Sep 12 2023

Creating a Consistent Self-Care Routine

By Kate Hesse

Let’s talk about consistent self-care. This summer I’ve let my evening routine slip a little.

When it’s light until 9 pm, I find it much harder to start winding down at 7:30. But if I want to get my evening self-care routine in before my eyes start to close, I do actually need to get started around 7:30. Knowing I need to get more consistent with my evening self-care practice, I thought it was the perfect time to talk about how you create a consistent self-care routine.

If you haven’t already, grab your copy of my Free Self-Care Toolkit. It includes everything you need to create a self-care routine that works for you and your life.

In this post I’ll cover several tools, techniques, and mindset shifts to help you create a consistent self-care routine, but I won’t be going into depth on what that self-care actually looks like. The Self-Care Toolkit however will help you identify the right self-care activities for you!

Make sure it’s actually self-care

Before we dive into how to create a consistent self-care habit, let’s talk about what self-care actually is!

Self-care is how you refill your mental, emotional, and/or physical energy reserves. And in order to create a consistent self-care habit, it’s important you’re able to distinguish between self-care, self-work, and distraction activities.

In a nutshell, self-work is how you learn and grow. It’s super important but it drains energy instead of filling it up. Distraction is like empty calories. It pulls you out of thinking about or experiencing what’s happening in your life. It doesn’t refill your energy reserves, but it often doesn’t drain them particularly quickly either.

And self-care is something nourishing which refills your reserves.

Self-care will look different for everyone – what self-care looks like for you is as unique as you are! But I like to use the metaphor of self-care feeling like a warm loving hug from one of your favorite people. It will leave you with a yummy feeling of being nurtured, nourished, and supported.

I did a deep dive into what self-care is – and what it isn’t – in Episode #4 of Solicited Advice to Live Your Best Life, hop back there if you need a refresher!

Make it doable for YOU

When you’re looking to create a consistent self-care routine, it’s important you make sure it’s doable for you. I mentioned at the start of this episode I needed to get more consistent with my evening self-care practice.

For me, that practice includes time on my yoga mat moving and stretching my body. It includes tapping as well as meditation to help wind down my mind. And it includes journaling to process the day and set intentions for my sleep. Oh, and I like to include some time for fun reading too.

You might be thinking – there’s no way I have the time to do all that. And that’s perfect. Because what’s doable for me doesn’t need to be doable for you!

What is doable for you?

Think about how much time you actually have to devote to self-care. It might be 10 minutes a day. It might be two hours a day. When you’re creating a consistent habit, the total amount of time is less important than actually being able to make a commitment to yourself you can follow through on.

And think about the activities which you can follow-through on. It might be unrealistic for you to get to a yoga class at the studio across town at the end of your work day, but maybe you have time to fit a 20 minute YouTube yoga class in your living room into your schedule. Again, think about what’s doable for you.

If you set a self-care goal that is totally unrealistic, you’ll quickly abandon the practice. But when you pick something that actually feels doable to you, you’re setting yourself up for success!

Keep in mind this applies not only to the time you devote to self-care, but also the activities you select. Again, the Self-Care Toolkit will help you work through both of these pieces!

Start small and then build up

Maybe you worked through the Self-Care Toolkit and were inspired. Perhaps you have a list of a dozen self-care activities you’d love to implement in your daily life.

You’ve probably heard me say it before – small steps are the key to success.

Pick one activity off your dream self-care list. Then pick a duration that feels realistic and reasonable given everything else on your plate. Work with that one activity until it becomes habit before adding another one in.

When we try to make massive changes all at once, we set ourselves up to struggle, and that struggle often results in abandoning the whole thing. You probably don’t have an extra hour or more where you’re doing nothing each day to fill with self-care.

But when you gradually add activities in 5 minutes here, 15 minutes there, you give yourself the chance to make incremental shifts and changes until you reach your self-care goal.

Consistent and sufficient

It’s important to remember when we talk about self-care goals this isn’t a set-it and forget-it number.

The purpose of self-care is to refill your energy reserves. If you’re spending those reserves quickly, or you’re starting with an empty cup, you’ll need more self-care.

And if your cup is full, and you’re not burning through your energy particularly quickly, you might need less self-care.

The amount of self-care you need will likely fluctuate from day-to-day, week-to-week, season-to-season, and year-to-year. When you think about consistent self-care, consider setting a baseline self-care level which you can always add onto when needed.

Habit stack

When you’re adding a new habit or routine to your life, habit stacking can be incredibly helpful in moving from best of intentions to a consistent routine.

If you’re not familiar with it, habit stacking is the practice of tacking a new habit onto one you already have.

Here’s what it might look like in practice when you’re seeking to create a consistent self-care routine.

If you decide listening to something inspirational each day is an ideal self-care activity for you, utilize habit stacking by listening to your dose of daily inspiration while washing your face and brushing your teeth in the evening.

Or if a gratitude practice feels particularly nourishing, you might try habit stacking by expressing gratitude for each part of your body as you suds it up in your morning shower.

And you might have heard me mention the mindful moment – this self-care activity helps bring you back into the present moment and reset your nervous system. This reset moves you out of the sympathetic stress response, and into the parasympathetic or rest and digest state.

I love to recommend using the mindful moment every time you cross a threshold, moving from one room to another, or transitioning between indoors and outdoors. This is another example of habit stacking. Adding a new habit onto something you already do regularly.

Create momentum toward consistent self-care with habit stacking

When you habit stack, you’re using the power of momentum you’ve already created with an existing habit to launch a new habit into your routine.

Once you’ve identified a self-care tool or technique you’d like to use, consider what existing habit you already have which would be a good pair for this new self-care habit.

It’s also helpful to create a trigger to remind yourself you’re habit stacking. For instance, you might set an alarm on your phone, or stick a post-it to the bathroom mirror. Whatever helps you remember to implement both habits at once.

Make it enjoyable

Self-care isn’t a chore. Although if it feels like one, you might want to jump into the archives again and listen to Episode #9 of Solicited Advice to Live Your Best Life.

If you want to create a consistent self-care routine, you don’t want self-care to feel like a chore! Because let’s be honest, if chores were optional we wouldn’t do them.

I don’t scrub my bathroom every day – and if self-care felt like scrubbing the bathroom, I wouldn’t do that everyday either!

So it’s important to make your self-care activities enjoyable for you. A big piece of this is recognizing if you’re an introvert or an extrovert. If you’re not sure which one you are, check out Episode #20 of Solicited Advice to Live Your Best Life where I detail the difference between the two.

To quickly recap – introverts recharge better alone, extroverts recharge better when they’re with others. So double check and make sure the self-care activities you’ve chosen incorporate the elements you need to recharge best.

Consistent self-care happens when you align activities with your unique priorities and values

Another key is to consistent self-care is to align your self-care activities with your interests and unique priorities. Again, this is all about making it enjoyable.

I love to knit, I find the process incredibly soothing, the rhythmic click of the needles, the feel of the yarn running through my hands, and the magic of something being created as I knit away. Knitting is one of my longest standing self-care activities.

Adam knit one scarf for himself. For him the process was a struggle from start to finish. Knitting is the exact opposite of self-care for him.

One of the box-standard suggestions for self-care is some sort of spa treatment – a massage, a manicure or a pedicure come to mind. But if you hate to have strangers touch your feet, getting a pedicure is probably going to feel more like torture than self-care.

Think about the things you’re trying to introduce as self-care habits.

Is there anything which just doesn’t resonate with you but got on the list because you heard someone else loved it for self-care? Cross that activity off and brainstorm something that feels more aligned with what you enjoy.

Add it to your calendar and make that time a non-negotiable

Block out time for self-care on your calendar each and every day and make it non-negotiable.

Let’s get clear on what I mean when I say non-negotiable. I don’t mean you can’t switch out a walk for a yoga class. And I don’t mean you can’t shift your self-care time to later in the day. I simply mean, don’t allow yourself to view self-care as something you do only if you don’t have anything else to do in that time.

Because the reality is, you’ll always have something else to do. Self-care only happens when we make it a priority. But it’s easy to view self-care as selfish, as time that should be spent taking care of other tasks and people.

However, self-care is the opposite of selfish. Only by taking care of yourself are you able to show up as fully present and at your best for everything and everyone else in your life.

When you make self-care a priority as important as going to work or making sure your family has clean socks and underwear, you’re building your resilience which turns the mountains in your life into molehills.

So treating self-care as a non-negotiable not only helps you create a consistent self-care routine, but it also helps improve every other aspect of your life.

Creating a consistent self-care habit

Ok, we covered a lot of different techniques today. Get started by getting your copy of my free Self-Care Toolkit.

Work through the exercises in the Toolkit to create a list of self-care activities which work for you and your life. Then use the tools, techniques, and mindset shifts we covered here to take that list and create a consistent self-care routine.

Remember, to be sustainable, your self-care routine will need to change and shift to meet your needs.

Allow yourself to experiment – try to bring a sense of curiosity to this process. Release what doesn’t work for you, and consider adding in more of what does.

And if you need help figuring out how to make all of this work for you and your life, schedule a Personal Roadmap Discovery Call with me – I’d love to help you discover your unique path to a consistent self-care routine.

One bit of housekeeping before I wrap up this episode. I’ve been doing the work right along with you. And part of that is a regular check-in on where I’m spending my time and energy. As we head into fall and winter, there are certain things I know I’ll need extra time and energy for. So as much as I enjoy putting together this podcast each week for you, I’m going to be taking a hiatus to reallocate my energy as I navigate the next several months. I can’t thank you enough for listening – whether it’s just this episode or you’ve been listening from episode zero.

I fully intend to return to offering you Solicited Advice to Live Your Best Life as more time and energy becomes available. Until then, please know my inbox is always open – feel free to reach out to me, or schedule a Personal Roadmap Discovery Call.

And remember – living your best life isn’t about changing your life – it’s about changing the way you show up for your life!