Self Care: What is a Self Care Plan?
After a long week, it’s time to relax, that includes your mind and body.
Dedicate your weekends to self-care.
My weekends are centered around self-care. Although I’ve implemented self-care into my daily routine, self-care gets my full attention on the weekend; I focus on completing my self-care plan.
What is a self-care plan?
A self-care plan is an individual’s detailed approach to executing self-care efficiently in their life. In simple words, a self-care plan is your guide to practicing self-care efficiently.
Making a self-care plan is simple.
To create your self-care plan, follow these three steps.
Assess
Gather
Guide
Assess
The first step is to assess the areas you want to target.
To do this step, it takes honest self-assessment. The theme for this month is assessment. Dedicate some time to assess yourself and your life. This includes your professional and personal life. Both are equally important.
Assess your professional life.
Are you happy with your career? Do you want to level up? Is it time to try something new?
Evaluate your personal life.
Are you happy? Is there some room for improvement? Do you have the right people in your life?
This step is the most important, but it’s also the toughest.
This is for you. You must be completely honest with yourself. The effectiveness of your self-care plan starts with this first step, your self-assessment.
Gather
Next, it’s time to gather your information.
Once you figure out what areas you want to target, you need to figure out the best approach. What are some solutions or tools that can assist you?
This step gathers the information you need to complete your self-care plan.
Do your research.
You may find the safe answers you need from research.
*Use credible sites to find the information you need.*
Along with researching different mechanisms and solutions for your plan, jot what has helped you so far. It can be anything.
My Go To’s
– Journaling
– Coloring
– Painting
– Puzzles
A huge part of my self-care plan/journey is working on my anxiety. Figuring out the most effective coping measures is key. I’ve been researching different methods to see which works best.
Research:
After doing some research from creditable sites, I found that lavender candles, journaling
and meditation are helpful for people with anxiety.
These would be perfect for the next step.
*Always contact a medical professional if you feel like you need to.*
Guide
After you’ve figured out what areas you want to target, it’s time to set guidelines.
You need a guide.
Guidelines keep you in check. Your guidelines can include your schedule, daily availability for self-care, list of self-care activities, punishments/reinforcements/ etc.
Use this step to create your self-care routine.
Now that you’ve gathered your information, design your self-care routine.
Self Care Routine
A self-care routine is a set of activities done at specific times that focus on self-care. Every self-care routine is different. Self-care routines are based on each individual’s needs, wants, stressors, favorite activities, etc.
Like your self-care plan, how you create your self-care routine is up to you, but make sure you think this one through.