The actual meaning behind self care

Whenever we say self-care, people tend to think, it's about sleeping in, eating well, not doing any work. 

Self-care is more than that. Self-care is also caring about what kinds of thoughts and emotions we allow ourselves to entertain and fester. 

If we entertain thoughts that are unhealthy for us, by focusing on the negatives about ourselves, about others and situations while lying in bed, that's not self-care. That's an even more toxic environment we have created for ourselves. This means that every time we lay in bed, we have given ourselves permission to dwell on the negatives. 

This is why so many people have disturbed sleep.

I'm not saying we cannot think negative thoughts, but this negativity we need to express should be done in an environment that is supportive and safe, preferably with someone supervising us, or someone who can pull us out of it. 

When we are left on our own, we do and can spiral out of control. With all that is going on in the world right now, it is so much easier to spiral out of control because the collective consciousness is steep in negativity. 

Here are some self-care tips:

• Get adequate sleep and rest, be sure your bed is a space of care and love and not a place for you to dwell on negative thoughts
• Practice meditation or mindfulness breathing 
• As far as possible, do not watch trashy TV shows, when we practise self-care, not only do we not feed ourselves trashy food, we do not feed trash to our minds and emotions too.
• Watch, read, listen to uplifting music, podcasts (you can find plenty on Spotify)
• Sometimes social media can be a place of such negativity that we need to unfollow some accounts, we want our feeds to be filled with uplifting and educational content so that it complements your self-care eco-system. 
• Establish clear boundaries with others. We need to know where the line is with different groups of people. Some people in our lives have a closer connection with us, while for others the line is further away. Not everyone is in our inner circle. And being sociable doesn't mean everyone should be in our inner circle. There are circles of friends for different reasons and seasons. And learning to know what to share and what not to share aspects of ourselves with different circles is key to our psychological well being. This is an area that is still quite immature in most people. It takes a while sometimes to understand and navigate through this, but it is important to learn this. This also includes social media, why share our intimate details with the public? This is not about being authentic or not, and authenticity is certainly not about blabbering about our private lives on social media.  
• Know when to switch off for real. Switching off for self-care time does not mean spending hours gaming, or watching Netflix, that is more like escaping from reality. We all need to escape from time to time but know that it is not the same as self-care. Self-care is a conscious decision to allow the body, mind and spirit to rest and to be in that space where we are suspended in a way from outside energies. And in a space where we feel nourished and loved by self.  
• Set a time, day, and frequency in which we wish to have self-care time. This not only gives us an opportunity to share the information with our loved ones, but it also prepares everyone to honour this for one another. 

I hope the above list, though not a complete one gives you an idea of the depth and necessity for self-care in these volatile times on earth. 

Long term plans are a thing of the past, we can only plan moment by moment, month by month, something that sages of the past have been trying to teach us for the longest time. There is only NOW, and we get to practice this at this pivotal time on earth.