Five tips toward self-care

MANY people consider self-care as a luxury than a priority, which leaves them feeling exhausted, overwhelmed and unprepared to handle day-to-day challenges.

Wellness coach, workshop leader and health educator Elizabeth Scott, PhD, explained that selfcare is more than finding ways to relax. It focuses more on addressing the basic needs of the body.

“All the stress relief activities in the world won’t help if you aren’t taking care of yourself,” she stated. “Meditation won’t do you any good if you aren’t getting adequate sleep. Hitting the gym once in a while won’t relieve much if you’re not regularly fueling your body with healthy, nutrient-dense food.”

Scott, author of The 8 Keys to Stress Management, who specializes in positive psychology, healthy relationships and emotional well-being, likewise elaborated that it is not a “one size fits all strategy”.

“The demands of your daily life can dictate what you need most. Your self-care plan needs to be customized to what is currently going on in your life,” she noted. “You don’t want to wait until you’ve reached your breaking point.”

Echoing the expert, the Benilde Well-Being Center of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde shared Scott’s advice and the different types of self-care to guide the general public in restoring their balance and finding relief from stressors. “Schedule time to focus on yourself,” Scott concluded. “Even when you feel like you don’t have time to squeeze in one more thing, make self-care a priority. When you’re caring for all aspects of yourself, you’ll find that you are able to operate more effectively and efficiently.”

Here are five reminders on how to best take care of pressure as an obstacle and power through it. They believe that pressure is a means by which they can improve their mental toughness and build up their confidence. Others avoid it altogether by ignoring it and focusing on other tasks. These are natural reactions because when you encounter a threat, you activate either your fight or flight instinct. But if you are to learn from challenging situations, you need to understand that pressure is one way for you to develop mental agility. Mental agility is the ability to proactively respond to different situations and issues by looking for solutions and what can be learned from the experience. It is your ability to face new and unfamiliar territory so you can navigate uncertainty and grow from the experience. It also describes how you use existing skills and capabilities to learn new ways of doing things, finding creative solutions, and managing your emotions in the face of diverging opinions. You develop mental agility by looking at pressure as a challenge to be overcome and as a lesson to be learned. Reframing your mindset can help you look at the value of pressure in your growth. Pressure can also come from simultaneous events demanding your attention. When this happens, you need to list down your top three priorities and schedule the rest to another day. In terms of prioritization, you can use the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize tasks based on urgency and significance. By focusing your attention on key priorities, you can manage your time better and work on those that have the most significance to your work. Remember that not everything that demands your attention should be acknowledged. There are times when your best option is to walk away from things that do not add value to you or your work.

List down those priorities and create a timeline for completing each one. Identify milestones so you know how much is needed to finish the priority task. Some people think that writing them down is enough. It is not. You need to break down the priority tasks into steps so you can also identify how much work goes into each step, and then identify dependencies from other departments. By breaking down the priority task into bite-sized steps, you can have a visual representation of how much progress you have made on the priority task, and plan in advance what you need from other departments. Listing down the steps helps you keep on track and provides a visual representation of how much you still need to do. And when there are changes in the timeline or in the final deliverable, you can use the list to negotiate timelines and the support needed with your manager.

Relatedly, one trick to reduce the pressure is to focus on the task at hand and not think of possible events. You add pressure to yourself when you overthink and assume that your current situation will determine your future. I once had a student who failed in the first quarter and to top it off, his father was one of the board members of the school. He talked to me and asked me to give him a little bit of consideration, and I told him that it was not his final grade yet and he can still make up for it in the other quarters. He told me that it might affect his applications to his choice schools if his grade was that low. So, I challenged him to step it up. And he did. He later told me it was his wake-up call to improve. Had he dwelled on overthinking and being anxious, he would not have succeeded.

One of the things you should never forget is to take care of your body. When you are stressed and pressured, your body releases adrenaline and cortisol which increase your heart rate and blood pressure. One way to reduce the harmful effects of increased adrenaline and cortisol in the body is by doing physical activities that you enjoy. Exercise helps release endorphins, or the happy hormones, which are the body’s natural painkiller and mood enhancer. If you want your body to cope with the pressure, you need to develop the habit of exercising or engaging in fun physical activities.

If you want to improve your circumstances, you need to accept that there will always be pressure. And these instances will help us discover what we are capable of and what we need to learn to thrive in a dynamic business environment. You just have to learn that pressure is your stepping stone to the next level of your career. n

PHOTO BY JAVAD ESMAEILI ON UNSPLASH

1. Physical: Take care of your body if you want it to run efficiently. You will think and feel better, too. Get adequate sleep. Have enough exercise. Eat a balanced diet. Take charge of your health. Attend appointments. Take medications as prescribed.

2. Social: Put time and energy in cultivating and maintaining close connections. Create an optimal social life. Nurture relationships with peers and family. Get enough face-to-face time with them.

3. Mental: Keep your mind sharp. Engage in activities that mentally stimulate you. Answer some puzzles. Learn about a subject that fascinates you. Read books. Watch movies that inspire you. Maintain a healthier inner dialogue. Practice self-compassion and acceptance.

4. Spiritual: Nurturing your spirit doesn’t have to involve religion. Meditate. Pray. Attend a religious service. Develop a deeper sense of meaning, understanding or connection with the universe.

5. Emotional: Allot time for tasks that aid you to acknowledge and express your feelings regularly and safely. Immerse in leisure activities that help you process your emotions and recharge. Talk to a partner, a friend or family about how you feel.

An additional tip: customize your own self-care plan. This can serve as a preventative measure to make sure that you don’t get overwhelmed. Make a list of the different aspects of your life. List down major daily activities. Assess your needs. Think about the possible stressors. Consider the things you can do to address it or help yourself feel better. Prepare for possible challenges. Identify a single small step to start caring for yourself.