The key to making self-care a lasting part of your life it so make it routine. Here’s why.
Whether you know it or not, you use routines every day. This could be waking up at the same time each day, the steps you take to get ready for work, the things you do after work, or getting ready for bed each night.
The activities you participate in each day without thinking are all part of various routines you have created in your life.
Priorities
Routines are often unconsciously created to take care of the things that are essential. For instance, preparing meals each day, taking your dog out in the morning, or dropping the kids off at school in the morning.
These types of activities are essential, and therefore a high priority.
Making self-care a priority means you need to make it as routine and automatic as shutting off the stove after cooking dinner each night.
So when you look at the routines you have created in your life, you will see your priorities. If self-care is not part of those priorities, it’s time to start a new routine, or re-write an existing one.
Creating Self-Care Habits
One of the most effective and simplest ways to create a new habit is to make it part of a routine.
Whether that’s adding one step to an existing routine, or adding a new routine to your day, if you are ready to make a habit of self-care, it needs to be part of a routine.
You can click here for more about strategies for habit success and creating routines.
It is commonly believed that it takes 30 days to form a new habit. But that’s only partly true.
After 30 days of consistently engaging in a new behavior, your brain begins to automatically start thinking of this behavior at specific times with certain triggers.
But the creation of an automatic routine that has become part of your life and who you are, i.e., long-term change, doesn’t happen for 90 days.
For me, I don’t feel something has become a habit until I don’t have to spend a lot of time and energy thinking about it. I want my new, healthy habits to become part of who I am. That takes longer than 30 days.
So, working a new habit into a routine takes time. But it is time well spent if it moves you closer to the person you are trying to become.
Normalizing Self-Care
Starting a new habit can feel awkward and uncomfortable. To be honest, it can feel downright unnatural.
When I started making self-care a priority and working to make new self-care habits, I met a barrage of negative thoughts and feelings that plagued me from a lifetime of putting myself last.
Thoughts like, “This is selfish!” and “You don’t have time for this.” were two of the most difficult scripts to re-write.
But as I continued to prioritize self-care, created routines to accommodate it into my schedule, and formed new habits, these actions started to feel normal. Plus, they were so positively reinforcing that new scripts formed, and the negative self-talk became less and less.
It took a long time for me to be able to say, “I deserve this.” without feeling like it was a lie.
But I didn’t give up on myself. I continued to spend time caring for myself, growing, and leveling up. One day, I realized for the first time that I actually valued myself enough to believe that I deserved to be cared for and loved.
It’s time for you to normalize self-care because whether you believe it yet or not, you deserve it, too!
Feeling Good
When you engage in creative activities, your brain is wired to release the feel good chemicals that we all love, like dopamine and seratonin.
By making self-care part of a routine you are priming your brain to release these chemicals.
Let’s dig into this a little deeper.
Your brain is the world’s most sophisticated super-computer. It learns from every experience you have and every action you take.
So, simply put, if you make a habit of sitting in a certain chair at a set time each day to engage in creative activities, your brain will begin to associate those things with the release of dopamine and seratonin. So it will be primed and ready when you pull out your yarn and hook.
It’s pretty incredible if you think about it!
By creating habits and routines around self-care, you are teaching your incredible brain to release the chemicals you need to feel good and enjoy your life…wow!
A Foundation to Build a Self-Care Routine
Once a new habit becomes a routine, it becomes a foundation you can build upon.
Rather than adding multiple new habits to your day all at once, you can focus on one small habit at a time. Then, when it becomes a routine, you can add another small piece to the habit.
For instance, if you want to train for a marathon, you aren’t going to focus on running for 2 hours a day on the first day of training. No! That would practically guarantee failure.
Instead, you might start with running a mile. This might take 15-20 minutes a day. Then, over time, you would gradually increase the distance each week until you were running several miles a day. Your one mile run each day was the beginning of a running routine that served as a foundation for running a marathon.
The same is true for self-care.
By picking something small and working to make it a routine, creates a foundation to build a self-care routine that fundamentally changes your life.
The Next Step
If you want to learn more about making creative self-care part of your life, drop down and get my Ultimate Guide to Using Crochet to Improve Your Mental Health and get started today.
Take this important step in your self-care journey by making a habit of crochet and prioritize doing the things you love in your life.
You can DM me on Instagram anytime, I would love to chat with you about self-care and crochet.
Happy Stitching!
xo — Lavena
