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In an effort to balance out my rant about self-care tactics that don’t work for me, I thought I would share some that do. While I will be sharing specific things that I do, I don’t want to present this as a list of things that work for me and should also work for you. I intend to focus more on how I settled on these methods, how they have helped me, and how I handle my own expectations for them.

1) Meditation: I will admit, my journey with mindfulness meditation began through a workplace wellness program. At first, I saw it as a great way to take an extra little three-minute break during the day. That led to many more three minute breaks, and eventually to me downloading a mindfulness app, but not really establishing any sort of routine. I had difficulty making time to meditate on the weekends, mostly because I did not want to be alone with my thoughts. After a long break during the pandemic, I downloaded a different app and started my journey over again. Most days I meditated very much in earnest, although some days I just put the timer on while I brushed my teeth to keep my streak. Eventually I noticed that I felt better on days when I meditated, and every once in a while I noticed myself dismissing troublesome thoughts.

But the results were not immediate. I was 200 days into my second meditation journey before I was able to put my phone in the drawer at work for even one day, and it was another hundred days before I was able to do so with any sort of consistency. For me, meditation hit that sweet spot of short term and long term benefits. Every day, whether I felt It was having an effect on the rest of my life or not I got some peace a few moments of peace and quiet.

2) Exercise: I’m not here to proselytize the benefits of exercise, which may not be accessible to everyone, or extol the benefits of a specific exercise routine. Everyone’s body is unique and the right exercise for you is a personal matter, so I wont to get into specifics. I want to use exercise as an example of something that takes much more time out of the day, and something that I have had an on-again-off-again relationship with for pretty much my entire life. My early dabbling for the exercise were largely tied to my teenage body image issues. After college, armed with a more thorough knowledge of how bodies work and a different set of expectations, I began to exercise again. This time my motivation was much healthier. I knew the more I moved, the better I felt, especially in contrast to a highly sedentary job.

Over the past few years I have tried, for varying amounts of time: yoga videos, which were the quickest and easiest; swimming, which was the most time-consuming, but also when I can say I was physically at my strongest; cycling during the beginning of quarantine when I was furloughed and itching to get outside, and now I do low-impact aerobics routines, which are much easier on my joints, but at least get my heart rate up.

In between each of these, there were long periods where I got little or no exercise. Sometimes I was just too busy, and sometimes my previous form of exercise no longer fit with my schedule. Every time I found something new I would have to start again from the beginning. I still struggle with having to backtrack so that I don’t over exert myself after I take a week off for whatever reason. My current routine works for me now and that’s great but I’ve learned enough from the past not to be disappointed when it doesn’t work forever and I have to find something new.

3) Setting Boundaries: This may seem like a departure from the previous methods in that it is not visibly advertised. After all, it would be difficult to sell you a boundary-setting app and no workplace wants to be on the receiving end of such boundaries. Learning to set healthy boundaries took a lot of therapy, which I know not everyone has access to, and a lot of lived experience. One simple boundary I set was not going out on weeknights. I decided it was more important for me to get enough rest before work the next day. None of my friendships have suffered. There are other, more personal boundaries that have been more difficult to set and I won’t get into details here. I had to go through the difficult task of parsing out what was reasonable to protect myself and what would put an undue burden on someone else. At the root of it all, though, I had to come to the realization that I was worthy of respect. And that is a conclusion I hope everyone is able to come to on their self-care journey.

 4) Journaling: My other on-again-off-again relationship. If you were to flip through the journals I have accumulated throughout my life, which I hope only Carolyn ever has or will, you would probably be very concerned for me. I tend to journal when I need it most, often in a time of crisis. I’ve tried at various times to create an “every single day” journaling habit to no avail. Journaling is where I exercise my self-imposed principle that nothing is self-care if it really stresses me out more than it helps. And often if I set a standard of journaling every single day, finding time to journal is more stressful than the stress it relieves. But I know that if I ever need to process something out on paper, the blank page is there for me.

5) Scheduling Me Time: I don’t do this terribly often, maybe once every couple of months or so, but sometimes if my calendar is looking either to empty or too full, I like to schedule out a little time for myself. Whether it’s taking a bath, watching a movie, or sometimes even something I just never do like cleaning my baseboards, it feels good to officially allow myself the time.

-Erica

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