by Lori Milner
Diets don't work because they're temporary; they are a pseudo-commitment. For sustainable change, it's your lifestyle that must change. It's your identity that changes. You start to call yourself a healthy person and then act like healthy people do. More importantly, your mindset shifts from a victim mentality of punishment to an owner mentality of freedom. Ultimately, your way of being changes. It is not one thing you do but a stacking of choices over your day that contributes towards your weight loss goal. It's not just one meal but sleep, water, nutrition, and your emotional world – everything in the periphery done consistently will help you achieve this.
Self-care feels the same. You'll do something now and then, but for this to become a way of life, you need to adopt self-care as a lifestyle, not something you'll try and see how it goes. It is more than fitting in some exercise, journaling or meditation in the morning. Have you considered the periphery factors you must focus on to enable self-care to become a lifestyle? Here are new habits to convert self-care from a nice-to-have to a permanent fixture:
Self-care is self-remembering
It's that simple. It's remembering to care for yourself. It's remembering to put yourself in the calendar and then treat that slot with the same respect and honour as you would with any other person. It's remembering not to check your phone first but to focus on yourself and start your day with something you enjoy rather than default to putting everyone else first. It's remembering what matters to you most and then making space in the calendar to spend time on it without guilt. Self-remembering is choosing yourself as the reason why – when you do things for other people, it doesn't last. When you do something because your happiness is the ultimate reward, then it becomes a lifestyle.
Self-care is self-awareness
Do you know how you feel throughout the day, or do you move into autopilot and push feelings aside like mosquitoes who annoy you and get in your way? When you care enough to check in with yourself when something triggers or upsets you, you can deal with it from a place of grace and compassion. Self-awareness provides the space to identify your emotion or get identified by it. Simply naming the emotion drops the power it has over you. For example, you could say, 'I am feeling anxious; I wonder why'. Then, get curious about it rather than feel anxious about being anxious. Self-awareness also makes it easier to feel the good emotions rather than focus on the disempowering ones. What is your emotional home? Where do you default when a challenge shows up? If you default to fear and anger, how about replacing these with gratitude and acceptance? I'm not saying don't feel the hard ones, but self-care is having the self-awareness to enable better choices. Choosing a more empowering emotion will create a more empowering state where you can see the possibilities, not just the obstacles.
Self-care is self-talk
The most important conversations are the ones you have with yourself. What do you tell yourself when you wake up? How do you walk into challenging situations or conversations? If you tell yourself you're not enough or are not there yet, this greatly impacts how you show up to yourself and the rest of the world. Do you tell yourself your wins are not big enough and you can only celebrate if you reach significant milestones? How do you encourage yourself to find joy in the process and not only the outcome? If this is how you operate, you will most likely feel let down when you get to the big outcome because it won't fill the void you expect. If a vicious inner critic takes over your self-talk, consider if there is a kinder way. Is there a gentler and more encouraging way? Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for how you relate to others. If you judge yourself, you will judge others.
Self-care is self-compassion
If you tick the boxes of exercise and meditation but are nasty to yourself when you make a mistake or miss a day, this is not the self-care lifestyle. Self-compassion is adopting a learning mindset towards yourself. Don't beat yourself up if you make a mistake or say something you shouldn't have. Self-compassion means looking at the situation objectively and figuring out where you got triggered. It's asking yourself – knowing what I know now, what can I do differently going forward? What have I learnt about myself? The more compassion you can bring to yourself, the more you can bring to others.
Self-care is self-forgiveness
No one is perfect, and we have all made mistakes in the past. They will continue to hold you back and play small if you decide to live in the past. To create a self-care lifestyle, you need to practice self-forgiveness; this is where your compassion for yourself plays a vital role. Rather than focus on your mistakes, have compassion and forgiveness for the earlier version of yourself. Remember, they did their best with the information and resources they had at the time. If you don't forgive yourself for your past, you will not allow yourself to indulge in the gifts of the present. You will continue to hold yourself hostage and self-punish by denying yourself pleasure. Journaling is a wonderful tool where you can write a letter to yourself or meditate and imagine yourself conversing with your younger self. Tell them you forgive them and mean it. You can imagine yourself hugging this earlier version of yourself and then letting go of what was.
Self-care is self-acceptance.
You cannot truly adopt a self-care lifestyle if you are conditional with yourself. If you have a weight loss goal, telling yourself you will only accept yourself when you reach the goal will not get you there. The same applies to your career; if you only accept yourself at the next salary increase or promotion, how do you navigate the time in between? Can you accept yourself as you are unconditionally today? Right now? When you arrive at a place of genuine unconditional self-acceptance, you are guaranteed success by encouraging yourself on the journey. You can be kind to yourself on the journey. Self-acceptance means you don't need to earn your kindness or do something to receive it. If you can't accept yourself unconditionally, you may not accept others unconditionally. What is the impact not only on you but on them?
Final thoughts
Why do diets end? You moved into self-forgetting mode. You forgot why you matter, what you value and what you're working towards. You forget that your future self is watching and counting on you to make good choices over instant gratification.
To make self-care a lifestyle, you need to replace the habit of self-forgetting with:
· Self-remembering
· Self- awareness
· Self-talk
· Self-compassion
· Self-forgiveness
· Self-acceptance
Here's to celebrating you,
Warm wishes,
Lori
Lori Milner is the engaging facilitator, thought leader and mentor known for her insightful approach to being a modern corporate woman. Her brainchild, the successful initiative Beyond the Dress, is the embodiment of her passion to empower women. Beyond the Dress has worked with South Africa’s leading corporates and empowered hundreds of women with valuable insight on how to bridge the gap between work and personal life. Clients include Siemens, Massmart, Alexander Forbes, Life Healthcare Group, RMB Private Bank and Unilever to name a few. Lori has co-authored Own Your Space: The Toolkit for the Working Woman in conjunction with Nadia Bilchik, CNN Editorial Producer. Own Your Space provides practical tools and insights gleaned from workshops held around the world and from interviews with some of South Africa’s most accomplished women to provide you with tried-and-tested techniques, tips and advice to help you boost your career, enhance your confidence and truly own your space on every level. Own Your Space is the ultimate ‘toolkit’ to unleash your true power. It’s for the woman who wants to take her career to new heights and who is ready to fulfil her true potential.
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