What is Self-Care and Why Does it Matter?
What is Self-Care?
“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” – Aldous Huxley
Welcome to our Fundamentals of the Self-Care Thinkbook! We are so glad you’re joining us for this one because, to be honest, it might be the most important course we’ve ever written.
Why?
Because self-care is the ultimate gift you give yourself. When you cultivate and follow through with a self-care practice that is just for you, you grow love—first for yourself, and (very soon thereafter), love that extends and is felt by those around you.
Self-care is the best possible thing you can do to improve not only your life, but the lives of the people closest to you.
A strong statement! Yes, and it’s true.
Self-Care isn’t Selfish: Why Filling Your Well First is Most Important
Unfortunately, self-care is easier said than done. It’s so easy to forget to take care of yourself, especially when you have others to care for. But when your well is dry, you can’t quench the thirst of others. It’s as simple as that. Self-care is the only way to fill your well, to ensure you can show up effectively for yourself and others.
As Maya Angelou put it, “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” But when you don’t serve yourself first, it’s like tying one of your hands behind your back. Helping others then becomes a lot more challenging, right?
Your Self-Care Plan is as Unique as You Are
The beauty of self-care is that it is unique, just like you. Not a single one of us will have the exact same self-care routine as another person, and that’s okay.
In fact, that is the point of this Thinkbook. We created this Thinkbook as a tool for you to first learn about self-care as it relates to the three pillars (body, mind, and soul), and then to learn how to create your very own self-care routine that fits like a puzzle piece in your life.
Not only will your self-care routine be different from everyone else’s, it will also change depending on the day, season, and year. It’s important to recognize that an effective self-care routine is dynamic and built on a foundation of self-awareness and understanding—it’s a continuous process of proactively considering and tending to your needs du jour.
And that makes this Thinkbook a self-care buffet: take what serves you in the here and now, and feel free to come back whenever you want to try something a little different.
The Magic of Self-Care
Let’s imagine that every night at 12 a.m. sharp, there was a money fairy that put $1440 in your chequing account and at the end of the same day, at 11:59 p.m., she took away whatever you didn’t spend.
How would you spend your almost fifteen hundred dollars, knowing that everything that wasn’t spent would disappear after 24 hours? Hopefully, you’d invest some of it to grow over time and spend some of it on enjoyable experiences.
Now consider the time you have in a day: each day you have exactly 1440 minutes to use however you see fit.
At the stroke of midnight, the previous day’s time disappears and is replaced by a new 1440 minutes. Reflect on how you’re currently spending your 1440.
Are you happy with your choices? Perhaps you spend a lot of time every day sleeping (a wise choice), working, looking at social media, spending quality time with family. How many minutes a day do you spend complaining? Worrying? Wishing? Feeling frustrated about things that are entirely out of your control?
What if I told you, just like the money in your bank account, you can invest a little bit of your precious 1440 minutes to create more time for the future? That, my friend, is the magic of self-care.
The Three Pillars of Self-Care: Body, Mind, and Soul
In this Thinkbook we will focus on the 3 Pillars of Self-Care: Body, Mind, and Soul, and how investing time into each of these categories creates more time in the long run.
The first pillar is Body.
This encompasses everything you do for yourself to be healthier, boost energy and vitality, increase wellness, and reduce illness and disease. By investing time into self-care for your body by focusing on aspects like diet, hydration, sleep, movement, and even time outdoors, you literally give yourself the gift of more time by increasing longevity.
We’ve all heard of adding “years to your life”, which is obviously a good thing, and is the main benefit of taking care of your body where you’re at right here, right now.
The second pillar is Mind.
This encompasses the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that colour our experiences. It involves how we talk to ourselves, our mindset, patterns, how mindful we are, how we understand and express our emotions, and our overall energetic frequency.
Self-care for your mind focuses a lot on self-awareness and self-reflection which will help you to better understand yourself and how you show up in the world. Whereas taking care of your physical body literally add years to your live, taking care of yourself mentally and emotionally adds life to your years.
The third pillar is Soul.
And soul-care, a deeper form of self-care, is often overlooked because it’s not something that’s as obviously necessary as taking care of our bodies and minds, but it is easily the most important of all three. Self-care for your soul is all about the big picture things in life: your choices and intentions, finding authentic sources of power, and accessing intuition to connect deeply to your highest self and to live a life according to your own purpose.
Soul-care requires practices that help you shed the illusions of life and go within, and are the best investment of your time as becoming acquainted with and caring for your soul is the number one way to ensure a happy, fulfilled life. A life you look back at with love and feel proud of all did, no matter how big or small your accomplishments.
So before we begin with the first pillar, body, let’s take a moment to assess where we’re at on our self care journey right now, and where we want to be.
Click here to download the self-reflection PDF for this lesson.
