Self-care has an odd, commercialized perception. To many people, self-care involves buying that pint of ice-cream, getting a manicure, or spending $200 in the name of “treating yourself.” Those things are all great and well if they make you feel good, but I know for me I tend to feel a little guilty if I am selfishly treating myself. Guilt does not make me feel good.

The goal of self-care is to build you up to make you feel good as you go throughout your day. This image makes a lot of sense to me. You have to fill up your cup before giving your energy to others. Otherwise, you have nothing leftover for you.

This week, I came across the Self-Care Wheel from Olga Phoenix to share more ideas about what self-care can be. I love that it is broken down into different personal aspects like physical, professional, emotional, etc. My goal is to try to satisfy one of these areas every day.

I have a daily checklist that I use to manage my self-care. I represent the categories from the self-care wheel in my checklist in the following ways:

Psychological: I make a point to read something that benefits me for 10 minutes every day. There’s a book sitting on my desk at work that I have been slowly working my way through. Sometimes I will choose an online article to read instead. I just base this on how I’m feeling and what I’m needing that day.

Emotional: I practice affirmations everyday. This is really hard for me because I don’t consider myself a creative person. I started off by Googling affirmations to find ones that fit my needs for the day. I’ve since gotten better about really considering what I need from myself to complete tasks.

Meditate: I use the Headspace app to get in some daily meditation. I really wasn’t sure if meditation would be something that I could get into. I didn’t know how to start. Headspace has a 10-day basics program (that is free!) to help you get started.

Personal: There are a few things I do to satisfy this area, but the one I’ll talk about here is my desire to get out of debt. Debt feels like such a burden to me and the thought of it gives me anxiety. Part of my daily checklist is to update my finances. This simple tasks allows me to stay in-the-know about where we stand and to keep my eye on the prize.

Professional: Up until recently, I had a very unhealthy relationship with work. In my field, it is expected that individuals work at least 50 hours a week with no overtime pay or no recognition for that overtime worked. My job recently changed to allow me the ability to work within 9-5 work hours. WHICH IS AMAZING! There are still the occasional calls after hours, but nothing nearly frequent as before. I make a point to get all of my work done within the day. This is represented on my checklist as “work done by 7pm.”

I need to do a better job of assessing and thinking about taking care of my physical self. That’s an area of growth for me!

Since implementing this into my life, I have seen many improvements to my mental health. I would not say that I am an anxious person. I’ve never been diagnosed with a mental issue, but both of my parents suffered from bipolar disorder. Self-care allows me to be in-tune with myself to identify how I am being affected by my environment and how I am acting to others. It is important for me to keep an eye on these things, so that I can know if/when I need help mentally and physically.