GYST: Self-Care & Per­sonal Health

I’m not just talk­ing about tak­ing a bub­ble bath and light­ing a Bath and Body Works can­dle. There are an over­whelm­ing num­ber of ways that we are sup­posed to take care of our minds, bod­ies, and emo­tions, and many of us don’t do the min­i­mum. It’s easy to slip into the un­healthy rou­tines of school, so­cial me­dia, and habits that are not based on mind­ful­ness. In to­day’s ar­ti­cle, we’re go­ing to talk about self-care, your phys­i­cal and emo­tional health, and prac­ti­cal ways to im­prove these things in bite-sized, every-day ac­tions. It’s time to Get Your Stuff To­gether. 

 

How to Get Your Stuff To­gether and Take Care of Your­self!

• Be Mind­ful of Your Habits (Every day!)
• Sched­ule Time for Your­self (Schedule.)
• Chal­lenge Your­self and Seek Dis­com­fort (yes, you read that cor­rectly.)

Be Mind­ful of Your Habits

Habits maketh man (or woman.) First off, what is a habit, and why are they help­ful? Habits are auto-run func­tions that your brain has cre­ated au­to­matic ac­tions for, like plug­ging your phone in at night or brush­ing your teeth. Your brain has a lim­ited amount of “de­ci­sion-mak­ing power” per day, and these auto-run pro­grams and ac­tions free up valu­able en­ergy for us to make im­por­tant de­ci­sions through­out the day. Take a mo­ment to eval­u­ate the habits you have. What are they adding to your life? Are they push­ing you to­wards the life and fu­ture you want? Are they adding to your health?

Habits are some of our most pow­er­ful tools. Matt D’Avella has a deeply de­tailed video on the power of habits, the best habits for life, and how to in­cor­po­rate habits with­out over­whelm­ing your­self. You can watch and learn here. One of the main points of this video is to start small and take it slow. It can be tempt­ing to jump in with both feet and tackle seven habits at once, but start with one, and fo­cus on do­ing that one habit to the best of your abil­ity. Once you have one habit mas­tered, then con­sider adding oth­ers.

Sched­ule Time for Your­self

I say this fully know­ing how many as­sign­ments you have due this Fri­day. I am aware that that pre­sen­ta­tion is due this Thurs­day and that one big test is next week. I hear you. As a se­nior at Maryville, I know what it’s like to feel like every wak­ing hour of your life is filled with things to do. Tak­ing the time for an hour of “self-care” or a morn­ing or evening rou­tine sounds like valu­able home­work-do­ing and read­ing time, right? Here’s the thing: it could be. You could ab­solutely choose to re­frain from a self-care rou­tine and jump right into work, work un­til you pass out, and do it again. But this is not go­ing to lead to your best work or even the most work. Tak­ing care of your mind and body through diet, ex­er­cise, mind­ful­ness, and “re­sets” ul­ti­mately makes you more pro­duc­tive in the long run. A re­set is a sched­uled slot of time with the sole pur­pose of re­set­ting and re­cen­ter­ing your­self. It can be as short and sim­ple as a 15-minute med­i­ta­tion, or as ex­ten­sive as a day of no so­cial me­dia, a hot bath, and movies with a loved one. 

Chal­lenge Your­self and Seek Dis­com­fort

Seek­ing Dis­com­fort is one of the best things that I do per­son­ally for my men­tal health. The group YesThe­ory coined the phrase in their jour­ney to max­i­mize their lives. The idea is that every good thing in store for you in life is on the other side of your com­fort zone. By seek­ing dis­com­fort, we grow, learn, and im­prove as hu­mans. Ask­ing out that spe­cial some­one? Un­com­fort­able. Go­ing to a new coun­try for an ad­ven­ture? Un­com­fort­able. The best things in life hap­pen on the other side of our com­fort zones. Ap­a­thy to­wards our lives—let­ting life hap­pen to us—is proven to be one of the lead­ing causes of re­gret in peo­ple over the age of 50. Take care of your­self now, and later, and seek dis­com­fort. If you want ideas for how to do that, check out YesThe­o­ry’s YouTube Chan­nel for some in­spi­ra­tion. 

Re­sources

YesThe­ory 

Matt D’Avella 

Pick Up Limes