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People have a wide range of needs, spanning from the emotional and physical to the spiritual. Acknowledging your needs and working to fulfill them can be an incredibly empowering act of what is called self-care. In simple terms, it’s telling yourself “I matter, and my needs matter.”
While the concept of self-care has grown in popularity in recent years, many people don’t know how it fits into their lives. They might associate the term with bubble baths, spas, and manicures, and figure that they don’t have the time for it. But self-care is so much more than just pampering yourself.
These seven self-care videos give helpful tips about best practices for taking care of yourself, both inside and out, managing challenging emotions, and how to keep positive even in tough circumstances.
How to Practice Emotional First Aid
In this TED Talk, Dr. Guy Winch, a New-York based psychologist, stressed that while people have been trained to take care of their physical hygiene since childhood, there is very little emphasis placed on how to take care of psychological and emotional wellbeing. “When I became a psychologist,” he says, “I started to notice how much more we value the body than the mind.”
In this talk, Winch delves into simple techniques for practicing emotional hygiene, treating emotional wounds, and giving yourself an emotional check-up.
50 Simple Self-Care Tips
If you’re new to the world of self-care, this video by Los Angeles-based vlogger Uwodoo is the perfect start. She lists 50 quick and easy self-care tips that can help people relieve stress and anxiety in a healthy way. All of the tips are practical and utilize tools that most people already have at home.
For example, she recommends that if you’re tossing and turning with worries on your mind keeping you from falling asleep, you should get out of bed and write down what’s bothering you on a piece of paper. “For me,” says Uwodoo, “Once I put something on paper, it’s out of my head, and I feel much calmer.”
All it Takes is 10 Mindful Minutes
In this TED Talk, meditation and mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe explains how people can take 10 minutes each day to create a sustainable mindfulness practice that can benefit them in many areas of their lives.
According to headspace, Puddicombe, a former Buddhist monk, encourages people to take 10 minutes each day to do absolutely nothing at all. “When did you last take any time to do nothing?” he asks. “We live in an incredibly busy world. Our minds are always going, and we’re always doing something.”
When you’re glued to screens and wondering if you’re being productive, Puddicombe says, it becomes more difficult to enjoy the present moment and fully experience it.
Removing Negative Self Talk
Several studies have found that people’s self-talk has an incredible impact on everything from their day-to-day lives to their academic and career successes, to their performance when playing sports. For some people, negative self-talk may lead to self-sabotage.
During this video, master yoga teacher Abria Joseph breaks down exactly how you can reframe internal criticism to create a positive dialogue with yourself. “I believe, passionately, that we can shift the negative voices and stories that are going on in our minds into positive ones,” Joseph says. “We have to question the thoughts, voices, and stories we have in our mind."
5 Actual, Real Ways to Practice Self Love
Many social media personalities sing the praises of self-love, framing it as something essential to inner growth and overall happiness. But, how exactly does a person start loving themself, especially if they have no clue where to start?
Australian lifestyle vlogger MuchelleB provides concrete steps people can take to start a self-love practice. Among her tips are to create a list of all the things you love about yourself. “You can even make adding to the list regularly a part of your routine,” she says. “Like after you finish your Sunday cleaning, you add another thing you like about yourself.”
The Missing Ingredient in Self Care
Dr. Portia Jackson-Preston, a professor of public health at California State University, Fullerton, recounts her personal self-care journey in this TEDxCrenshaw Talk. After a serious medical diagnosis, she realized that she needed to invest in self-care in order to protect her health.
Up until her diagnosis, her career had been her highest priority, she said on her website, and she explains how she gave herself permission to focus on self-care. “I used to think self-care meant massages, pedicures, and retreats,” says. Jackson-Preston. “It was a reward, a luxury of time and resources - and I was too busy working for that.”
Jackson-Preston breaks down self-care into six categories: physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, professional, and recreational. “My physical self-care involves walking or dancing for thirty minutes every day,” she says. “And my emotional self-care means having compassion for myself, each day of my life.”
Self Care Date
Feeling overwhelmed and drained? Aileen Xu, an interior designer expert, recommends that you clear your schedule to have a proper “self-care date” with yourself. Xu goes over her self-care date routine, which includes journaling, but the activity she considers the most important is cleaning up.
She makes the connection between your physical environment with your mental state, and explains that tidying up can help us feel calmer. “Having a clear space will help give you a clearer mind,” she says.
