Boundaries – Overlooked Form of Self-care

At one point in our lives, we may have seen the rising trend of self-care culture.

We may all know that self-care is important. I’m sure that we have all gotten plenty of ideas on how to practice self-care. These ideas may include face masks, fancy lattes, or elegant spa days. Self-care ideas are everywhere.

So while there are plenty of activities that will allow us to practice self-care, there’s also a form of self-care that we sort of overlook. These are our personal boundaries.

Boundaries are about taking ownership of our lives.

Has there ever been times when you said yes to going somewhere even though you’d rather stay home? Or even said yes to going somewhere even though you have something more important to do?

Have you ever said yes to doing something even though you know deep down you are too busy and overwhelmed?

I could list plenty of examples. The whole idea is that self-care is not just the regular activities that we do to recharge ourselves, it’s also the lifestyle that we live to take ownership of our time.

What Boundaries Look Like

Boundaries define our internal limits. They help us take ownership of our time and are responsive to our choices and values.

It is when we set limits not just on others, but also on ourselves.

I mean, taking yourself shopping may be a form of selfcare, but what is that doing to your finances?

And yes, it is important to help our friends once in a while, but how is that impacting our personal schedules and priorities?

You may have noticed by now that setting and living through our boundaries is not just a one-time self-care activity – it is an ongoing lifestyle of choices we make for ourselves.

How Setting Boundaries Can Be a Form of Selfcare

I’m not really going to list a bunch of self-care ideas because you have probably seen a bunch of them everywhere already.

What I am going to list are a few courses of actions that we wouldn’t initially consider as self-care at first. When you think about it, even though these little actions don’t constitute as self-care in the eyes of Instagram, they actually become beneficial to our mental health in the long run – that is the ultimate self-care.

1. Turning off notifications when we need to get important work done (or we just simply want to disconnect from the world a bit)

When there are many tasks that are demanding our attention and we need full focus without distractions, then a simple way to set boundaries for even just a brief moment is turning off our notifications.

It may sound like a silly way to practice “self-care”, but when we really need to prioritise the things we need to do for ourselves, whether that’d be an important task or even just me-time, turning off notifications does count as a form of self-care. It goes to show that we are putting our needs and priorities first.

2. Saying no.

This goes from saying no to particular events that you don’t really need to go to, to saying no to the requests of other people.

While there are times when we have no choice but to attend that event, or that requested task of another person is actually important, it’s still a good practice to be able to distinguish what is important and what is not.

I’m still trying to get better at asking myself if going to a particular event or helping someone out with a task is something that I am able to handle, and would be worth doing over my other priorities. If the answer is no, then I should choose not to do them.

When you look deeply into this, saying no is a form of self-care because it means saying yes to all your other priorities, and also relieving yourself of any future stress and burn out from trying to do everything for everyone all at once.

3. Limiting consumption of social media and bad news in general

Everyone knows that especially during this pandemic, there were bad news (and there are still bad news) everywhere left, right, and centre. And of course, this includes social media where there is so much room for comparison.

It may be easier said and done, but if there is something that we are consuming or scrolling through that is making us feel bad about our lives, limiting ourselves from that will give us a favour.

I mean, if you knew that you were eating something that was so unhealthy for you that it’s making you sick every time you eat it, you would stop eating it right?

Same with what is being consumed in our minds – if we’re noticing that we’re feeling bad every time we see or hear particular news or posts, it may be time to at least limit exposure to it.

I explained further about being mindful about what we are consuming in our minds in this post – Our Diet is Not Just the Food We Eat

4. Listening to our Bodies

This reminds me of the time when I was sick, and I was everything but productive – and that was because my body physically was not able to do any work.This also applies to full-on burn out which also makes us not mentally capable to do work as well.

But just think about this – is it rude to not listen to someone? Like if someone told us to stop doing something, it would be completely arrogant of us to ignore them right? So why would we not listen to our own bodies?

Having an unproductive day once in a while when we are feeling physically sick and burn out is completely okay, I wrote about it on here – It’s Okay to Have Unproductive Days

Putting into Practice

Of course, this list is not exhaustive as there are plenty of ways to apply our boundaries to self-care.

We are responsible for how we take ownership of our time, and it’s common sense that losing control of that is not caring for ourselves.

So… lets always include our internal limits as part of our self-care, because that’s one beneficial way to take care of ourselves.

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Related Posts:

Yes, It’s Okay to Have Non-Productive Days

Our Diet Is Not Just The Food We Eat