Mindful self-care practices to improve your life

Last updated on June 25th, 2023 at 02:59 pm

To improve one’s life, caring for one’s self and totally committing to one’s overall health are important. As with every other habit, self-care practices can easily become routines such that you don’t pay attention to the motions again; you just don’t feel their impact anymore.

Mindful self-care practices sort of push you to be more aware, and to concentrate more, thereby benefiting more from practising them.

Eating more healthily:

When stressed, it’s easier to reach for comfort foods or to binge eat. Being more mindful of your eating habits can drastically improve your life.

Allowing others to take care of you:

It should be easy to allow ourselves to receive care, but there seems to be a badge of honour for those who can do it all alone these days. Receiving care and support from others in our lives doesn’t make us weak. It just means that we don’t have to go through life alone. Open up to being supported.

Slowing down:

There’s nowhere we’re rushing to, but we all seem to be in a rush, yet, we all stand to benefit from slowing down. Eat and chew your food more slowly, savour your beverage, walk slower, do one thing at a time. Take an overall look at your life and mark the areas that need you to slow down.

Connecting with others:

Social isolation has been on the rise in the past few years. Socialisation is now taking a backseat and whatever little socialisation we do, it’s usually over the phone. We all suffer the consequences of this even without us knowing. Want to bring in more mindfulness? Drop your phone, and connect with nature and other humans.

A feel-good plug in:

What’s your feel-good source? For some, it’s five minutes of music. For others, it could be baking, cleaning, meditation, etc. Whatever healthy practice that feels good to you, you want to incorporate more of it into your daily activities. 

Personal check in time during the day:

You know how you occasionally check up on a friend? You want to do the same for yourself. To start this, you can set a reminder on your phone. In this short time, you want to do a rough scan of your body. Are you overstimulated? Tensed? Is your breathing shallow? This might be the right time to insert your feel-good plug-in or to do a little breathwork; nothing too fancy or complex, three deep, slow and intentional breaths should do it.

No one can anticipate your needs more than yourself. In this era of hustle culture, inflation and economic crisis, social isolation and hyper-independence, mindful self-care practices are effective to enhance our life and mental health.