Simple Self Care Routine

Many of us these days are in serious need of a new self care routine. We feel overwhelmed with so many things we need to do and deep worries about finance, health, family and home.

But many of the self-care checklists or the ideas for self-care days we see are false friends. They don't nurture those gaping gaps in our lives or give us the self-care essentials we need in our everyday lifestyle to be able to care for ourselves and those we love.

So I have for you here an incredibly simple but powerful daily self-care routine based on 7 essential self-care habits that help us thrive physically and mentally even when life is tough.

Self Care Essentials

Daylight Dosing

Many of us are chronically short on one simple thing with huge impact on our : 

1. Happiness
2. Energy
3. Sleep (& baby sleep)
4. Digestion
5. Resistance to illness
6. Vulnerability to auto immune disease
7. And more!!

That simple thing most of us are missing is daylight. It doesn't just top us up with immune boosting vitamin D but actually triggers AND balances : 

• Mood boosting serotonin
• Steady cortisol levels
• Digestive enzymes
• T-cell regulation
• Gut microbioeme
• Skin microbioeme (it controls dandruff!)
• And even baby calming hormones.

Real daylight on our eyes first thing in the morning also controls our body clock and the release of the melatonin we need in the evening to sleep well.

So self-care starts with getting enough daylight every single day.

Get More Daylight

Aim for an hour of daylight minimum and ideally at least two everyday. And when you're feeling stretched thin use all the little opportunities you can to slow down outdoors :

1. Eat breakfast on your doorstep
2. Stroll in the park
3. And stop at a bench to read a novel
4. Or catch up with a friend
5. Eat lunch alfresco
6. Nap in the garden
7. Hang out on the porch to watch the world go by ...

Avoid Sugar

It is so easy to indulge ourselves with something sweet when feeling low but it is absolutely not self-care. Sugar is perhaps the single biggest trigger - matched only by iron deficiency - for : 

• Energy crashes
• Mood swings
• Brain fog
• Headaches

And sugar is tied to more than 30 chronic conditions including IBS, Acne, UTI, candida, PCOS and more!

So for real self-care strip sugar from your diet and replace it with good quality fat and protein.

Walk The Mile

Serotonin - the happy hormone which oozes calm and stability - is a self-care essential but many of us go short. This is partly because of daylight deficiency but also because we're buzzing around full of the stress hormone cortisol which actually suppresses serotonin.

Caffeine and sugar spike cortisol but so does intensive exercise. Serotonin thrives in calm, steady movement and especially loves walking.

So make walking a mile - two if you can - a non-negotiable part of your self care routine and get the serotonin flowing.

Let Go Of A Little

Many of us are drowning in stress inducing clutter and have become border line hoarders. We get locked in anxiety at the thought of decluttering anything "in case we need it".

To break the cycle make the Just 10 Things declutter method part of your self-care routine. You take just 5 minutes daily to declutter 10 items. Every day you let go of a little you ease that paralysing anxiety and in a year you can clear out over 3,000 things!

Swallow A Frog

We all procrastinate and put off stuff we don't want to face up to, hoping if we hide it away at the back of our brain it will disappear. But it doesn't, it festers and makes our anxiety far far worse.

We're often told to swallow the frog to get it out of the way but it is much easier to get into the daily self-care habit of swallowing the tadpole and facing up to one tiny job we don't want to do before it has a chance to grow.

So every day tackle one tiny thing you have been hiding from and avoiding.

Connect For Real

It is the irony of the age that we have so many ways to communicate but so often feel horribly lonely. Most of our actual face-to-face or voice-to-voice communication happens at work or at school and that means it is not really ours, it belongs to someone else.

So we need to make deliberate intentional time every day for face-to-face, voice-to-voice, skin-to-skin communication that belongs to us :

• Real phone calls
• Sit down family meals
• Talking to people at the store
• Coffee with friends
• A quick drink with neighbours
• Snuggling up to watch TV 
• Doing chores together etc etc ..

It won't be stress free, there will be fights but they will be real fights, our fights not artificial arguments driven and exploited by an algorithm!

Lay One Small Brick

It is very easy these days to feel alienated by an overriding sense we are stuck in second gear on a road to nowhere with no chance to build anything for ourselves. But even when we are horribly low we can.

We need first to identify what we personally actually want to build. Our goals could be :

• Meeting a partner
• Starting a family
• Building a saving fund
• Learning a life skill
• Developing a side hustle
• Creating art
• Growing your own food
• Finding a home
• Kicking off a start-up ...

Once we know what we are building we just need to make sure we lay at least one small brick in its foundations every single day. Laying that brick might be nothing more than 5 minutes scribbling some notes, drawing a diagram, sending an e-mail or making a call.

But sticking to that daily habit we will little by little build something and it will be our thing of which we can be proud.

OK, so now we've deep dived into the 7 key self-care habits we need to follow in our daily routine, let's bring them together in a simple self-care checklist.

Self Care Checklist

The hidden power of this self-care checklist, is that it doesn't involve carving out time for yet more things on our to-do list. We simply weave these essentials into everyday life :

1. Get at least 1-2 hours daylight.
2. Avoid added sugar.
3. Walk a mile.
4. Declutter just 10 things.
5. Do one tiny job you're avoiding.
6. Connect for real with real people.
7. Little by little build something of which you can be proud.

I do hope this simple routine helps you build these self-care essentials into your everyday life even when it is hectic, stressed and downright hard. They truly are powerful habits for boosting resilience and bringing long term joy.

But if you are really struggling to manage your load right now do read the extra care check below ...

Extra Care Check

Low mood, poor energy, extreme fatigue, anger, anxiety and an overwhelming sense of being overloaded can all be big flashing signs of deficiency in these 4 key nutrients :

• Iron
• Zinc
• B12
• Magnesium

If you are struggling and haven't had these nutritional deficiencies checked in a blood test recently it really is worth seeing a doctor or pharmacist to get them done. Tackling any deficiencies is an essential foundation for your self care going forward.

For more simple advice do check out my other healthy living posts and follow me on Pinterest.