Top Self-Care Tips For Living Your Best Life

Top Tips for Living Your Best Life

It may seem impossible to look and feel your best every day, but it is not out of your reach. You may even be so used to not functioning at 100% that you may not even notice how much your life could be improved. These self-care tips will help you live your best life.

Let’s be honest, we all have days that are not the greatest. If you create a mind shift and design your life around your needs, then you will find that you have more days that leave you feeling satisfied and happy.

Sometimes You’ll know what areas of your life need to change. Sometimes you just don’t know what is wrong, only that you feel “off.” And sometimes you just struggle trying to begin the process of change.

Wherever you are in your journey to feeling whole again, there are some simple things that can improve your mood, your mindset, and your body. We’ve included some of our top self-care tips to help you live your best life, and not just survive day-to-day.

Some may come naturally to you, but others may be a struggle. The important thing is to embrace that self-care is a journey with no clear finish line. As your life changes and you grow older, some of the lifestyle choices you make now won’t support your well-being anymore. Looking and feeling your best is about listening to your body, mind, and looking at your life to adjust how you are living to support yourself.

It may seem impossible to look and feel your best every day, but it is not out of your reach. You may even be so used to not functioning at 100% that you may not even notice how much your life could be improved. These self-care tips will help you live your best life.

Physical Self-Care

You need to support your body physically in order to look and feel your best. Moving your body, getting proper nutrition, sleeping better, and resting during the day are all ways to self-care for your body.

When your body is taken care of, it is going to feel and perform better. Listening to the subtle hints that you are doing too much, moving too fast, or not taking care of it will creep into your life and drag you down.

Some tips for physical self-care include going for a walk, exercising regularly, getting plenty of sleep, eating a healthy and balanced diet, and finding times to rest like taking a bath or meditating.

Finding a personal style and being true to who you are will also help you be able to look and feel your best. Finding something and being able to say, “That is my look!” will help you to truly feel like yourself.

Psychological Self-Care

You also need to support your mind if you want to feel your best. Your mind is your greatest asset, and it works overtime to make sure that you can do everything you want to do. Your mind needs to be encouraged to stretch its capabilities, but it also needs time to rest and recover. Finding a balance between these two things is essential if you want to feel your best.

You can keep your mind stimulated and supported by practicing daily mindfulness (or meditation), spending a daily quiet time, reading a book, learning a new skill, or unplugging from technology to slow down. Getting enough sleep will also assist your mind in recovering from the day.

dog with eye mask and an alarm clock asleep on a bed

Emotional Self-Care

Emotional self-care is a huge piece of living your best life. This area of self-care includes learning to navigate through your emotions, enhancing your empathy, and managing stress. Learning to create healthy boundaries and developing good, supportive relationships is also important.

You can help support your emotional well-being by learning to say no, taking time to think about your feelings, and being aware of where your emotional boundaries lie.

We were created to be social beings. We crave the company of others. And let’s be honest here, 2020 has been a year of change – we’ve been quarantined. We’ve unable to enjoy socializing with others. Our home life has changed with more of us working from home, which brings unique stress to our lives. And our kids are being schooled virtually, which means we are spending more time with them. There is no clear separation between home and work and home and school.

Even it is is virtual, with your online community, your family and friends, you need to have a solid support group that is on your side when it comes to looking and feeling your best.

How do you foster social self-care? By honoring commitments you make to other people, asking for help when you need it instead of suffering alone, stepping out of your comfort zone and meeting new people. It’s also critical to carve time out to spend with your family.

Creating a dedicated time for family daily, weekly, monthly is critical to these relationships. Our families need us, and they need us to be our best for them.

Professional Self-Care

It is important to have a purpose in life and support yourself financially. We often do this by settling into a career. It is important to share your talents with others, have boundaries between your professional and personal lives, and find what makes you feel fulfilled.

You can support your professional life by taking a lunch break to eat a healthy meal every day, negotiate for your needs in the workplace, have clear boundaries to ensure that while work gets your attention during the day, that you also make room for other areas of your life, and take advantage of professional development opportunities that come your way.

Environmental Self-Care

The areas that we occupy are going to influence our bodies and our mood. It is important make it suitable for the life we want to live. Organizing, maintaining, and clearing clutter in your work, home, and personal spaces will have a bigger impact on your life than you realize.

You can take care of your environment by decluttering the spaces in which you spend time, monitor your technology time and go without it sometimes, clean up after each meal, and make sure that your spaces are clean and safe.

Indulge in little luxuries in your home to help calm your soul, and make yourself feel special. My favorite indulgences are sheets and flowers. They feed my soul, and bring me joy, and brighten up my home. Create a space that is calming to your mind, body, and soul. One where when the stress of life becomes too much you can escape to and reset. For me, that is the bathroom.

Right now we are living in a furnished rental, and the bathroom is not optimal. So I’ve created a “self-care space” in a little nook that has a chair and a table. This is where I reset and recharge. I have some of my favorite books there, my bible, and a notepad to jot down my thoughts.

Spiritual Self-Care

It is also important to figure out what you believe in and devote time to develop those beliefs and spend time with others who share those beliefs. Having a belief system and set of values can help guide your life and help you feel grounded and secure, even during times of stress and turmoil.

You can do this in many ways. Obviously, being a part of a church community promotes spiritual development, but you should also incorporate other ways to nourish your spiritual side. You can do this by meditating, writing in a journal, going on a retreat, or spending time in nature.

Financial Self-Care

Managing your financial needs is another large part of self-care. Taking responsibility for your finances can help reduce stress in your life and enable you to do more than you would be otherwise. You need to be in control of your money and not allow money to control you.

You can be in control of your financial life by knowing where your money is coming from, understanding and tracking your spending with a budget, paying bills and doing taxes on time, and spending wisely and saving frequently.

This may seem overwhelming at first, but the important thing to remember is to keep developing these areas and skills. If you feel overwhelmed, then take it one step at a time. Pick one area that you think has the biggest impact on your life or that sticks out to you and focus there first.

It can also help to write things down. Take some time and write down the first couple things for each area that you feel like need to be improved. Each month pick one thing to work on and strive to incorporate that into your life.

As you keep working and moving forward, you will see how all these areas tie in together. As you are improving in one area, you will naturally feel yourself start to improve in other areas at first. And you will notice that as you adopt a mindset of improvement and change that it will start to seem less overwhelming and will become a part of your personality.