Maintaining healthy Self Care can be a balancing act. While you’re working to take care of your family, meet the obligations of your job, and manage the day to day tasks of living, you still need to care for your whole Self. Mind, body, spirit – they all need TLC that will keep you healthy and thriving.
If you have an accountability partner, the two of you can keep each other going. Someone who supports your spiritual practices encourages you to be consistent. A workout gets energy from shared enthusiasm. Your mental “workouts” are stimulated by someone who has the same interests.
But what about when the Self Care gets stale? The same old day-to-day activities can get old. When your interest in Self Care starts to lag, it’s easy to let those healthy habits go by the wayside. Pretty soon, you’re back to unhealthy habits and headed towards burnout.
Don’t let it happen! There are ways to keep your Self Care fresh. Trying something new can renew your interest. A Self Care Challenge is the perfect way to do it. Choosing something new or different, pushing yourself a little further, looking at something outside your norm.
Photo by Helen Bauer, The Heart of Hospice
Here’s how it should look. First, take a good look at yourself and how you’re managing your Self Care. Look at all of the three components-mind, body, spirit. Assess your habits with as much objectivity as you can. Your Accountability Partner might provide some honest but respectful insight here. Where have you gone off balance? Are you bored? Does a certain Self Care activity not fit into your life or your current mindset? Is your Self Care sustainable and affordable in terms of time, effort, and money?
It’s ok for Self Care to morph. It should change as you do and most of us are changing all the time.
Next step-push it up a notch. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a different activity. The change can come in the form of increased time or effort. If you’re hitting the gym for your workouts, use those machines that have been intimidating in the past. Find a new trail to hike. Read a book that’s longer or outside the genres you typically like. Expand your spiritual practices, increasing the number of days a week you make time to feed your spirit. Create a playlist of music that you’ve never listened to before.
Here’s where the challenge part comes in. Along with your Accountability Partner, decide how to create the change in whatever Self Care activities you share. Make a goal, decide on how you’re going to do it, and then set a deadline. (A little healthy competition might do you some good here.)
You’ll never know what might be good for you until you give it a try. Jerry and I have tried out several Self Care ideas that didn’t work very well or weren’t sustainable over the long term. Even daily gratitude lists were eventually set aside during seasons in both our lives that became overwhelmingly busy with family and personal obligations. I don’t see it as a failure when I make the decision to let go of one of my Self Care habits. I see it more as reorganizing the system when it doesn’t work for me any more. A Self Care habit isn’t healthy if I don’t enjoy it any more or can’t even find time for it.
Try out a Self Care Challenge with your accountability partner. There might be a little friendly competition; that can be just the push you need. After you’ve reached the deadline, discuss the success of your new Self Care habit. Is it a keeper? Or did it demand more of your personal resources (time, money, planning, etc) than you’re able to give? You might stumble on a way of caring for yourself that turns out to be your new favorite.
So remember to take care of your Self – you’re totally worth it!
No matter who you are, or where you are in your hospice journey, you are The Heart of Hospice.