Where you’re going wrong with your self-care routine
Have you ever felt like self-care is overwhelming or just one more chore on your to-do list? Does it feel like it isn’t “working” for you, or maybe you’re getting self-care wrong?
I totally understand that feeling. It happens to me sometimes. And it’s a great reminder for me to check in on what I think I’m doing for self-care – because I’ve come to learn in my own life and from talking to family, friends, and clients, this feeling is almost always linked with labeling self-work and distraction as self-care and not actually practicing any true self-care.
What actually counts as self-care
Which brings me to the importance of understanding what self-care actually is!
Self-care is something that replenishes your mental, physical, and/or emotional energy reserves.
Self-care leaves you feeling nourished. Like you just got a long hug from one of your favorite people – someone who loves you unconditionally.
Imagine a beautiful tea cup sitting on a beautiful saucer. Next to it is a full pot of warm tea waiting to be poured. Lift up the teapot and slowly begin to pour the tea into your teacup.
Visualize the steam lifting up out of the cup, smell the aroma of the tea, and feel the warmth of the teapot in your hand.
Continue pouring the tea into the tea cup until it’s so full the tea begins to spill over the rim of the cup and fill your saucer until it can’t hold another drop.
I like to remind clients that the energy you have to give others is the tea in the saucer. To keep yourself happy and healthy, the tea in the tea cup is what you keep for yourself. If you let your tea cup drain you won’t have any energy left to give yourself or others. Self-care is how you fill your tea cup and saucer.
And what isn’t self-care
So just as important as knowing what self-care is – is knowing what it isn’t.
Self-Work
Self-work is something that helps you learn and grow but it takes energy.
A great example of self-work is the goal setting and year end review process in Episode 2 and Episode 3 of the podcast. These are things that are super important to living your best life, but they drain tea out of your tea cup – not refill it.
Distraction
Distraction is like empty calories. It’s often an energy neutral event. It isn’t taking any tea out of your tea cup, but it isn’t pouring any in either.
And that means it isn’t inherently a problem. But if you’re aiming for a healthy diet of 2,000 calories a day and you can get all of your nutritional needs in 1,800 calories, then by all means, have 200 calories that bring nothing to the table. However, if you’re struggling to get all of your nutritional needs met, those empty calories become an issue.
Similarly, if you’ve got extra time and energy, then distraction activities aren’t a problem. But if you’re struggling to get enough self-care and frequently feel rundown, exhausted, or burnt out, distraction activities become an issue as they get in the way of spending time on what will make you feel better.
Distraction won’t help replenish your reserves. And it won’t prepare you to tackle the challenges of tomorrow with grace and ease. You need to make sure you’re incorporating actual self-care into your life for that.
Where we get self-care wrong
Self-care has become such a buzz word that it gets thrown around a lot.
It’s often used for marketing purposes as well as by people who genuinely want to help you life a healthier life. So let’s talk about some of the ways we can get self-care wrong – turning it from something to replenish us to something that drains us:
Following someone else’s self-care checklist
Maybe it’s because I share so much information about self-care, but I can’t go on Pinterest without a dozen “must-do self-care checklists” popping up. And while I truly believe each person who puts out a list like this is well meaning, there are a few important thing’s they miss which can set you up for self-care failure, not success.
We’re not cookie cutter humans, and what feels like self-care to one person ISN’T necessarily self-care for someone else. Here are just a few ways this comes into play:
Self-Care looks different for introverts & extroverts
Introverts and extroverts recharge differently. Introverts recharge better alone. Extroverts recharge better when spending time with others.
So if you’re an extrovert following an introverts self-care list (or vice versa), it isn’t a surprise you’re not nourished by those activities. You can tweak these activities by adding in or taking away the component that you need – for instance, a walk in the park alone recharges an introvert while a walk in the park with a great friend recharges an extrovert.
Your self-care activities should be as unique as you are
Our interests and hobbies are as unique as we are, and working with those unique interests are how you set yourself up for self-care success.
I love gardening. Getting out in the garden not only allows me to recharge from my regular daily work by resting the left side of my brain while engaging the right, I also get so much nourishment out of digging my hands in the dirt, listening to the birds sing, and rejoicing in each plant as they come into bloom.
Adam views gardening as a chore and so while it takes physical energy from both of us, he doesn’t get the mental and emotional recharge from it that I do.
We all have different resources
These lists often forget we all have different life resources – especially time and money.
If the self-care checklist you’re trying to follow calls for a weekly massage, depending on your financial situation, the stress of the cost may be greater than any relief you’d receive from the massage.
Or if you’re a parent of young children, and the self-care checklist you’ve downloaded includes a four hour at-home spa day every Sunday morning, you may feel like you’re being asked to chose between self-care and quality time with your kids.
The bottom line is – self-care should feel like self-care to you – not a chore or a burden. Just because it’s self care for someone else, doesn’t mean it’s self-care for you.
Confusion between self-care and self-work
Many of these lists are filled with self-work activities. I’ve noticed over the years a real misunderstanding of the difference between the two. Often people conflate personal development with self-care. I intentionally use the term self-work instead of personal development to create a clear distinction between the two. But there’s some gray area here, which leads us to the next place we sometimes get self-care wrong.
Not paying attention to the intention
There are plenty of activities that can be either self-care or self-work (or maybe even distraction).
I love to use a walk in the park to explore the differences:
- Self-Care: you can go to the park and take a casual stroll, noticing the world around you with all five senses, truly relaxing and simply enjoying the experience with no other intention. (Quick side note – remember what we talked about earlier – if you’re an extrovert invite someone you enjoy spending time with on that walk with you!)
- Self-Work: you can go to the park with the intention of getting 4,000 steps in 30 minutes to reach your step goal for the day. You’ve headed into the park with a goal and the intention of achieving something that will help you learn and/or grow.
- Distraction: you can go into the park and pop in earbuds and play your favorite entertainment podcast, blocking out your awareness of the world around you and using the podcast to pull you out of thinking about and experiencing your life. (Another side note – if you were listening to a podcast like this one with the intention of learning something to improve your life, that shifts it into a self-work activity.)
So while in each case you were taking a walk in the park, your intention and the way you approached that walk influenced the impact it has on the tea in your tea cup.
When you notice a self-care routine that used to work isn’t filling you up any more, it’s a great time to do a check in on your intention. Have those self-care activities shifted to self-work or distraction? What changes can you make in intention to allow them to shift back to self-care? Which brings us to the last point I want to mention –
Defaulting to habit
Take a moment and get really honest with yourself. How often do you find yourself curled up on the sofa with a glass of wine mindlessly watching the television at the end of the day and justifying it as self-care?
As you might have guessed by now, it probably isn’t self-care. It’s most likely distraction. You can also add scrolling through social media and playing games on your phone to that list.
Does something leave you feeling numb and distracted? Do you look at the clock hours later and wonder where the time went? Not in a “wow – I had so much fun I totally lost track of the time” way, but in a “huh – I’m really not sure how I just spent that much time staring at my phone (or tv)” way. That’s distraction, not self-care.
Please don’t get me wrong, sometimes distraction is all you have the bandwidth for. And that’s ok. I curl up almost every evening and watch tv with Adam. At the end of a long day it allows me to shut down my brain and goes great with an easy knitting project. But I have a reminder set to turn off the tv at 7:45 pm every night so I have plenty of time for my evening self-care and self-work routine.
Remember – distraction in and of itself isn’t a bad thing – it only becomes a problem when you don’t have enough time for the other important things in your life.
However, if you’re reverting to distraction activities out of habit, it’s time to bring some intentionality to how you spend your time. Looping back to the last point – consider if there’s another activity or another way to approach the same activity which would shift you out of distraction and into self-care?
Next Steps
Has it started to dawn on you that you don’t have any actual self-care in your life? Are all the activities you thought were self-care actually distraction or self-work?
Are you curious how to shift your routine so it not only begins to nourish you but self-care turns into something you look forward to each day instead of just another item to check off your list?
If you’re nodding yes right now – I’ve got you covered – grab a copy of my free Self-Care Toolkit or use the form below. This 27-page ebook has everything you need to start building a sustainable self-care routine to help you fill your cup, build your resilience so you’re ready to take on anything life throws at you, and make self-care fun again!
And remember – living your best life isn’t about changing your life – it’s about changing the way you show up for your life! I’m sending you a great big hug – you’ve got this!
Show Notes
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