Creating a Self-Care Routine to Live Your Best Life

Everyone aspires to live their best life, even if we are not always vocal about it. However, there are many things involved in living that life we see for ourselves, and a significant part is having a self-care routine.

Most people misunderstand what self-care represents, and those with a faint understanding highly underrate its ability to help us live the kind of life we want. 

Self-care is a series of intentional thoughts, actions, and choices that stem from an individual’s dedication to healthy living. A self-care routine is a well-thought-out outline that highlights activities with feasible timelines that allow us to practice effective, consistent self-care. 

Having a self-care routine ensures that you’re not winging it. It is a deliberate attempt to make sure that you practice self-care the right way. 

Your definition of the best life can be a healthy, well-toned body. It can be a mind free of anxiety and depression, a consistent state of spiritual high, or getting that dream well-paying job.

Identify what your best life looks like, and then use this article to curate a self-care routine that helps you achieve that.

Read also: How to maintain a healthy lifestyle in Nigeria

Tips To Creating The Best Self-care Routine

You must take note of certain tips that will help you manage the self-care ideas that you already have such that they have the impact that you desire.

Your self-care must be SMART, as in an acronym. S is specific, M is measurable, A is achievable, R is realistic/relevant, and T is time-bound.

1. Specific

Whatever self-care you engage in must be directed towards a particular goal. Your goal here is to live your best life. Therefore, the number one question to constantly ask yourself before adding self-care ideas into your self-care routine is, will this help me live my best life? 

If the answer is no, that activity has no place in your self-care routine.

2. Measurable

Every part of your routine must be something that you can quantify. 

Say you want to include running as an exercise in the physical part of your self-care routine. You can quantify it based on total kilometres. Therefore, running is an acceptable idea to implement in your self-care routine.

3. Actionable

Your self-care routine should be such that if the major goal, for example, is a state of steady spiritual high, then it should have mini-activities that make the goal easier to achieve.

This could be, reading a page of scripture every morning with the sole aim of learning something new and beneficial. In this case, you would be more attuned to putting them into practice, which will make you more spiritually aware and grounded. 

‘A page a day’ is actionable. ‘Finish the whole Qur’an or Bible’ is not. The former is how your self-care routine should be.

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4. Realistic

You’re excited about this. You cannot wait to get started and clear all your goals in one sweep. 

Relax. That is not going to happen. When you set unrealistic goals like getting that banging body in one month, you get no results whatsoever. It is simply because it’s impossible to get results that fast. When this happens, you get frustrated with yourself, lose inspiration to continue, your body gets burnt out, and then you abandon all hopes of ever having a well-toned physique—the end.

However, when you set realistic goals, you can have a happy ending. 

Read also: How to live a happy life even in Nigeria

Carefully ascertain how much time you can dedicate to this goal in a day. Speak to a professional in that field, allow them to assess your current state, and suggest a reasonable and feasible time frame within which you can achieve this goal. Then, arrange your self-care routine to reflect that.

Begin with bite-sized portions. Allow your body and mind to ease into the process. Build on that and then gradually increase your pace, consistently following the outline of your routine.

Then one day, maybe even sooner than you earlier predicted, you look into the mirror and voila! You have yourself a body that rivals the sculpture of a Greek goddess. 

Well, not exactly, but you get the point. It’s a happy ending.

5. Time-Bound

The difference between a goal and a dream is that a goal has set activities and time frames within which you complete all the activities. 

It makes your self-care ideas more achievable and takes your best life from a dream to a working reality.

So, give your major goal a specific timeline, and assign a timeframe to all the activities required to achieve that goal.

For example, you want to read more books because you know that it will help you become more intellectually sound (S – specific). You intend to finish five books this year (M – measurable). The plan is to complete one book at a time (A- actionable). You intend to read three pages every day before bed (R – realistic). By April, you plan to have finished reading the first book (T – time-bound).

Read also: 12 books to read for self-development

Tips on Creating Your Self-care Routine

Once you understand the concept of having a SMART self-care routine, you can start creating yours with the following steps.

1. Highlight your self-care ideas

Use physical, mental, intellectual, spiritual, professional, social, and emotional cores as your highlight. List self-care ideas under each core in your self-care routine. 

When you are done, ensure that everything you have outlined is SMART.

2. Hold yourself accountable

Have a system to check that you are on the right track. A journal can help you monitor and track your progress.

Another idea would be to have a partner with similar goals. They could be your accountability partner.

3. Don’t be rigid

The goal should be your priority, and a routine set in stone will not help you achieve that. Should circumstances prevent you from following the self-care routine to the letter, be willing to make adjustments when and where necessary.

Self-care is a reality and should remain so. If you’re wondering, there’s one way to take care of yourself that Insight can help you with. Join our community of intellectuals to discuss thought-provoking subjects and get a new perspective on life. Also, connect with us on Instagram to get summarised updates on similar content.

About The Author

I’m RAHMAT OMOLE, an experienced SEO content writer and freelance writing coach. I’m passionate about helping writers transition from writing as a hobby to writing for a fee. I also run a website and IG platform that gives tips and gems to freelance writers.

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