Self Care

 Self Care Our Responsibility

R. Knots, an American award-winning author once said, “taking care of myself does not mean ‘me first’. It means ‘me, too”. Nowadays, self-care becomes more well known to everyone as more people start to learn and practice it, but many people still have no idea what self-care is about. According to Perimeter Health Care, self-care is a general term that describes everything you do deliberately for your mental, physical, and emotional well-being. It is a simple concept of taking care of ourselves, but we often overlook it. Good self-care is the key to improve our mood, maintain our health and relationship with ourselves so we can radiate and transmit good feelings to other people. As easy as this may sound, many people fail to practice self-care due to busy schedules or are too consumed with technology until the ‘me-time’ become the last thing to do in their daily lives. Starting a self-care routine can be challenging and hard to maintain but knowing what works for you may help practice self-care. There are three main ways to practice self-care in our daily lives which are taking care of our mental health and emotion, do some extreme activities, and practice healthy and nutritious diet.

The first way of practicing self-care is by taking care of mental health and emotions. Mental and emotional health are important parts of overall health. People who are mentally and emotionally healthy can control their thoughts, feelings and behaviors. They can cope with life’s challenges and can keep problems in perspective. They feel good about themselves besides having good relationships. Being emotionally healthy does not mean you are happy all the time. It means you are aware of your emotions. You can deal with them, whether they are positive or negative. Emotionally healthy people still feel stress, anger, and sadness but they know how to manage their negative feelings. They can tell when a problem is more than what they can handle. They also know when to seek help from their doctor. Mental and emotional health allow you to realize your full potential. You can work productively and cope with the stresses of everyday life. It helps you work with other people and contribute to society. According to a website called Family Doctor (2017), there are many ways to improve or maintain good mental and emotional health. The first suggested way is to express your feelings in appropriate ways. Let people close to you know when something is bothering you. Keeping your feelings of sadness or anger inside can lead to stress. It can cause problems in your relationships and at work or school. Next, allow yourself to always stay positive. Focus on the good things in your life. Forgive yourself for making mistakes and forgive others as well. Spend time with healthy, positive people. Stress and problems with family, work or school can trigger mental illness or even worse, leading someone to have suicidal thoughts. Thus, counselling, support groups, and medicines can help people who have emotional problems or mental illness. If you have an ongoing emotional problem, do not be afraid or shy to seek for a doctor’s help. He or she can help you find the right type of treatment.

Next, one of the ways to self-care is by doing some extreme activity. What is extreme activity? And how extreme activity can give us the idea for self-care? Extreme activity also known as adventure sport or extreme sport which often involve speed, height, and some high level of physical exertion such as para jumping, rock climbing, water skiing and scuba diving.  If you are a person that always stress, then this extreme activity is the best solution for you to release your tension. This is because, according to Indo Indians (2020), this extreme sport will give a lot of benefits to our body and mind. The example of benefits that it could give such as stress reliever, keep our body shape maintain and give us the healthy muscles. When we are doing the sport, our brain will induce one kind of chemical named as dopamine chemical that will keep us happy when doing the activity. This sport also required the person who join it to work their body out. It will make the body to burn more calories and lead to a healthy body. As we all know, extreme activity involved physical activity. Physical activity can reduce the level of stress hormone in the body and at the same time, it can stimulate the production of endorphin. Endorphin is a chemical in our brain that act as natural painkiller and it can improve the ability to sleep which can reduce stress. Deeply breathing also can cause the body to produce endorphin. This natural stress lifter can keep our stress and depression away. (Anxiety and Depression Association of America,2018)

Lastly, practice a healthy and nutritious diet also one of the tips for self-care. When talking about good nutrition and self-care, it never means dieting. It means properly fueling and feeding your body the basic things it needs to function for example, high-quality protein, healthy fats, vitamins, minerals, and carbohydrates. Good nutrition is self-care because your relationship with food can create a better sense of balance in your life. This reflected in how balanced and varied your nutrition is and how well your food is serving as your fuel. Some tips on upping your nourishment are to get colorful and eat regularly. The more color the better when it comes to nutrition. Not only does it lend itself to more diversity of immune-boosting and inflammation-fighting vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytonutrients, but I am also convinced that more color in your day is a mood-booster. This is not off, as a 2013 study found that diets rich in fruits and vegetables were associated with daily feelings of well-being. Then, to eat regularly, if you go hours without eating, you are not properly fuelling your system, your metabolism goes all out of whack, and things like fatigue, low energy, brain fog, and the dreaded “hangry” feeling can start to set in. When you finally do eat, it’s not uncommon to ignore your satiety cues, overeat, and feel guilty or physically uncomfortable afterward. Not to mention, your body isn’t going to get the full benefit from exercise without proper nutrition before and after. Another tangible way to find balance with good nutrition to support self-care is with a mindful eating practice. According to The Centre for Mindful Eating, this practice is intended to bring about an awareness of our actions, thoughts, feelings, motivations, and insight into the roots of health and contentment. It makes you more aware of your internal and external environments surrounding the activity of eating, and it brings about a balance between pleasure associated with food and good nutrition to benefit the body’s overall metabolic processes.

In conclusion, there are three main ways to practice self-care in our daily lives which are taking care of our mental health and emotion, do some extreme activities, and practice healthy and nutritious diet. Other ways can be practiced too but always stick to the basic first to find your rhythm and gradually planning your routine. Reading and watching videos about self-care could help build your routine. Self-care is not a selfish act because other than considering our needs, we also will learn what we can and need to do to take care and reinvigorate ourselves without neglecting our health and safety. The mind, emotions, and body are a gift from God that should not be taken for granted. The future you will be thankful if you start practicing and investing in self-care starting from now. The current break that we have due to the pandemic could be a kick start for self-care as we have more time to figure and arrange things out. So, let us not waste any time and take this opportunity to bring out a better version of ourselves.