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Posts tagged with “self-care”

How Self-Care Can Actually Save the Planet

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“Take care of the earth and she will take care of you.” ~Unknown

The morning the sky turned red and the sun didn’t come out, I decided I wanted to sell my car. In a strange way, it seemed like an ultimate act of self-care.

Mind you, my wife and I are a two-car family and neither of us commute in the traffic-clogged Bay Area. So losing a car wouldn’t be a hardship. Instead, it would be a frank statement of living my values. A way to stage my own protest and live true.

I now understand this is …

What Self-Care Is

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How to Take Good Care of Yourself During the Coronavirus Pandemic

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EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

“Self-care is how you take your power back.” ~Lalah Delia

For more than a week now, I’ve been immersed in how to handle the pandemic that is unfolding all around us. By now, one thing is clear to me. We are either our greatest allies or our own worst enemies at such times. How we react makes all the difference.

One friend brought home a three-inch tome all about pandemics, determined to read her way through it. Another began advising everyone …

Why My “Self-Care” Did More Harm Than Good

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“Self-care is how you take your power back.” ~Lalah Delia

Self-care is not a bubble bath.

I mean, it might be, if you’re the kind of person who feels like they’re committing a mortal sin by allowing themselves to wade in hot water with a candle or a book for twenty minutes alone. If that’s you, then yes. Please allow yourself a bubble bath. Regularly!

Same with a massage. Or scheduling time for exercise. Or buying yourself some new underwear. Or taking a nap.

If the idea of doing these things makes you feel squirmy and selfish and, Nooooo, …

If You Want a Healthy Relationship, Value Yourself

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“It’s all about falling in love with yourself and sharing that love with someone who appreciates you, rather than looking for love to compensate for a self-love deficit.” ~Eartha Kitt

I always found the concept of self-love embarrassing and horrifying. Just thinking about it would make me cringe. It felt completely wrong, and I didn’t understand what it was all about. Quite frankly, I felt disgusted by it and thought it was a new-age invention by self-centerd people who wanted to have more opportunities to be selfish.

Sure, I was young then, but I can now also see how that …

How Yoga Gave Me the Courage to Stop People-Pleasing

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“Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.”  ~The Bhagavad Gita

Growing up, I couldn’t have been further from my ‘self.’ Early childhood experiences taught me to focus all of my energy externally. To put everyone around me first and to be insatiably attentive to their needs. This kind of thinking instills you with an incredibly low sense of self-worth, disconnects you from your own feelings and desires, and ultimately leaves your happiness pinned to other people.

When you have low self-worth, you mostly want to contract away from the world like a turtle. …

How to Avoid Emotional Burnout This Holiday Season

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Whether you celebrate or not, the holiday season can be stressful for many reasons. From experiencing difficult emotions like grief, anger, or resentment that seem to resurface out or nowhere, to the pressures of making everything perfect for everyone, there’s a lot of opportunity for emotional burnout.

I’m no stranger to painful emotions re-emerging around this time of the year. Christmas used to trigger in me the feelings of loneliness and guilt for years, following my move across the country and away from my family and friends.

Moving was a conscious choice my husband and I made soon after …

Remember to Take Care of Yourself

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The Power of Saying No (Even to People You Love)

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“When you say yes to others, make sure you are not saying no to yourself.” ~Paulo Coelho

“Yes, of course
”

“Yes, that’s no trouble at all
”

“Yes, I can do that
”

“Yes, I’d love to help
”

Yes, yes, yes. “Yes” seemed to be the key word in my relationships with partners, family, friends, and colleagues.

I wanted to be helpful, kind, and thoughtful; I wanted to be there when people needed me. I didn’t want to let them down or disappoint or displease them. I spent a lot of my time devoted to my self-image as a capable, nice …

How to Listen to Your Body and Give It What It Needs

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“And I said to my body softly, ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath and replied, ‘I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.’” ~Nayyirah Waheed

For more than half my life, I took care of my body “by the numbers.” Every day, I walked a certain number of steps, no matter how sore, sick, or tired I was. I worked a certain number of hours, often going without sleep in order to finish my work and check off all the numbered items on my to-do list, no matter how my body begged for rest.

For …

The Best Question for Self-Care: What Do You Really Need Today?

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“Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.” ~Arthur Schopenhauer

About a month ago I came back to my daily meditation practice after realizing I’d been pushing myself too hard, and I was amazed at how easy it was to sit, get into that groove, and just be. I expected to sit for ten minutes, but on this day, my body didn’t want to move. I was completely content in the stillness, in silence.

I have been meditating and practicing …

Two Types of Boundaries That Can Help You Take Good Care of Yourself

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“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.” ~BrenĂ© Brown

Do you have the courage to love yourself and set the boundaries you need?

For years I didn’t, and wondered why my life didn’t work. I didn’t really understand what boundaries were or why I needed them.

My severe lack of boundaries allowed me to give away my energy, time, power, and love to others, leaving virtually nothing for myself.

For years I lived in a perpetual state of lack, feeling like I wasn’t enough. Looking back, it makes sense …

5 Things to Stop Doing When You’re Struggling and Feeling Drained

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“There is nothing in nature that blooms all year long, so don’t expect yourself to do so either.” ~Unknown

Recently I’ve been spread incredibly thin, and, at times, I’ve felt stressed to the max.

In addition to being at the tail end of a high-risk pregnancy, with complications, I’ve been working toward various new projects—not just for fulfillment but also because I’ve allowed the business side of running this site to slide for years. And I have a baby coming soon. It’s crucial that I revive what I’ve allowed to deflate because I’ll have a whole new life to …

Self-Care Is Also…

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How to Help Without Hurting Yourself and Avoid Healer Burnout

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“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.” ~Pema Chodron

The technical term is Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. This is when one stumbles upon a new, unfamiliar, or unusual piece of information, and soon encounters that same subject again, within a short time, sometimes repeatedly.

So, for example, you decided to take the plunge for that hipster, purple hair streak that you thought was so punk rock, but now you see it on everyone.

You have recently been car shopping, narrowing it down to a couple of choices, and now Honda Fits are …

How to Set Better Boundaries: 9 Tips for People-Pleasers

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“Boundaries are a part of self-care. They are healthy, normal, and necessary.” ~Doreen Virtue

I still have the journal entry that sparked my journey into boundary setting. It says, in striking black pen, “I wish I could speak my truth. If I can learn to speak my truth before I die, I will die a happy woman.”

Dramatic? Maybe. But I was tired of being a pushover, a people-pleaser.

I’d written it the day after I’d been the recipient of unwanted advances at a bar. For thirty minutes, a stranger had engaged me in aggressive conversation, peppered in flirtation, and …

Escape Isn’t Self-Care: What We Really Need to Feel at Peace

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“A pause gives you breathing space so listen to the whispers of the real you waiting to happen.” ~Tara Estacaan

You and I, we’re much too busy. We’re doing too much. We’re stressed. We’re overscheduled and overwhelmed. And we’re not doing enough self-care.

The good thing is there’s help. There are headlines, hacks, and half-baked gurus who promise to bring us to the less-stressed light. And there’s a vast supply of products to help too. Bath salts, wine, essential oils, yoga classes, massages, chocolate cake, books, life coach packages, etc. But sometimes I wonder, are all the articles and products …

How I Stopped Feeling Guilty About Doing What’s Best for Me

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“A good rule of thumb is that any environment that consistently leaves you feeling bad about who you are is the wrong environment.” ~Laurie Helgoe

Do you ever worry that if you fulfill your needs you will disappoint others? Do you ever feel guilty for doing what’s best for you?

For years, I felt guilty about taking time for myself. I thought that being alone, away from the rest of the world, meant being selfish. This was especially true in one toxic relationship that kept dragging me down because I was afraid to make a change. As a peaceful, …

How to Release Emotions Stuck in Your Body and Let Go of the Pain

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“The human mind is a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information.” ~Daniel J. Siegel

We are emotional creatures, and we were born to express emotions freely and openly. Somewhere along the way, however, many of us learned to repress emotions, especially those deemed “negative,” in order to fit in, earn love, and be accepted. This was my experience.

I grew up in a home where the motto was “Children are to be seen, not heard.” There was little emotional expression allowed, let alone accepted. No one was there to validate or help us …

How I Stopped Chasing Highs and Self-Destructing

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“Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.” ~Albert Einstein

In our culture, it’s pretty common to think of rock ‘n’ roll hedonism a little wistfully. From Keith Richards to Hunter S. Thompson, the wild nights and strung-out days of the world’s most iconic party animals are seen as integral to their sparkling creativity, rebellious nature, and untouchable glamour.

So many people, especially if they want to make it in the creative industries, idealize and inevitably attempt to mimic these lifestyles. Whether they want to be a “work hard, play hard” music producer, channel Hemingway …