How Simple Self Care Practices Improved My Mood For A Month

Many publications preach about self-care and its benefits, and I am here to testify to its success. I changed my approach to self-care for a week, and my mood improved for an entire month.

Self-care is the conscious process of promoting your mental, physical and emotional well-being. Many people associate self-care with bubble baths, sheet masks, and manicures, but it is so much more than that.

Taking the time to prioritize your health can improve your life in many different ways. Read further to explore how the simple self-care practices I adopted over one week improved my mood for an entire month.

The Need For Self Care

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Our lives are full of tasks, social events, and external stressors that we do not take the time to listen to ourselves. Most people cannot identify when they need to pay more attention to their needs, and I am the same.

Unfortunately, many of us wait until our health is compromised in some way to start paying attention. I had found myself slipping into what felt like a depressive episode before realizing I needed to take better care of myself.

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While reaching for self-care in this instance was the right thing to do, I shouldn’t have waited that long. It is essential to keep track of how you feel physically, mentally, and emotionally every day to live a full life.

From my experience, taking better care of yourself will result in better productivity in all aspects of your life. Everybody has the need for self-care in order to live a life that is full and free of unnecessary stress.

Identifying Self Care Deprivation

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It is easy to deprive yourself of basic self-care when you are busy with everything but yourself. Unfortunately, experiencing burnout, feeling low, or getting physically ill will make the deprivation evident.

Self-care is a broad spectrum, and one cannot practice everything on the spectrum daily. This makes it essential to identify how you are depriving yourself of self-care and attend to those issues.

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By the end of April, I felt weak, experiencing brain fog daily, and my mood was low. It was up to me to be honest about where I was depriving myself of self-care to remedy these issues.

For the above, I concluded that I wasn’t eating well, taking enough breaks, and I wasn’t tending to myself emotionally. Identifying the above then helped me put together the simple self-care practices to improve my life.

My Self Care Practices

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Trying to ensure that I was nourishing my body appropriately was the first self-care step on my list. Although setting a reminder to eat every few hours can be useful, that wasn’t working for me.

I decided to buy a collection of containers and started meal prepping to ensure that eating was easier. Then came the bubble baths, candles, and incense aspect of self-care, which addressed my need to take a break.

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I made myself a spa-worthy bubble bath every evening after work to release myself from the stress of my responsibilities. In addition, I started journaling and writing a gratitude list every night to set my mind right.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been consistent after the first week of my self-care journey, but it has made all the difference. It has been four weeks since I started the journey, and I haven’t felt better since. I’ll definitely be back for more.