If we really want to talk about self-care, we have to be honest with each other and what self-care means. It is not always a beautiful thing. Self-care sometimes means that you have to do the things that you have previously hated doing. Pushing yourself going to the gym every day, having to cook yourself a healthy meal instead of ordering fast food. Ending a friendship that you know has been toxic for a long time can be considered self-care, it won’t be pretty, and those couple of minutes will be tough, but you will feel the change fast. You need to stop trying to be someone you are not so that at the end of the day, you don’t feel exhausted and need to take a break from your fake persona in order to feel a little ordinary.
Self-care should be something that we do naturally, and it will be hard for people to realize that in today’s world. Self-care can’t be all we rely on because we are so tired, and we need some escape from our constant burden for ourselves.
The true meaning of self-care has a life you are not continually trying to escape from. And in order to get to that point, you need to do things that you usually don’t want to do.
Those things may be your past failures, mishaps, and mistakes. But unlike previously running from them or feeling disappointed in yourself, you face them with full force and retracing your steps and seeing where you could have done better. You have to start with those problems and not just leave them in the past and looking for what you desire in the future. You have to let go of some things you don’t need, and people that you thing will only drag you down. You will disappoint them with some of your choices but may want to live a life that others don’t feel like living.
You have to stop living a fake life. A life that you are only living so that others will accept you, and throw away some unimportant goals which may take up more time than the ones that will surely make your life better. Self-care determines how much of your fear is due to the inability to improve your latent possibilities. And what comes from your way of thinking before you even realized what was going on.
People oftentimes mix-up the term self-care and the phrase ‘treat yourself,’ which are totally different things. Self-care is making choices and doing things that will benefit you in the long run, while treating yourself is just indulging in something that will fade in a couple of days.
Often people use their unhealthy and hectic lifestyle as justification. And throw the term self-care while they are drinking or procrastinating and thinking that this is the right thing to do. Also, self-care has nothing to do with fixing the life you have, it is more about caring what your life will be in the future. And when you genuinely start taking care of yourself and the actions that you do, you will see that many of the problems you tried to fix before are already gone.
It is being your own savior, your own hero. Taking care of yourself until the point when you look at what your life is, and you don’t get the urge to step out of it. You have to choose the life that will feel good instead of the life that will look good. Also, sometimes it helps to stop what you are doing, and help out the people that are dear to you. Ultimately, you have to think about what kind of person you want to be and be honest with yourself about the things you can do to achieve those dreams.
