thoughts on self care

Sunday, February 10, 2019

Self care has been on my mind lately. Mostly what it means to me. There is so much stuff on the internet about self care, and ways to do, and things to buy to achieve the "best" form of self care. But my thought lately has been.. 'what does self care look like for me personally?' With so much being put out there online about it, I think it can be hard for us to form our own opinions and form our own thoughts. It's great to look online for inspiration, and to even get ideas from others and such, but when it comes to SELF care, I personally think that that is something that is unique and looks different for everyone. 

We've all seen the Pinterest posts saying "self care isn't selfish." And while that's true, I think our society makes it selfish. I don't think that we should view self care as something that we need to share with the world. My generation has a big problem of feeling the need to make everything Instagram worthy. And if something isn't, we pretty it up so that we can post the absolute best version of whatever it is we are doing, even if in reality it doesn't look that glamorous. I know for me personally, I find myself seeing peoples self-care posts on instagram and think to myself 'ugh, I wish I had a pretty blanket like that one' or 'why can't my bedroom set up be that perfect?' or 'I wish I had a picture perfect latte and work setup right now so that i could be just as productive as that person.' When I think back on thoughts like that, I kind of laugh at myself, because its like... wait what? 

Anyone can make something look good online. And the concept of self care isn't about doing something that says hey world look at me im doing something cool! Self is care is about doing something that makes YOU happy. Something that brings YOU joy and a sense of fulfillment in some way. If you are spending all of your self care time waiting for likes and comments on your post, you aren't truly letting yourself fall into a state of relaxation, rest, or feeling recharged. 

I think that we all (meaning, everyone in the world.. myself included) need to learn how to put our phones down and live in the moment. 

Recently I discovered the Screen Time thing on my iPhone. Basically it tallies up ho much time you spend on your phone, and tells you how long you specifically spent on certain apps. If you have never looked at this, or turned this on.. I highly encourage you to! It really woke me up to the reality of how much time I spend mindlessly scrolling. As I figured, most of my time was spent on social media apps. And don't get me wrong, I love Instagram! I love getting to share experiences and photos with the people that care to see them, and I enjoy seeing other peoples posts about their lives or businesses or just pretty pictures they've been taking. I also find a lot of inspiration and creativity through certain accounts that I follow, but I also feel like Instagram is where I do most of my comparing. She's way prettier than me, they have so much more money than me to do cool things with, I wish i could go on a vacation that nice, I wish my room was as cute as theirs, I wish I had those clothes, they're such a better photographer than I will ever be. Toxic. It's toxic. 
There's a setting within the Screen Time feature where you can set time limits on certain apps. I decided to give this a try this week by setting a time limit of 45 minutes on social networking apps. After the 45 minutes are up, it basically locks me out of the app. You are given the option to ignore the limit for 15 minutes at a time or you can choose to ignore it for the rest of the day.. so you aren't entirely locked out of it, and you always have to option to just go in to your settings and turn it off completely. But I tried to have some self discipline and really push myself to be diligent, and really only use the 45 minutes. The first day, I was so annoyed haha. It wasn't even 9am yet and I had used the 45 minutes. Locked out for the entirety of the day. I selfishly thought, what am I supposed to do while I eat breakfast if I can't go on instagram? What will i do during my lunch break? 

Again... I laughed at myself for thinking these thoughts. Even typing them now I feel ashamed and embarrassed for ever even thinking like that! Because it seems so silly. 

I decided to start using those times as self care times. The time when I would normally be numbing out everything around me, every thought in my mind, and every situation going on in my life currently by scrolling through an app.. I started using to do things that brought me a little more joy. Things that made my mind work a little bit. Things that make me think more creatively and things that challenge me a little more. And ultimately.. things that wouldn't cause me to compare myself so much to someone else. I started reading while I eat breakfast in the morning. Talking to my co-workers more at lunch. Spending time with my family in the evening uninterrupted by a phone. Thinking of more creative things to do with my time is a very freeing thing. 

Self care doesn't always have to be bubble baths, face masks, and spoiling yourself by spending a bunch of money. Sometimes it can, because we all deserve it sometimes, but we don't need to be doing that all the time. I encourage you to remember that self care is about you. It's a personal thing. It might not look like someone else's, and really, it shouldn't. It's okay to put your phone down every now and again and just disconnect and unwind and quiet your mind for a little bit. It's okay to truly let yourself recharge by just being offline. By just being by yourself or spending time with a loved one or a good friend. uninterrupted by what's going on on the internet. 
Something I've learned by being online less is that I really don't care that much. Earlier in the week when i first started cutting back on my screen time I definitely felt like I was going to miss something. I don't know what exactly I thought that I would be missing.... but I just had a fear of being left out on some sort of information. By Friday I didn't have the desire to pick up my phone and just veg out after work and get caught up with all the thousands of posts that I missed during the week. The desire to go online decreases when you start filling your time with more things that makes your heart happy. 

The point of this post is to encourage you. To encourage you to live life and not feel the constant need to post it online. If it's an important life event, or something super exciting or just a cool thing you want to share.. go for it! I'm not at all against instagram here, like I said up there i love instagram! I just wanted to encourage you to not be afraid to put your phone down. I was, for a long time, and thats why i wanted to share my experience in decreasing my screen time, and implementing more daily self care techniques into my life. Do what makes you happy. Not what you think other people want, or what other people say should make you happy.


1 comment :

  1. this is amazing. thought provoking, challenging, and amazing. thank you.

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