Benefits of Self-Care
Let’s discuss the benefits of self-care. These are specific, tangible outcomes that you can expect when you take some time to understand how self-care supports your health care. This should help reduce any doubt or residual guilty feelings you might have if the previous section doesn’t have you convinced! When you are in the midst of self-care time, you’ll know you’re doing something important for your mind and your body. No need to get permission from anyone – you’re taking charge of your own health care!
Boost Self-Esteem and Confidence
When you take time to care for yourself in meaningful ways, it acts as a solid reminder that you are valuable and important. The positive and self-affirming activities that fall underneath the self-care umbrella (such as meditation, physical exercise, getting enough rest, and gratitude journaling) serve to elevate your mood and ultimately show yourself – and others – that you care about yourself.
Once you begin to exude self-confidence, others treat you better, and this enforces more self-confidence. It’s an awesome positive feedback loop that continues to build upon itself, the more you do it.
If you tend to say “yes” to others a little more often than you’d like, sacrifice some of your own needs to make others happy, or riddle yourself with guilt for saying “no”, caring for your emotional health by slowing down, considering what it is you really want and need, and making authentic choices on how to spend your time and money would benefit you.
While it may not seem like it on the surface, people-pleasing is a huge sign of low self-worth. Why do you feel like your wants and needs aren’t valid or important?
Other of Benefits of Self-Care include: Boosting Relationships
Whether romantic, friend, family, or at work, any relationship you have with others will only improve once you begin to give yourself what you need to feel your best. With your romantic partner, if you engage in a self-care practice that leads to your identifying what you do and do not want, and then have the confidence to articulate that your relationship can only grow from such clear, honest communication.
Your friendships will also benefit from regular self-care too. Perhaps by spending time engaging in new hobbies that truly fulfill you, you’ll have fun, exciting things to share with friends… or even meet some fantastic new people!
With your family members or at work, caring for yourself enough to establish firm boundaries can go a long way in garnering respect and even support.
Cope with Stress
Establishing a stress-busting self-care ritual is instrumental in helping people cope with the increasing demands of modern life. Let’s face it, regardless of where you are in life, when you are a woman over fifty… life has challenges. By cultivating a simple, healthy go-to recipe for stress and tension relief, you’ll be on top of your game when life throws its inevitable curve balls your way.
Improve Physical Health
Self-care isn’t all about meditation and journaling. Exercising regularly and making healthy food choices are essential elements of self-care. Obviously, this will help you stay in good shape, which boosts self-confidence, self-esteem, and even affects how others treat you, but it’s also key to longevity and happiness.
Another Benefit of Self-Care is Helping you Care for Others
At this point in our lives, this is one of key reasons why you need to establish a thoughtful, intentional and consistent self-care plan. Whether you have adult children, are caring for your aging parents, or are in a caretaking position at work, you have so much more to give when it comes to caretaking when you are taken care of first.
Caring for others involves a significant level of self-sacrifice and patience. If you are caring for others all the time but nobody cares for you, you’ll be emotionally and energetically bankrupt. Caring for our parents is one of the greatest challenges we may face and you want to be able to take this on with energy and grace.
You taking responsibility for putting yourself first means you’ll have a much easier time giving of yourself to others without your well running dry. Second, while you may assume taking time to care for yourself means less time and energy you can spend on others, the reverse is true.
If you happen to play a role in life where you care for others (for example a parent, work in healthcare or customer service, care for aging parents), it’s all too easy to spend all your time and energy attending to the needs of others.
Knowledge and Exploration
One of the most important lessons here – as we move into our fifties and beyond, being able to explore what we want from life and better understanding ourselves and what serves us best will be the underpinnings of the rest of our lives. Self-knowledge and exploration constitute a significant benefit to engaging in self-care practices.
In this go-go-go world with technology all around and ads bombarding us from all directions, showing us what we should like, and telling us how we can fix ourselves, it’s all too easy to ignore and run away from what we really like, what we really want, and who we really are deep down inside.
Many of us have never even asked ourselves these questions. Taking the time to get to know yourself through self-care is one of the most powerful things you can do to take control of your life. Life is all about evolving into the best, most authentic versions of ourselves that we can be. How will you know who you are unless you spend enough quality time with yourself as you grow? The answer is: you won’t. Adopting a self-care regimen is crucial to self-knowledge on your path to personal growth. As popular as self-care has grown over the years, it’s vital to gain a clear understanding of what it is and what it is not. Making sure you engage in at least a few regular self-care practices along your path to personal growth and development will ensure you experience life with a sound body, mind and spirit.
Lastly, an important benefit of self-care is the Healthy Management of Emotions
Someone who doesn’t have a strong self-care regimen is highly likely to crumble under stress, anger or disappointment. This doesn’t have to be you. Even the luckiest people on the planet have bad days. We lose loved ones, suffer broken hearts, don’t achieve goals we set out to conquer.
Without a solid self-care toolbox, it’s so easy to turn to unhealthy habits such as drinking to excess, seeking comfort by overindulging in food or shopping, or even becoming avoidant – neglecting our responsibilities completely. These only make bad situations even worse.
When you have great coping mechanisms for when you’re sad, angry, stressed or hurt, you’re able to deal with negative events in much healthier ways. You’ll still feel the negative emotions – mind you – but you’ll be able to manage them. And that makes a world of difference in your overall life experience.
Don’t forget to check out the Best Self-Care Products Under $20, and I would love to hear about your self-care practices – leave a comment below!
