🔑 Key Takeaways
- Being intentional and purposeful with self-care is crucial in uncertain times. We should focus on developing individualized strategies that help nourish us and create habits, loops, and expectations that support our well-being.
- Self-care is not self-indulgent, it's a responsibility towards ourselves and those who depend on us. Prioritizing self-care helps in maintaining and promoting health, preventing diseases, and coping with illnesses.
- Prioritize sleeping, exercise, and healthy eating for a better quality of life. Don't feel guilty about practicing self-care, it's about adding to your overall well-being. Incorporate spiritual self-care through acts of gratitude and kindness. Focus on foundational aspects rather than overwhelming yourself with lists and ideas.
- Engaging in movement and walking are simple ways to boost our well-being. Having a good foundation of the fundamentals, planning our time, and prioritizing our well-being can help us incorporate exercise into our daily lives.
- Being accountable to someone and prioritizing self-care can help us overcome perfectionism and manage stress. Just showing up for nourishing activities can create momentum and real-time data cultivates a sense of craving for repetition.
- Reflecting on daily routines and optimizing for happiness can lead to long-term benefits for mental and physical wellness. Enduring pain to achieve goals is challenging, but focusing on joy can make it worthwhile.
- Taking care of ourselves, our homes, and our lives is essential. Understanding our resources, capabilities, and choices help us make better decisions. Having respect for ourselves, making space, and being part of a community is crucial to fulfilling our purpose.
- It's important to have a little buffer in life to cope with challenges and find fulfillment through a strong life purpose. Exercise and self-care are essential for longevity, and enduring present challenges can lead to future success.
- Self-care involves prioritizing emotional and social well-being alongside physical health. Overcoming barriers and giving back to the community without expectation promotes self-care. Engaging in real-time connections and laughter is also crucial for self-care.
- Prioritize activities that energize and ignite passion by scheduling them in your calendar and having an emergency self-care plan ready. Seek support from loved ones and stay open to feedback to overcome challenges and keep learning.
📝 Podcast Summary
The Importance of Deliberate Self-Care during the Pandemic
The pandemic has made it harder to adjust to life and requires a more deliberate approach to self-care. Forethought is necessary to be purposeful about our days and incorporate our idiosyncratic preferences. Looking at tomorrow, next week, and the month after can help develop an intentional mindset. Uncertainty or lack of predictability contributes to psychological and emotional challenges, and it's important to focus on strategies that nourish us individually. This requires a better understanding of what self-care means to each individual and how to succeed at it through creating habits, loops, and expectations for ourselves. Being more deliberate and intentional with self-care can help navigate the moving objects and targets in life, especially during pandemic life.
The importance of prioritizing self-care
Self-care is essential for maintaining a healthy mind, body, and soul. The ability to promote health, prevent diseases, and cope with illnesses is not just the responsibility of healthcare providers but also of individuals, families, and communities. It's important to grow nourishing thoughts in our brain and be protective of the soil we work within. Many people misunderstand self-care as self-indulgent, costly, and selfish. However, it's selfish not to care for ourselves as we have a responsibility to others who depend on us. We must strive to prioritize self-care in our lives and understand that it's a collaboration towards maintaining and promoting health.
The Core Aspects of Self-Care for Preventing Chronic Diseases.
Self-care is important for overall health and well-being. The core aspects of self-care, including emotional, physical, and spiritual self-care, contribute to preventing chronic diseases. Dr. Wayne Jonas suggests prioritizing sleeping, exercise, and healthy eating as foundational aspects of self-care. Self-care is not about taking away from others, but rather adding to your own well-being. It is essential to take permission for self-care and to explore and invest time in it. Act of gratitude, kindness or volunteering are also spiritual self-care. There are lists and ideas, but it is best to focus on the foundational aspects of self-care.
The Importance of Exercise for Our Well-being
Exercise is crucial for our well-being and can be as simple as engaging in movement and walking. It is essential to have a good foundation of the fundamentals, as it makes all other things much more manageable. Misconceptions and lack of knowledge about the cost and time needed for self-care are significant barriers to caring for our bodies, minds, and souls. Being purposeful and planning our time can help us incorporate exercise into our daily lives. It is vital to prioritize our well-being, and even small steps like taking a walk or going mountain-biking, can significantly boost our mental and physical well-being.
The importance of accountability, self-care, and realistic expectations for sticking to commitments.
Being accountable to someone, like a friend or a therapist, can help us stick to our commitments. Our own self-expectations and perfectionism can become barriers, so it's important to recalibrate expectations and recognize that something is better than nothing. Nourishing activities like yoga, walking, or a preferred workout can help us manage stress and show up differently in the world. Just showing up is half the battle, as it creates momentum and snowballs into more actions. Prioritizing self-care and scheduling it on the calendar can ensure that we make time for it, and real-time data can cultivate a sense of craving for repetition.
The importance of understanding habits, motivation, and productivity for sustaining self-care.
Self-care is essential for mental and physical wellness. It's important to reflect on our daily routine and habits to incorporate feedback that puts us back on track to achieve our goals. Understanding habits, the habit loop, motivation, and productivity helps to sustain self-care. To qualify for self-care, we need to feel good and experience joy. Joy is an enduring emotional state that creates a sense of satisfaction. Optimizing for happiness brings long-term benefits to one's health and well-being. Enduring pain and discomfort while pursuing a goal is challenging, but focusing on joy, understanding our goals, and enduring the pain can bring long-term benefits to our overall health and wellness.
The Importance of Self-Care and Prudent Choices
Self-care is not wasteful. Taking care of oneself, one's home, and one's life is inconsiderate and wise. We shouldn't waste our resources and should make prudent choices that help us show up in the best way possible. To do something, we have to give something up. Understanding our resources, our capabilities, and how our choices affect our family helps us make better decisions and cope. It's important to have respect for ourselves and recognize that we are unique individuals with no other copies. Community is also crucial for us to fulfill our purpose and intention. We should avoid operating at full utilization and make space for margin in our lives.
Coping with Aversive Things: The Importance of Margin and Purpose.
Coping with aversive things does not mean you have to white-knuckle through them every day. Coping involves having a little margin, a little buffer which provides a sense of fulfillment and meaning. Having a strong life purpose decreases mortality rates. Reverse-engineering your life by projecting to the future, and determining who you want to be, and where you want to be, helps in making significant life decisions. Caring for oneself is essential, and requires commitment and buy-in. Exercising 2-8 hours per week throughout life reduces the risk of dying early by 29% to 36%. Enduring present-day challenges is worth it when it helps in achieving future goals.
The Importance of Emotional and Social Self-Care
Self-care involves caring for oneself emotionally, physically, and socially. Recognizing emotional self-care and caring for how we feel is as important as physical care. It is important to be aware of the barriers that make emotional self-care difficult. Additionally, it is important to care for the community and give back, but not with the expectation of receiving something back. When changing how you function in life, it is important to ask more questions and assess what is in your hand that someone else could benefit from. Self-care also involves connecting with others in real-time, without latency, and enjoying their laughter. Laughter is a big deal and is important in self-care.
Importance of Creating a Personalized Self-Care Plan
Creating a personalized self-care plan is important for maintaining mental and emotional wellbeing. By identifying activities that energize and ignite passion, individuals can prioritize them by scheduling it in their calendar and putting it in their visual field for easy reference. In case of an emergency, having an emergency self-care plan ready helps to deal with sudden setbacks or tipping points. Being accountable to others like friends and family makes it easier to follow through on commitments. Instead of fixating on the problem, looking for solutions and finding workarounds to get support from others can help overcome challenges in a tailored way. It's important to keep learning and growing by seeking feedback and staying open to new ideas.