Adopting healthy self–care habits

i) Pay attention to your physical health

• Regular exercise
• Getting 8 hours of sleep
• Try to maintain a healthy diet (don’t starve yourself, just make sure that you try to eat nutritious food)
• Being hygienic
• Releases chemicals like endorphins and serotonin which help boost your emotions
• Show your body love and it will feel loved, it will positively impact your mental health

ii) Set boundaries and communicate your thoughts

• If there are certain things that make you feel uncomfortable, let people know
• It does not have to be an aggressive conversation you can say it calmly and sternly
• Helps you develop your own voice and gain strength through that

iii) Set small goals for yourself daily and try to achieve them throughout the day

• A task as small as making your bed can actually positively boost your mood, it feels good to complete something
• Be realistic in setting them and don’t be hard on yourself if you do not achieve a certain goal

iv) Give some time and attention to your hobbies

• Ideally these hobbies should be things you love doing
• They also bring out endorphins and Serotonin which positively feed into your emotions and self perception.

v) Pay attention to how you present yourself

• If you feel confident in what you wear, that confidence reflects in your behaviour
• Dress to impress yourself

vi) Don’t be too open about your life

• Conceal your goals and dreams from too many people
• Letting people know what you plan to do often creates a lot of pressure, because oftentimes it’s difficult to fully reach all our goals because usually when they are set, people don’t consider some speed bumps they may encounter
• A study by Verena Michalsky and a group of other psychologists found that the more you talk about your goals and dreams, the less likely you are to achieve it. What happens is that you want to achieve something, all your brain, mainly your subconscious mind, registers in that you need to make an effort towards it, unfortunately sometimes it can’t tell apart the different actions, so if you talk about it, it registers that an action was made towards the goal and you subconsciously feel less driven to do something, even though your conscious mind knows you need to do something. It then leads to an internal dialogue where your conscious mind constantly pressures you to do something, your subconscious says you did do something, your conscious mind says that that wasn’t good enough, and your subconscious eats up the idea that your efforts are not good enough…then you motivate yourself and create an unhealthy cycle by talking about it.
• One or two very close people to keep you accountable isn’t bad, but overdoing it is where the error comes in.

vii) Stop pointing out your flaws and speaking negatively about yourself and your life

• Someone compliments you, don’t respond by pointing out what’s wrong with it, just accept the complement and say thank you
• When you do that you teach your mind to accept that negativity and this in the long run feeds things such as undermining yourself and just not putting yourself out there
• Difference between being confident within yourself and being arrogant and conceited; you’re not trying to put anyone down, being arrogant involves putting others down because of your own insecurities, to build yourself up, this includes statements like: “I’m prettier than all these other women.” Confident people are not afraid to admit when they are wrong and they are self-affirming