Creating new habits for self care

It’s that time of year again where we promise ourselves to do things differently this year; make resolutions, commitments to new habits, promises to break old habits and having spent the last 3 months of 2019 working ridiculously long hours and travelling the length and breadth of the country, I realised my old habits were creeping back in. Starting afresh, Monday 6th January, with a new commitment to “Choose Change” – thank you Helena Holrick for your inspiration, I sat down at my desk to commit to new rules, boundaries and the creation of new habits and wondered exactly how long does it take for something to indeed become a habit?

Lots of Googling and lots of rabbit holes later, I found several articles suggesting it takes just 21 days but when I looked into it further, it would seem that there is no real substance to that – an average figure that seemed to be sufficient for everything from weight loss to stopping smoking and so when I looked further into it, I came across some scientific research conducted by UCL, Phillipa Lally, who found that actually it is more likely 66 days before we do anything automatically. More than 2 months of new behaviours for them to become anything like new habits …. So I duly changed my time plan from January to mid March and began scoping out some new choices.

My commitment to myself this year is to put self-care in place as a regular feature. I talk about it in a lot of the workshops I run around mental health and suicide prevention, but let me explain a little more …

Self-care is about investing in yourself, it’s about making sure your own needs are being met and taking time out that is just for YOU and your wellbeing – be that physical, emotional psychological etc ….. self- care is not selfish, it is not indulgent. Self-care is real, and it matters—and it isn’t a new age fangle dangle thing that we never needed when I was a lad, oh no, in fact the first mention of self-care goes back as far as the Egyptians, where they discussed self-care ideas like using specific oils to improve moods and fight ailments - much like we look at essential oils and the benefits they offer ..

 However, self-care will be different things to different people – what works for one might be an annoyance and have the opposite effect for another …. For example, I quite enjoy having a pedicure whereas if you were to touch my partner’s feet, you might get a smack in the head ….. metaphorically speaking of course!! (Or not, depending on his mood ;-)

This, of course, adds to the complexity of self-care. There is no cookie-cutter formula for caring for yourself – different things work for different people, it’s important to find what does it for you but whatever you choose it's about choosing the mindset, activities, practices and habits we bring to bear against stress, unhappiness, illness, depression and many more negative emotions. Self-care helps us top up the tank, add to our our reservoir of resilience and makes sure that whenever life throws a curved ball at us, we have something in the tank to help us ride the waves.

Now if you follow my business page on LinkedIn or Facebook you will know that I do regularly practice #selfcaresunday – a day of no obligations, no commitment, no alarm clock – but I don’t think that’s enough. Basically I ignore my needs for 6 days, race around the country telling other people to look after themselves (and others) and then come home to lie around all day Sunday …. Hmmmmm. Definitely time to choose change but if we need 66 days to form a habit then I need to put together a plan to make this happen ….

Now I do love a good plan! I can’t promise I always stick to them, but I love the idea, and if you are struggling yourself to adopt a habit of good self-care, then my plan might help you too? Starting today I intend to choose at least ONE of the following an incorporate it into my day – I’ve not set myself specific tasks for each day as work and travel and life can get in the way but depending on where I am and what I am doing, I can ALWAYS find a way to do at least one thing that is an investment in my well-being.

I am starting with a list of 10 and then will come back each week to review progress and add a further 10 ideas so that by the time my 66 days are done, I should have almost 100 ideas for self-care tips so do feel free to join me and check in with me each week to take a look at the 10 newest additions. Maybe you can also start to create a list of your own? Thinking about what would be a good investment for you in your own reservoir of resilience and perhaps committing to one thing a day that works for you – even if that is only 5 minutes of peace and quiet, just being?

I’m excited to get started and hope you will join me in choosing such change in 2020!

Andrea www.abdcct.co.uk