As life gets busy and priorities are thrust upon us, it can be difficult to find (or make) time to practise self care.
Self care is everything we do to look after our wellness and includes the choices we make about food, drink, exercise, sleep, hygiene and stress management. It might not be something that you actively think about on a day-to-day basis, but it is certainly something you think about when it all goes wrong. Those times when stress piles up, or we start to feel slow and lethargic because we haven’t exercised enough, or we struggle to keep our eyes open at work because our sleep patterns are messed up.
It can certainly be advantageous to consider how you care for yourself well before it ever reaches these critical stages, and journaling can be an excellent addition to your self care routine.
The different types of self care
Physical
Probably the most obvious form of self care, physical includes everything to do with your body. Are you getting enough exercise and sleep? Are you eating well? Is your body functioning the way you would hope it would for your age? Working on your physical self care requires an amount of dedication, commitment and discipline that can be challenging, but will ultimately be rewarding.
Emotional
Emotional self care needs you to be honest with yourself about the emotions you are feeling and when. What triggers them? Are they productive and can you feel them and acknowledge them in the moment, or are they controlling your actions and causing you to act in a way which is not aligned with the person you want to be? Emotional self care can also encompass confronting and dealing with past emotional traumas, with the aim of moving on in a healthy and productive way.
Mental
Mental self care is closely linked to emotional self care, but also involves your coping strategies for things like stress and anxiety. Do you know what causes these responses in your body? Can you pinpoint it to certain situations or interactions? And what strategies can you put in place to help you deal with them in a productive manner, or improve your resilience? This can be as simple as having a place to vent and feel without fear of judgement.To work through challenges without ruminating or punishing yourself with negative thoughts.
How to create a self care journal
The basics of a self care journal are the same as with any other type of journal, so for the basics, check out my post on how to journal. The main difference is that your self-care journal is going to be a little more centred around the things you do to take care of yourself and more mindful of how you are feeling physically, emotionally and mentally.
Some specific techniques you might consider for your self care journal include:
Decide on self care metrics
Before you start, you should think about what you want to measure and how you will measure it. If your focus is physical self care, then is your measure of success weight loss? Body composition? Waist size? Numbers going up when it comes to lifting weights? Being able to run a certain number of miles? The same is true for emotional and mental self care – what indicates a positive shift for you and can it be measured?
Habit trackers
If you’re trying to develop new, healthy habits, then habit trackers are a great tool for monitoring your progress and prioritising the important success metrics. Whether you’re tracking sleep, water, exercise, diet, steps or anything else, habit trackers are a simple, visual way of seeing your progress and keeping you on track. As you start to build a chain of successful habit days, you can benefit from the psychological aspect of not wanting to see your chain get broken, which can help to keep you going.
Journal about the positives of the day
A self care journal can be a fantastic way to pick yourself up when you’re feeling low. If you collect positivity throughout your days and look for positive moments, you will soon have a wealth of positivity to reflect on when it seems more difficult to think of anything positive. Doing this regularly is also a way to train your brain to look for positives, which can have a great impact on your overall outlook and health.
Gratitude journal
Similar to seeking positivity, gratitude journaling is the process of writing at least one thing you are grateful for each day. It helps you start to seek out thinks to be grateful for each and every day. It’s difficult to overstate the value of generating lists of things to be grateful for, you might be surprised what comes up, or you might not be and it might refocus you on what makes you happy and help you to reevaluate where you spend your time.
Collect good thoughts
You don’t have to look externally for positivity or gratitude, you can try and find positivity to journal about, within. Keeping a note of your good thoughts, what made you think them, where you were, who you were with can help you put yourself in situations where you are more likely to think positively and help make you more aware of the situations and people that make the good thoughts few and far between.
Plan ahead and create routines
Whatever form of self care you are practising, your journal can be an extremely useful tool for creating the routines that will help you achieve your goals. It’s a space to plan the course of action that will lead you to achieving your goals. If physical self care is your main aim, then your journal might include workout plans or meal planning, or body composition trackers. If your aim is emotional self care, you might plan breaks in the day to meditate or destress.
Benefits of a self care journal
Self care is so important for being the best version of ourselves that we can be, but it isn’t always easy to keep our own self care at the front of mind. By committing to keeping a self care journal, we’re putting those needs at the forefront of our mind every day. This can have numerous benefits.
Checking in with yourself
A self care journal forces you to stop and ask yourself how you are doing. It makes you listen to your body and mind and really consider your wellbeing. This can be beneficial for preventing burnout, reducing stress and fostering self awareness.
Stay on track
Anyone who has tried to form a new habit in the past knows how difficult it can be. Whether it’s going to the gym, finding time to meditate, starting yoga or drinking that disgusting-but-healthy smoothie, it can fall by the wayside pretty quickly. Journaling allows us to track and monitor all these things and to apply practical psychological tools to keep us on track and working towards our goals.
Monitor changes over time
It can be easy to slip into less productive habits, or to to be less conscious of how we are treating ourselves, but there are early indicators that might suggest our self care routine is on a downward spiral. Started drinking more recently? Getting less quality sleep? Feeling more anxious about work on Monday? Woken up with a niggling pain in your neck? When we keep a self care journal, we’re keeping ourselves conscious of these small habit and routine changes, which might not be detrimental in themselves, but can start to stack up quickly and have us feeling like a less-than-best version of ourselves
Develop the mind-body connection
Bodybuilders and gym lovers know that there is significant evidence that when you are training a muscle group, your training can be enhanced and the muscle development can be increased significantly if you focus your mind on the muscle you are working at the time. If you are bench pressing, focusing on the muscles in your chest contracting and expanding, mindfully driving the bar up and contracting the pecs at the top of the movement, can all give you a more effective workout.
Journaling can help to develop this mind-body connection. Try running yourself through an MOT in your journal. Work your way up from your toes to your head, asking how each part of you is feeling. Are there any aches or tensions anywhere? Is there anything you need to take care of before it becomes a full blown injury? Running through this exercise, both externally and internally, can make us more conscious of any changes in our wellbeing.
Self care journal prompts
If you are feeling inspired to try and keep a self care journal, but you’re not sure where to start, the following prompts can provide a good starting point:
How does my body feel today? Are there any areas that need attention or rest?
How is my current diet supporting or hindering my physical health? What small changes can I make to feel more energised?
What has been stressing me out lately, and how can I approach these challenges with calm and resilience?
When was the last time I was fully present in a moment? How can I practise more mindfulness today?
How am I speaking to myself? What can I say to encourage a more positive and constructive internal dialogue?
In what areas of your life can you take better care of yourself? How can you start taking better care of yourself in those areas?
What helps you feel calm and relaxed?
How does stress feel for you and in what situations are you most likely to feel stressed?
Where do you need to start putting yourself first? How can you better prioritise yourself?
What is your idea of a healthy lifestyle?
Happy journaling.