Self-care is something that is of great importance to me. It's one of the things I prioritize the most. An aunt of mine was told me, in her words: "No one can take care of yourself better than you." In other words, the amount of love or care that you can't show to yourself should not be expected to come from someone else. After hearing these words from her I began to take my self-care more seriously instead of waiting for someone to come and do it for me.
Some days can be quite hectic, coupled with other factors as well like some days I'm having some challenges in my health or I just happen to be in some kind of mood that day. But to the best of my ability I try to be as frequent as possible. As much as bodily self-care is important, I also try not to neglect the care for my soul. People often have different perspective towards yoga. Some people also have different intentions as to why they participate in it. In my own view, yoga is an exercise that really helps me relax my mind while just as much as it does to my body.
So my typical day starts with paying a visit within myself. I try to meditate. By doing so I channel my energy to the right direction and often a lot the turn out happens to be a very effective day for me. I know fully well that when I go about my activities I am going to experience a lot of noises from different sources; my neighbors, from my roommates music player, from the streets, in my classroom, and so on. I feel the need to allocate a little portion of my day to absolute silence would be of great necessity to me, instead of noise throughout.
My diet is one thing I never joke with. I used to be the kind of person that deprives myself of foods nutritious to my body, always trying to manage and go for the cheaper things even if I had to money to afford the good ones. Even in the aspect of drinking water, I normally preferred drinking water from the borehole just to save me money from buying pure water. But part of my resolutions this year was to put that to an end.
I realized there are some situations that no matter how we try to hold tight unto money we'll end up spending it one way or the other and most times one of the ways is usually more expensive would cost us more instead of spending it on that one we were so reluctant to release the money to. Like when we show less care for our health or take in things which are not really nutritious when may end up with certain health challenges that would take away our money in a larger quantity than if we had spent it on healthy foods.
One of the things I try to do when preparing meals is to make sure it's something I'm proud of that if a friend of mine were to visit I wouldn't be ashamed to share it with the friend. Not that it must be a continental dish but at least it should be presentable.
Another way I administer self-care is by taking myself on weekends. Who said it has to be two people before there can be a date? I try to take myself on treats. Instead of waiting for when I and my friends go out and have good times, I go out and have my own personal good time. You can call a it Me Time. Trust me, hanging out with friends is cool, but there are sometimes I just need this (me time).
Self-care just can't be overemphasized. If we don't find ourselves worthy of some certain kind of care, then we make people see us the same way.