Ideas for a Self-Care Strategy
1. Spend at least fifteen to thirty minutes daily in meditation, prayer, or quiet time just being.
2. Get at least twenty minutes a day of exercise- yoga, walking, hiking, or any type of exercise within your abilities.
3. Give yourself permission to laugh when you feel authentically joyful.
4. Surround yourself with caring others- family, friends, work colleagues. Seek the company of others who are compassionate & kind.
5. Find the sun for at least 20 minutes every day.
6. Observe and truly experience nature. Notice the sky when walking to your car. Listen to the sounds of birds. Pay attention to the trees, smell blossoming flowers, hear the buzzing bees, and watch ants as they work.
7. Without forcing it, experience gratitude daily for even the simple things in life that we usually take for granted: good health, family, running water, your home, & food.
8. Show compassion, actively, toward others. Look for, even small, opportunities to help. Open doors, offer to aid someone carrying groceries, really listen to someone else’s story. Actively, every day, seek to show kindness. And volunteer at least one day per month.
9. Support your brain: Eat a healthy diet & eliminate junk & fast foods. Take a good, food based multi-vitamin/mineral & include omega-3 oils such as cold pressed linseed oil, & also include borage & flax.
10. Express love, gratitude, and affection.
11. Rescue an animal.
12. Find creative expression: garden, yoga, art, music, sculpture, poetry, writing... any way to transform emotions into creativity!
13. Be your own best friend. Now. Hurry.
14. Have a good cry when you need it.
15. Drink plenty of good water.
16. Accept and embrace painful emotions without pushing them away. Accept and embrace 'feel good' emotions without clinging to them.
17. Practice solitude.
18. Sleep 7 hours a night.
19. Eat clean.
20. Play dirty (get in the mud, walk barefoot, sweat).
21. Remember your precious, beloved, irreplaceable ones who have died.
22. Try new things.
23. Find your special song.
24. Seek out those who made a difference in your life and tell them.
25. Help build bridges of love, not fear, between people.
26. Take an internet/electronics/cell phone break.
27. Treat yourself to a day of comfort.
28. Again, rescue an animal. Rescue animals truly can rescue us.
29. Buy a stranger a cup of coffee.
30. Find your own daily or weekly rituals of solace such as lighting a candle, burning incense, writing in a journal, or taking up a hobby that honors your precious one.
