It could also include holding onto boundaries where we draw imaginary lines around ourselves to maintain balance and protect our bodies, minds, emotions, and time from the behaviour or demands of others, that allow us some of our own space. It also includes things like being organised and on top of things, so you can allow yourself the space to prioritise and focus on important tasks to be fair its always challenging working with clients where in fact they are really quite organised, but the team or the wider organisation they are working in has too much on and/or in crisis. Workplace self-care: taking breaks during the work day, making quiet time to complete tasks, or getting regular supervision and/or peer support from work colleagues.Emotional self-care: spending time with loved ones and friends that fill the emotional reservoir, allowing time for comforting activities (and knowing what these are for oneself), or practising self-compassion through things like affirmations or mindfulness.Psychological self-care: taking time for self-reflection, trying out new things unrelated to work or writing in a journal for example.Physical self-care: eating healthily and regularly (as well as taking time to eat rather than on the run), taking regular exercise and getting enough sleep.It is an active choice and you should treat it as such. Universal wisdom seems to indicate that self-care needs to be something you actively plan, rather than something that just happens. Self-care is a close cousin of personal resilience, which I have written about, along with other “cousins” like self-compassion and meditation/mindfulness practice. In coaching practice self-care comes up time and time again with clients clients who run businesses and struggle with work-life balance, clients who are senior Managers in organisations dealing with huge pressure due to Covid, clients stuck doing jobs they don’t enjoy but have got boxed in by the salary expectations, or people operating at a senior level in organisations, where they have little “hinterland” of other interests outside of work. We talk about the idea of “work life balance” but in practice overwork or lack of work-life balance can make people less productive, disorganised and emotionally depleted. The speed of the modern world, the stress we have in busy lives at work and at home can all mitigate against the need to take time to ourselves. This is a challenge for me, having grown up in a house with a teacher and a nurse as parents, whose philosophy was do things for other people first and then look after yourself this contemporary idea of self-care is a role reversal of putting others first. If I don’t take enough care of myself, I won’t be in the place to give to either my loved ones or my clients. It is not only about considering our needs it is rather about knowing what we need to do in order to take care of ourselves, that allows us to take care of others as well. One definition says appropriately given current circumstances: “the practice of taking an active role in protecting one’s own well-being and happiness, in particular during periods of stress”. Self-care is an all-encompassing umbrella term for any activity we undertake that proactively looks after our mental, emotional and physical health. A worldwide pandemic, and coaching work with several people directly dealing with Covid 19, has got me thinking a lot about self-care.
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