Self-care is the first step to wellness! Here's your 5 step guide to showing yourself some love by wellness coach Shreen El Masry from Be You Be Free:
Self-care is about self-respect, increasing your awareness, and showing love, compassion and understanding of yourself. Most importantly, it is about doing what is right for you. Prioritising your needs and putting yourself first is key before you embark on a wellness journey.
Step 1 - Make you the priority
Recognise how important you are. Make looking after you a priority. Here are some tips to get you started.
- Remember that you are unique and no one knows you better than you.
• Create the life that you want to live and do the things that you want to do.
• Honour every little thing about you, as they are the things that make “you”.
• Listen to your heart and be you who you want to be, not who you think you should be.
• Look after and nurture your mind, body and spirit.
• Have compassion for your weaknesses and forgive yourself.
• Treat yourself with love, care and respect.
Step 2- Practice self-care everyday
Practice a self-care activity every day that you enjoy. This can be anything from making your favourite cup of tea, having a bath, binge watching Netflix or hanging with a friend. My favourite self-care activities are watching Sex and The City, putting my pyjamas on and drinking herbal tea. What is your favourite self-care activity?
Step 3 - Create your wellness vision
A wellness vision is the picture that you have of yourself living your life the way you want it to be. It is a picture of you at your very best self. Your vision can be in any shape or form, a picture, a painting, bullet points or even a paragraph. It needs to be unique and meaningful to you.
Before you create your vision, ask yourself, what is the reason I want to be this way? What is the true meaning behind my vision? By identifying your deep motivators will help keep you on track during your wellness journey.
Grab a pen, paper, pens, pencils and any other materials you need and follow your heart.
Step 4- Identify your strengths.
We rarely take time to reflect on our achievements in life, but by identifying all the things that we do well will boost our self-confidence which will help us on our wellness journey. Take some time today to list out your top five strengths, and reflect on the times where you have successfully accomplished something. If you are struggling to think of them then you can take the VIA strengths survey. This a great tool that will help you identify your top strengths and is something you will be able to use and apply to your everyday life.
Step 5- Enhance your self-connection
Once you connect with yourself, you will then find it easier to connect with everything around you in a more meaningful way. You will also develop your character strengths and have a more profound understanding of who you are, and what you really want in life.
Here are five ways to enhance your self-connection.
- Pay close attention to all thoughts and feelings. Pause, take note of them and breathe deeply with all negative thoughts and/or stressful situations.
2. Be free in nature. Smell the flowers, walk barefoot in the sand, listen to the waves. Tune in to all your senses. Be free.
3. Create a happy place. Find a place or create a space at home that makes you feel happy and content and that is special to you only. Try and visit this place once a day.
4. Keep doing more things for you. Keep practicing dailyself-careactivities that make you happy.
5. Nourish, move, sleep & listen to your body and heart. Your body is your temple and it’s all yours. Tune in to what it wants and treat it well.
What can you do today to help you self-connect?
Now you are ready to start the journey to wellness. It’s certainly not an easy ride and it will be ongoing journey of growth, discovery and change. Identify your needs so you don’t feel the pressure to conform to situations and environments that don’t suit you, and learn to love and accept everything about you. Never forget that you are one of a kind.
Shreen El Masry is a Personal Trainer, Wellness Coach and owner of “Be You Be Free” and is currently studying a Post Graduate Diploma in Wellness at RMIT.
For more information, please contact Shreen at +61433915423, shreen@beyoubefree.com.au, or find her online at her website, on Instagram, and Facebook
