Self-Care September 2021

“Treat yourself as you would treat a good friend”

~ Dr Kristin Neff

September’s  daily actions from ‘Action for Happiness Org’s’ calendars are included to encourage a person be kinder to themselves and others, especially when things go wrong. which is based on the key of Acceptance: Being comfortable with who you are.

I don’t know about you, but this is something I know I could really do with following this coming month and beyond. For some reason (there is no one specific event) I lately found myself ‘hitting a wall’. Maybe it is having now spent more than 200 days in lockdown over the last 1.5 years, or what is going on around the world, who knows? All I know is that for my own wellbeing I needed to take a step back from social media, and begin to focus on myself.

One thing I have done this weekend for my own selfcare is have my first COVID-19 jab, and listening to my body. I’m pleased to say no tentacles have started growing yet – yaay! 😊

“Self-care increases our resilience and helps us get more out of life. It also helps us accept others as they are too . . . Self-acceptance and compassion are also closely related to mindfulness and meditation” Action for Happiness Org

How do you practice self-care at home, work and all pillars of your life?

As a Career Development Practitioner, it touches me when people come to realise the importance of self-care skills and competencies in people’s lifelong career development planning and management. The importance of this is something that has been further reinforced during Doubleknotworks Certification in Hope-Action Theory & Practice course, I’m currently studying, as part of my own continual professional development.

A couple of things that stuck out to me whilst listening to recordings was that Self-Clarity one of the competencies of Hope Action Theory relates to looking after yourself in the relationship of others. How often do you put others’ needs before your own?

Perhaps someone at work asks you to complete a task immediately, even though you have been at your desk for more than 2 hours without a break. You were about to step away from your desk to stretch and walk over to get a glass of water, but instead, you say “it’s okay, I’ll do this for you right away”.  Next thing you know, 45 minutes go by, and you still haven’t had your 5 minute self-care break. Sound familiar? I know I have fallen into this trap so many times over the years.

Some elements of self-care are:

• Spiritual self
• Emotional self
• Physical health
• Intellectual self
• Mental health

All of these elements have an impact on a person’s sense of self-clarity. I was interested to listen to Spencer Niles during my course work, explain in terms of a person’s career that “Donald Super’s notion of how people structure the basic roles of living into a life that they find satisfying, is often not part of career interventions, as people often think of work as an isolated thing that occurs in a person’s life.

We know that career development is holistic, and when one pillar in our life is suffering, all other pillars are impacted, and this is becoming increasingly apparent in the face of the impact of COVID-19.

Related Action for Happiness Orgs Self-Care actions are:

• Action 7 – Bring mindfulness into your day
• Action 8 – Find your strengths & focus on using them
• Action 9 – Get help if you are struggling
• Action 19 – Give yourself a happiness check
• Action 28 – Detox your negative thinking patterns
• Action 33 – Be realistic in you reasoning

Some of the daily actions I will be actively engaging in over the next month, integrated in all pillars of my life, are:

• Notice the things I do well, however small
• Focus on the basics: eat well, exercise & go to bed on time
• If I’m busy “allow” myself to pause & take a break
• Ask a trusted friend to tell me what strengths they see in me
• Free up time by cancelling unnecessary plans
• Choose to see my mistakes as steps to help me learn
• Give myself permission to say no

You can get further information on related actions from the website link below

Calendars will be made available over the next few days, in PDF & jpeg and accessible format in the following languages (what a great way to brush up or learn new language skills)

• Albanian
• Arabic
• Bengali
• Bulgarian
• Catalan
• Czech
• Chinese
• Croatian
• Danish
• Dutch
• Estonian
• Farsi
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Greek
• Hebrew
• Hindi
• Hungarian
• Icelandic
• Indonesian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Kyrgyz
• Lithuanian
• Mongolian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Romanian
• Russian
• Serbian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Turkish
• Ukrainian
• Urdu
• Welsh