How Self Care Boosts Your Mood and Self Esteem

Self-care is a term that has been thrown out a lot in the past couple of years, but there is still a lot of stigma behind it. Many people think it needs to be as exuberant as a bubble bath every night with a facial, but this isn’t always the case. For different people, it can mean a lot of things. 

What’s Self Care

“A lot of people think self-care is a luxury but it’s a necessity to function and maintain what we’re doing.” Says Eva Carlston’s therapist, Ashlee Jacobs. Which is true! Self care resets our minds and makes us efficient, happy, and productive people. 

It can simply mean doing basic hygienic needs, which can sometimes fall by the wayside. It could be as easy as drinking a bottle of water! Caring for our bodies and making our physical body feel better can help our emotional wellbeing along the way. Teaching our girls to know what self-care is, how to do it and how effective it can be for them is a critical piece of programming at Eva Carlston Academy. 

Self-care examples:

• Washing your face in the morning 
• Drinking a bottle of water 
• Journaling at the end of the day 
• Making your favorite cup of tea or coffee to enjoy 
• Brushing your teeth
• Eating lunch
• Listen to your favorite song while commuting
• Make a to-do list 
• Not procrastinating 

Starting easy like washing your face every morning or night can help guide you through this process. Scale it back to what you need it to be, and don’t rush into it. Remember to care for yourself at the end of the day and make time to spend with yourself, rather than constantly exhausting your energy with people you interact with all day. Self-care is a priority and you aren’t being selfish, even if it may feel this way at first. 

How Self Care Benefits You

If you’re having a particularly hard day with your mental health, work, or just daily life in general, self-care can help alleviate some stress. Sometimes it’s good to sit at the moment with our emotions, but focusing on self-awareness and self-compassion is beneficial to us overall. It can help shift our mindsets to start to become “what can I do for myself?” or “what do I need personally.”

Self-care matters because it helps to keep us grounded and in tune with our own emotions so that we can better help ourselves and understand others who may be feeling similar things. Creating a routine that incorporates these easy activities can help ensure that you are getting what you need out of your day so that you are better equipped to handle any feelings of anxiety, stress, or depression. 

As much as we would like it to be, self-care isn’t just the “fun things,” it’s also the necessary daily hygiene, nutritional aspects of life, or being more efficient with day to day activities. At Eva Carlston Academy, we push our students to make sure they understand what it looks like to put effort into ourselves, and the benefits that can come from a strong, daily routine.