The Self-Care Project: How to let go of frazzle and make time for you

by Jayne Hardy

Nobody ever has their shizz completely together, despite how it might look from our ringside seats.

It’s the lows that teach us valuable lessons and give us insights. They’re where we get to grips with our true character and inner strength.

We only know what we know, and hindsight affords us the opportunity to reflect on circumstances knowing more today than we did back then.

I’ve never really felt as though I ‘fit in’ and as I grow older I am beginning to understand that’s not such a bad thing.

when you’re strung out, the little things are the big things (it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back, after all).

‘Despite what those pesky thoughts inside our heads tell us, self-care isn’t selfish.’

In fact, self-care has mindfulness as its foundation; you can’t care for yourself in the truest sense if you don’t understand what it is that you need, what it is that comforts you and nourishes you.

Self-care requires you to become hyper-aware of how you feel all day, every day.

But self-care is about consciously taking responsibility for your happiness; your physical, emotional, psychological and social needs.

as you grow and evolve as a person, what counts as self-care for you might evolve too.

If we don’t find the time for self-care, our health has a way of forcing us to stop and take care of ourselves somewhere down the line.

We all like to be liked, but in serving other people’s demands on our time and energy, we often end up silencing our individual needs and wants.

when we become self-care ninjas, we have so much more to give others.

When we put our needs first, it often has a positive effect on the things that really matter to us – our health, our relationships, our resilience, our work.

Self-care allows us to be the very best version of ourselves, which in turn allows us to properly care for those around us.

It is only in knowing ourselves that we can care for ourselves effectively. We need to know who we are – our principles, values, ethics and morals – establish our boundaries and explore how certain decisions and activities make us feel, and then be disciplined to discover why we may feel or react in that way.

Boring self-care might include making that overdue doctor’s appointment, getting enough sleep, remembering to take your meds, calling a crisis team, brushing your teeth, tidying your home, sorting through your finances, applying for a job, eating a nutritious meal, arranging childcare, completing forms, making an uncomfortable telephone call, doing the laundry, taking a shower, asserting your boundaries, asking for help, etc.

When we neglect ‘life admin’ for a sustained period of time, we increase the risk of turbulence in our lives.

Self-care is often used as an emergency measure to rebuild the damage, mentally and/or physically, that has already been done.

We don’t consider that self-care can also be used as a preventative measure to ease any pressure we might be feeling on a rolling basis.

If you put anything under prolonged stress, it will break. Our minds and bodies are no exception.

We can counter this by taking our full lunch hour (preferably away from our desk), building in regular pauses to our day, unplugging from technology, taking our full annual leave, prioritising leisure time, getting enough sleep and silencing alerts on our smartphone: all of which help to slow the pace.

When we’ve endured a long period of decision making, our ability to make good decisions fades. Our cognitive functions have simply had enough; our mental energy is depleted.

We burden ourselves with the ‘not good enough’, the ‘can’ts’ and the ‘shoulds’; we play the same relentless, damaging and untruthful tune over and over until we can’t get it out of our heads.

We don’t need fixing – we need unleashing, unpeeling, unfolding.

One idea is to find pictures/photos/visual representations of your answers to questions such as: ‘What’s important to me?’, ‘Who do I enjoy spending time with, and why?’, ‘What are my favourite things?’, ‘What comforts me?’, ‘Where would I like to travel/explore?’, ‘What does my ideal day look like?’, ‘What did I want to be when I was younger?’, ‘What are my favourite songs?’, ‘What hobbies do I enjoy?’, ‘What is holding me back?’, ‘What new things would I like to try?’ and ‘What colours/ flowers/foods am I drawn to?’ The list of possible questions is endless.

we’re never too old to play and we’re never too old to reap its benefits.

Remove the capacity to send/receive emails from our smartphones, or at the very least, silence the notifications we receive so that we consciously choose when to check in.

Keep the browser or the email application closed when working on our desktop and check in at set periods throughout the day.

Use a service like unroll.me to mass-unsubscribe from mailing lists (often ones we don’t remember signing up for).

Set up email folders for historic emails that are clogging up our inbox so that we can lay our hands on ...

But our hours of work are creeping into our non-work time, on a regular basis. They’re expanding and encroaching on time that’s designed to be downtime, the time when we can focus on non-work things and have some fun.

Scientists have discovered that we can never truly do more than one thing at a time; our brains just can’t handle it.

we’re more productive when we commit to doing just one thing at a time, one after the other – it takes less time to do that than it does to try to master all the things, all at once.

Maintaining motivation is a continual work in progress. If we can identify why (doesn’t it always come back to our ‘why’?!) it went away, then we can understand where to find it so we can make strides to bolster it again.

When we’re overwhelmed, stressed, tired and depleted, our motivation has already left the building.

‘We’re allowed to change our minds, to change direction.’

‘Every micro action of self-care is a way to stick two fingers up to depression.’

overcoming problems increases our self-confidence and our resilience.