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Over the last several weeks, we’ve talked about self-care, grazing into the topic on the Sunday Night Routine Blog and the 7 Ways to Reduce Stress Blog. But today on La.Rue, I want to dive deeper into Self-Care and its benefits when practiced daily. I want to talk about how we can love self-care. When living intentionally, you grow to love yourself and practice self-care often, seeing its benefits in your everyday. You are the most important person in your life; without taking care of yourself, you cannot take care of others. Your energy is your own and to harness that energy is to live intentionally. Self-care doesn’t just mean cleaning yourself up at the end of the night, it’s a much deeper practice than that, going truly and deeply into loving yourself.

8 Ways to Fall in Love With Self-Care in Your Life 

1. Always Practice Your Habits & Routines: Self-Care has a great deal to do with your habits and routines. You practice habits and routines every day because you’re confident they improve your life. When you stop practicing those habits and routines, you stop practicing self-care. It’s so important to keep these practices consistent even if you’re feeling unmotivated or in a rut. Your routines and habits are a positive in your life; they contribute to your happiness and self-care.  Consistency and commitment are key; even when you’re feeling off, your routines will always help to balance you.

2. Always Listen to Your Emotions: Recognize, acknowledge, and accept your emotions; we’re not happy all the time, and that’s okay. We have to stop feeling guilty for feeling what we’re feeling. We feel the way we feel because our bodies, minds, and the universe are trying to tell us something that we need to acknowledge. Self-Care means accepting our emotions and understanding them. When you’re feeling a certain way you would like to move on from, say sadness or anger, try sitting down with those emotions and writing out why you’re feeling that way. Acknowledge the emotions so you can begin to move on.

3. Get Enough Sleep: Feeling tired and exhausted leads to feeling unmotivated and unproductive; therefore, you’re accomplishing little to nothing. When we’re overly tired, we’re either one of two people: we become completely unproductive or go into hyper overdrive and work until burnout. Either way, neither of these is healthy nor helpful. We’re human; we function on sleep. I know that everyone can function on different amounts of sleep and need different hours based on age, but be aware of what you need to be productive and engaged throughout the day. Make sure you’re getting your sleep; this is a necessity to self-care.

4. Reclaiming Your Energy: You own your energy, take it back from the people that are negatively affecting your life. A fantastic practice of self-care is examining the energy or vibrations you’re putting out in the world.  In response to our own vibrations, people may put out negative energy towards us. These are people who don’t want to see you succeed. When you’re practicing self-care, practice reclaiming your energy from these people and, in response, putting out positive energy for them. If you’re interested in learning more on this topic, I encourage you to listen to Haley Hoffman Smith’s Podcast, Big Conversations.

5. Take Time for Yourself: Don’t feel guilty for canceling plans or saying no if you need time alone to regroup. In the first blog of the year, 5 Bad Habits to Kick in 2021, we talked about this being a bad habit to kick. Time for yourself and learning to love your own company is arguably the biggest form of self-care and self-love. Without loving yourself and time alone, how can you practice other techniques for self-care? Growing to love yourself is an ongoing journey. Continue spending time alone and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and “safe” boundaries.

6. Practice Affirmations & Healing: Accept what the universe has prepared for you and that all of “this” is a part of your narrative. Practicing daily affirmations should be a part of everyone’s routine (blog coming soon!). Affirmations are your way of telling the universe exactly what you want out of life. And if those affirmations haven’t come true in your life yet, it’s because you haven’t opened yourself up to their possibilities. When practicing self-care, we must practice healing and acceptance. This is an acceptance of both our potential future and of our past. When we acknowledge what difficulties may arise with our success and accept them, they no longer limit our success, allowing our affirmations to manifest.

7. Always Look for Ways to Grow: There will always be opportunities to improve ourselves. Self-care means always looking for ways we can continue to grow into better humans. One of our greatest abilities as people is to learn from our mistakes and our actions and grow from those understandings. People have great respect for those who can acknowledge where they have fallen short and take the time to improve. Self-care means you never stop feeding your hunger for knowledge and your potential for growth.

8. Forgive Yourself: No one is perfect. A fundamental problem people most commonly face in their inability to move forward in life is their lack of forgiveness in themselves. We have all made mistakes, and we will all continue to make mistakes; this is a part of the human experience. What we can do moving forward is process, learn, grow, apologize, and forgive ourselves. When we take responsibility for our actions, we open our lives up to great opportunity and great success. You are a remarkable person, and you wouldn’t be that person without the mistakes that have shaped you. So, forgive yourself and move forward.