Top 9 Self Care Tips
Episode #7: Welcome to the She Builds Show, I’m your host, Stefanie Olson. Today, I want to talk about self-care. This is an area I’ve been discovering for quite some time. How much is too much? Is it selfish? What’s a good routine? Today, I help to answer some of those questions with my top 9 self-care tips, because 10 just seemed to mainstream. The biggest feedback I can give you about self-care is, you just can’t take my routine and insert it into your life, you’re different from me, you have your own set of unique strengths and weaknesses, and so do I. But hopefully you can take these 9 self care tips and mold them to fit you and your life.
Ready? Let’s go…
SHOWNOTES:
• I know what life feels and looks like when I’m not drifting, so I can recognize the drift. Do you get my drift? I always love a good dumb joke. So what I do is start adding the things back in that I know will get me moving in the right direction; I get up early, I ask the kids to cook dinner with me, I write in my journal about my sadness, I work through it, I process it, and then start to gain traction. Again, like I said, the number one thing in self-care is to know yourself, and when you’re drifting and when you’re not. The second thing that works well for me is to be intentional. Life is so easy to just drift through to wake up, drink coffee, go to work, cook, clean, laundry, repeat. But what makes a difference in my self-care umbrella is intentionality. (02:50)
• I’ve kept a journal most of my life due to my severe introverted-ness, I’m not one to spill the beans on the nearest stranger, I’m more likely to keep everything inside till I absolutely lose my freaking mind on the people I love most. That’s much more my style, so I wouldn’t recommend it, but I would recommend journaling so that this doesn’t happen. So, I actually write my letters to God, I start each day with the two words, Dear Father, and I just tell Him how I’m feeling, what I’m grateful for, and what I need help with. And usually it ends in some sort of surrendering what I’ve been trying to control. It helps. The other thing that I do to get me excited about journaling, if you’re not really like a journaling type, is to go to Barnes and Noble and shop in person for a journal. They have the most stunning journals with leather bound backs, and you can’t help but want to fill the pages. So that’s just a side note trick to journaling, but that’s one of my top goals on the daily. (05:11)
• I started with the Calm App, spending at least 10 minutes in the morning or night, just sitting up straight and breathing. And at first, my mind wanted to run wild all over the damn place, but after about two, three weeks, my body looked forward to it, my mind settles quickly now, and when I lay down, I can rest and fall asleep. And I also when I’m struggling, when I’ve had a busy day, I can kind of lean on this technique to start breathing and to quiet my mind and to drift into sleep, so it’s really helped. My kids actually join in on some of the meditations with me and they really like it, and it’s just been something new that I’ve been learning and leaning into, so I love being able to accomplish that daily. (07:37)
• I take a daily gratitude photo, and then I add it to this really cool app called One Second Every Day. So for me, pictures evoke beautiful memories, and daily I try to capture a moment that I’m grateful for. Whether it’s a sunrise, or my kids, or my pets, or just even a dang butterfly, I try to find time to stop and just be grateful. Some days it’s just my cup of coffee in the quiet morning and others, it’s truly incredible things like completing a house or watching my kids learn how to do a back-flip. It changes your perspective when you’re intentional about gratitude. (11:25)
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