3 Steps to Make Your Self-Care a Priority

I know as helping professionals, we talk about self-care all the time. But when it comes down to actually making it happen, that can be hard. So I’m going to be sharing 3 steps to making your self-care a priority.

Step 1: think of your self-care as just as important as anything else that you do.

Your daily walk, your cup of coffee, your journaling time… whatever it is that you know that you need to do to take care of yourself is just as important as a mandatory work meeting, a doctor’s appointment, or anything else that you have to do. So treat it that way. You wouldn’t just blow off an important work meeting, right? But it’s easy to blow off your own self-care. So treat your own time with the same respect as you treat others’ time.

Step 2: Take care of yourself FIRST first before you start thinking about other needs or start getting going on with your day and on your to-do list.

What would happen if the first thing you thought about when you woke up in the morning was, “How do I take care of myself?” And I don’t mean your basic morning routine- brushing your teeth and all that stuff.

I mean really being intentional about taking care of you first. Saying to yourself “I’m going to give myself time to be centered and grounded.”

Today I had a cancellation. Now it’s sad that I have to admit that I had to have a cancellation in order for this to happen, but I had a cancellation this morning and that allowed me to go back home after I dropped my daughter off. Instead of going straight to work like I usually do, I went home, took a shower, watered my plants, and had a cup of coffee. It was lovely. So what do you need to do to make that happen on a regular basis?

You may have to look at your schedule, and you may have to little get a little bit creative. You may have to get up a little earlier. You might have to tweak the logistics of your routine, especially if you have kids. But take a look at that and think about how can you put your self-care first, number one. Okay?

Step 3: Schedule your self-care.

Take a look at your calendar or your planner, put that self-care in there, schedule it, and figure out everything else around that.

I know if I don’t put it on my calendar, I won’t do it, especially things like going to the gym or going for a walk. So when you look at your week, make sure you get those things scheduled in there and treat them just like any other important appointment!

If we haven’t met, I’m Michelle. I help therapists and helping professionals optimize their self-care and recharge their batteries so they can live and work without burnout. Please let me know that you stopped by, and share this video with anyone that you think may relate to it!

Let me know if you have any topics you’d like me to cover. If you want me to talk about anything like chronic stress or self-care… I really love talking about self-care micro strategies that you can implement into your day. We can talk about burnout and risk factors.

So let me know what you wanna hear about in future videos!

I am going to drop a link for you for a free guide. This is the Therapist Mom’s Ultimate Survival Guide. And this is actually really helpful for anyone, but specifically when you’re a mom who works as a helping professional, you pour your energy out all day long and it can be really hard to find time to take care of yourself. So this guide is chock full of little micro strategies that you can use to take care of yourself. Just click on the image below to get it.

I hope everyone has a wonderful day, and I’ll see you next week!