Self-Care Bingo – Easily bring play to your self-care routine
Self-care is critical to our mental, physical and emotional health. It helps us transition from fight, flight, or freeze into rest and digest (learn more about that here). And because it has such a serious impact on our lives, we often treat it like an incredibly serious thing.
But when we make self-care work, it adds extra stress and pressure to our lives instead of the joyful replenishment so many of us desperately need. So I wanted to bring a sense of playfulness back to self-care by turning it into a game of bingo!
Why daily self-care
You can read more about why daily self-care is so important here and here. But because so many of us treat self-care as an optional last item on our to-do list, I wanted to again touch on why daily self-care is so important.
Self-care is how we refill our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual energy reserves. Let those reserves run low and you set yourself up for burnout and a litany of diseases.
Often self-care becomes something we treat like a triage tool, implementing it only when things are already out of control in our lives.
However, if you build self-care into your daily routine, it not only becomes a habit (and therefore harder to skip), it also helps you maintain a sense of balance in your life. Instead of constantly pulling yourself back from the brink of exhaustion and burnout, you’ll be able to more consistently stand comfortably in a place where everything feels easier and more balanced.
Why make it a game
The last thing I want is for self-care to feel like another chore I need to do in order to cross it off my to-do list.
Have you ever heard the theory that you should put the things you are decluttering into a plastic bag, not a box? The idea is that in our minds “plastic bags equal trash” while “boxes equal something of value being delivered to us”. When you put the things you are ready to part with in a box, it becomes harder to part with them as you have “added value” simply by placing them in a container associated with value.
By turning self-care into a game instead of an item on our to-do lists along with “clean the house” and “pick up groceries”, we change the way we look at it. Suddenly it is something playful and fun to look forward to instead of something we feel obligated to do so we can cross it off the list.
I like bingo because it gives you the option to pick and choose from a variety of activities and time frames each day, giving you flexibility to fit your self-care routine into your life.
How to play self-care bingo
Print out your bingo card. (If you want a version which comes with each box filled in with suggested activities and durations of time, sign-up for my FREE Self-Care Toolkit.)
Fill in each blank with an activity you find to be nourishing. Try to mix up different types of activities around the board so you won’t need to do the exact same thing over and over in order to reach bingo. You might include options like: 15 minutes of meditation, a 30 minute walk, or 1 hour of fun reading. Pick activities that resonate with you and durations of time that work with your life.
Once you have your board filled in, pick at least one activity each day. You might want to pick it in advance so you can add it to your schedule and make sure you have the time blocked out for that activity. Or perhaps you block out a chunk of time each day for self-care, but pick an activity that fits into that time frame based on how you are feeling that day.
Make this uninterrupted time. Put your phone in airplane mode or in another room. Let your family know you are taking some time to yourself and won’t be available during your self-care window.
Try to get bingo each week by completing a line of five squares in any direction.
If you have more time in your schedule or feel like you need a little extra self-care, consider going longer than the suggested time or adding in a second activity after the first.
Updating your bingo card
If you find you continuously avoid certain squares week after week, take a moment and ask yourself why. Maybe you don’t have that much time in your schedule right now. Perhaps it is an activity that no longer feels nourishing to you.
Once you determine that it feels more like a chore than self-care, cross out that square and add in something you do feel nourished by. Periodically you may want to review your entire bingo card and create a new one to reflect your current self-care needs.
You may also want to create seasonal cards which include different activities. For instance, I try to get out for walks and to garden most days in the warmer weather but I spend much less time outside in the winter.
Remember the point is to have fun
If you find yourself stressing about fitting a certain activity into your schedule in order to get bingo for the week, let it go. The whole point of turning self-care into a game is to remove the stress and make it fun!
Maybe you look at your bingo card each week and see what shapes you can make from the squares you completed – like finding pictures in the clouds. Or perhaps you try to avoid duplicating any square selection two weeks in a row.
There are no judges, and there are no rules, so make the game work for you!
