you can take for each type of self-care, you can read this blog post! This blog post are all the greatest self-care actions you can take for every area of your life!

No-No’s for Self-Care

One of the things we’ll get out of the way now are the no-no’s of self-care, aka the mistakes to avoid making.

These are the things that we obviously should not be doing. If you are, it’s something that you are going to unlearn.

Here are the big no-no’s of self-care you want to avoid:

1. Copying everyone else’s self-care – How every person does self-care is going to be different. Society may say to do this as your self-care but for you, it may not make you feel good after doing it. Do self-care activities that you enjoy.
2. Saying that you’re not a “self-care” person – You actually are a self-care person, you’re just not a self-care CULTURE person. Self-Care culture highly emphasizes spending a lot of money and going all out for doing your self-care… that’s not for everyone! Like what was said above, how everyone does self-care is different.
3. Saying that you don’t have time – No matter how many things you are currently balancing in your life, you are going to make time for your self-care and not find time for your self-care.
4. Thinking you need to earn your self-care – You don’t need to earn your self-care. Self-care should not be treated as a “reward”. Self-care should be treated as something non-negotiable.
5. Thinking that self-care is not productive – If you are feeling burnt out as a result of not taking a break, rest, or time for yourself, then your productivity is already affected anyway. That’s why self-care actually contributes to better productivity.

If you want to read more on how these no-no’s are big self-care mistakes, read this blog post! You can read the big no-no’s for self-care and how to prevent yourself from doing them!

How to Create a Self-Care Routine

Since you want to make sure that self-care is a regular part of your life, we’ll go through briefly how to create a self-care routine for it!

You can read the blog post on the steps to creating a self-care routine so that you know exactly what you’re going to do to recharge yourself regularly.

Steps to a self-care routine includes:

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 those activities based on your love language!
3. Brainstorm and keep a list – this is so that you will 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 Tasks that You MUST Do

(minimum monthly)

Now, we’ll break down self-care to the list of tasks that you MUST do at least monthly. If you can do more, it will be even more amazing!

These self-care tasks are not just random self-care things. These are actually tasks that can help you make sure that you have a clearer headspace and motivation!

1. Take a DAY off – like seriously, take a day off. Whether that’d be at least ONE day on a weekend… take a day off!
2. Spend time alone – that’s why it’s called self-care right? Having alone time is pretty much essential. It’s your opportunity to do things for yourself and build a better relationship with yourself.
3. Do a self-care that meets your LOVE LANGUAGE – you can read the blog post on how to practice the love languages on yourself, and choose an activity that you can do!
4. Pinterest FUN! – Pinterest is a great place to find more ideas for the type of self-care activities you want to do.
5. Reflect on how you can improve every area of your life – self-care is about taking care of yourself after all. Reflect on how you can improve each of those areas.
6. Identifies what energises you and what drains you – you want to be self-aware of the things that work and what doesn’t. So, take the time to list down (from past experience) what energizes you and what drains your energy. This is so you can do more of the things that do work, and less of the things that don’t.
7. Journal about anything – journalling is a really great activity to express what’s on your mind, and help you relieve any feelings!

If you would like any other self-care tips, you can read these other blog posts:

• Easy Self-Care tips for more self-love – Self-care tips for self-love!
• 10 Simple Self-Care Tasks to Start Your Month

How to do self-care without spending $$?

Self-care doesn’t have to cost a dime! There are plenty of self-care activities you can do that involve no cost. Here’s a little process you can get started with:

1. List down what fills your cup: Think about what fills your cup aka things that make you feel better and boosts your mood.
2. Take care of yourself like someone you’re responsible for: imagine you got to take care of your 6-year-old self for a day. Even if you had a tight budget, what would you do to make them feel better on good and bad days?
3. Have wind-down time every day: One way to guarantee you’re getting your daily self-care, without spending any money, is to make your night routine your self-care routine.

This blog post goes in-depth on how you can implement self-care without spending any money.

Ways to Stay Motivated with

Your Self-Care

The final part of this guide are just some overall tips to help you stay motivated with your self-care.

1. Have a Self-Care Routine – that’s why we outlined earlier how to create a self-care routine. Having a regular self-care routine is helpful in ensuring that you do self-care regularly!
2. Have a self-care space at home – just like how you would have the desk as a space to work, and a bed as a space for sleep, have a space for self-care. Even if the space is just a corner in the room, where you put some pillows there… as long as you have a space that you can associate with self-care!
3. Set Non-Negotiable Rest Days – it’s so important to set a day where you have a complete day off, and to do them regularly! You need to allow your brain to rest and recharge.
4. Content Diet – you can also stay motivated with your self-care by reading and listening to motivational content! If you’re reading or watching the news, that’s something that could drain us. Consume something that is motivational and uplifting instead.
5. Use Pinterest – Pinterest is a really good place to find ideas and inspiration for your self-care. Try your best to look at it every week to feel inspired.
6. Watch REELS – (just remember) that you want to make sure that it’s REELS with motivational and inspirational content. You may need to “train” the algorithm for this. Engage and save more posts on self-care, self-love, self-confidence, and overall personal development, and watch your explore page and REELS feed explode with those types of posts. Instagram apparently makes sure that it gives you more of the content you consume most on the app!
7. Make time for your health habits – of course, health and self-care has a direct correlation. If you’re not prioritising your health, you’re actually not prioritising your self-care. Self-care is all about taking care of yourself, and if you’re not prioritising your health, you’re not doing that. So by making time for your important health habits, it will make you feel more motivated to do more self-care.
8. Bonus ways to make self-care more enjoyable:

• Self-Care menu: have a menu filled with self-care activities to pick and choose like a restaurant.
• Self-Care jar: to make things more fun, write down self-care activities in a small piece of paper, put it in the jar, and pick a random one to do.
• Have your own traditions: just how like families have their own traditions (e.g. have a barbeque every Sunday, go to the movies every month), come up with some of your own.
• Keep trying new activities

Read more on these “self-care motivation boosters” in this blog post, and ways you can make self-care enjoyable here.

How to Make Self-Care Enjoyable!

1. Create a self-care menu: If you’ve ever been to a restaurant, you’ve obviously seen a menu. In this menu, there are a bunch of choices of what you can eat and drink. A self-care menu is just like a restaurant menu, except the menu is a list of self-care activities.
2. Self-Care Jar: A self-care jar is where you put a whole bunch of self-care activities in a jar. Then, when it’s time for your self-care and you feel spontaneous, you simply randomly draw something from the jar, and whatever you get, you’ll do!
3. Your own traditions: If you’re familiar with traditions, you know that they are traditions because they are special to a family or culture. For example, a family may have a tradition of watching a movie in the cinemas every month because it’s their special time to bond as a family.
4. Keep trying new activities: Another way to make self-care more enjoyable is simply trying out a new self-care activity every once in a while. Trying out new activities helps you learn more about yourself and discover more of your interests and what you enjoy.
5. Finding inspiration on social media: To help out with #4, a good place to start is finding inspiration on social media. I personally enjoy going on Pinterest because I love the different graphics and links to blog posts that help me read more about the different self-care ideas. 

If you want to read more in depth of each of these, you can read this blog post.

Take a SMALL STEP

Here are some small steps you can take to make the most of this guide!

1 – List down each of the areas of self-care, and write down just ONE thing you’ll do to improve that area. The areas are:

• Physical health self-care
• Mental health self-care
• Social Self-Care
• Financial self-care
• Intellectual Self-Care
• Fun Self-Care

2 – Write down the answer to this question: How can I make self-care unique to me?

3 – Follow the steps in the “How to Create a Self-Care Routine” and create your self-care routine!

4 – Pick ONE self-care task to do TODAY. – from Self-Care Tasks You Must Do.

5 – Pick ONE self-care motivational booster task to do today. – from Ways to Motivate Yourself to do Your Self-Care

Yes, you’re supposed to feel

selfish with your self-care

… and that’s not a bad thing!

Self-care is about doing things for yourself. You get to pick what you like doing, and you don’t have to worry about anyone else not liking the activity. You’re doing things for you.

That’s why, make that time for yourself. Make that a priority! Even if you need to take small steps to do it…

Speaking of small steps, I do have a book about making small steps to progression, called Small Steps to Progression. It’s a free download and I do really think you’ll love it! You can download it for free here.

But anyways, don’t forget to commit to yourself today. Make yourself a priority and not a free time option!

-Lauren ☺

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Related Articles:

All Self-Care Blog Posts HERE!

Greatest Self-Care Actions for Every Area of Your Life

5 Big No-No’s for Self-Care

10 Self-Care Tasks to Start Your Month

7 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Do Your Self-Care

Easy Self-Care Tips for More Self-Love!

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