Hey you! Yes, you.
Are you struggling with how you’re feeling about yourself? Don’t worry, I struggle with this feeling too. In fact, I often find myself hiding away from the world because of my embarrassment of what I look like and how I feel about myself.
Even though I exercise and try to eat healthy, I have a hectic lifestyle, with work and home life, extracurricular, and volunteer activities. Like most busy professionals, sometimes things tend to fall by the wayside like eating healthy, exercising, and finding time for self-care. Yes, that’s right – self-care. With everything we have going on in our busy lives, self-care sometimes becomes a low-priority and can sometimes feel selfish. I’m here to tell you, it’s not!
Most of us don’t realize the impact that self-care has on how we feel about ourselves and the influence it has on everything we do; from the food that we eat, the exercise or movement that we do each day, how we care for our families, how we show up at work or in school. So why do we ignore this important factor? On a subconscious level, we may feel like we don’t deserve the best for ourselves. This shows up as us putting everyone else’s needs ahead of our own. For some of us, it may be that we just don’t know how to pause and take time for ourselves. Whatever the reason, I can relate. Throughout my life I’ve felt “all the things” that hindered my self-care so let me share my top three tips for practicing self-care on a busy schedule. If practiced, these quick tips are sure to help you on your way to looking and feeling good about yourself:
- Embrace exercise at least 3 days a week for 20 minutes. Exercising is an amazing way to improve the way that you feel about yourself. It can boost your overall health, energy, mood, and help increase your performance. I know that there are a million and one things that you could be doing with 20 minutes in your day – but I promise you will see and feel the extraordinary benefits that come from investing that time in an exercise routine – so make it count! Exercising can be fun, like a walk in the park with your family or friends, workout to your favorite exercise video, a hike on a beautiful scenic trail, dance class, or bike ride. The feeling that you have after a great workout is very rewarding.
- Adopt a healthy nutritional lifestyle even if it means making small changes to your current eating habits. By making small changes to your diet, you are able to take a positive step towards a healthier lifestyle. A small step or healthy swap could be ditching the soda and drinking a carbonated water, eating a bowl of fruit instead of a bag of chips, or eating a protein bar instead of a candy. This is self-care – because you are choosing foods that are good for you and that contributes to your overall health. It took me a while to understand this concept because I always found myself identifying a million and one things I could be doing with my time, and making conscious meal planning decisions wasn’t one of them – especially when on the go. Then you start to wonder, why am I feeling so tired? Bloated? and not productive? or why isn’t my favorite outfit no longer fit? These are questions that I often asked myself. But I later learned that emotional eating and trying to make big changes to my eating habits at once was the culprit! Not feeling our best has a lot to do with the foods that we put in our bodies – so try to make small changes to your eating habits.
- Seek life coaching support to include wellness and leadership coaching. After graduating from high school and transitioning to college, I was no longer participating in competitive sports. I stopped working out, did not make the best meal choices, and self-care wasn’t a part of my vocabulary. With those ingredients, I was a recipe for disaster. I spiraled out of control. My hair was thinning, I had gained over 30 pounds in one year, and didn’t realize it until I saw a picture of myself. I was ashamed of what I looked like and didn’t feel great either. Until I signed up for wellness and leadership coaching. Having a life coach helps assist you through your journey of self-discovery. They can help you perform at your greatest potential personally and professionally, such as helping you with your career, health and wellness goals, and can assist you lead change in the areas that do not contribute to your happiness. Having a coach to support me during that time was transformational for me and I am now devoted to giving others the support I needed back then through Fit2Lead.
These simple tips helped me find ways to feel better about myself. Now, I commit to self-care on a weekly basis and feel great! Embracing self-love and recognition of your strengths are critical for feeling empowered in your life’s journey and propelling yourself towards future success at home and in the workplace. It also allows you to believe in your skills and abilities, take pride in what you do, and finally celebrate who you are. It is something about having a fresh or new hairstyle and new outfit that makes you walk through any door with increased confidence. It is even more powerful when these self-care tools work together to sculpt the best you that you can be.