If you’ve been on social media in the last few years, you’re probably familiar with the term “self-care.” Often accompanied by trendy workouts, fad cleanses, and exceedingly expensive retreats or purchases, self-care has become the hot new catch-all phrase for the equally passé—and oft misused—hashtag #treatyoself. Not only does this content push an unrelatable and unobtainable narrative, but it’s harmful to the core message of what self-care and wellness should be.
I’m Vanessa, and I’ve been working remotely in corporate America since much of the U.S. first shutdown in early 2020. Along the way, I’ve had to learn the hard way what wellness really is, what it isn’t, and why it’s still so important for those of us who have become remote workers long-term. In this article, we’ll begin to explore much the same, and I hope that over the next few posts, you too will come away with a greater understanding of how to better navigate your own well-being. Now let’s get into it!
What Self-Care Is (And What It Isn’t)
When we think of self-care, often we think of elaborate skincare rituals or indulgent purchases, but self-care goes deeper than that. Lindsay Tigar (2022) explores the concept of self-care in her article for Real Simple, and I highly recommend this as supplemental reading, but in summary, the act of self-care is a simple one: doing things that reinvigorate you. Whether that is as extravagant as treating yourself to a spa day or as simple as existing mindfully in the moment (more on that later), the aim is to partake in something that increases your overall wellness. It is in this way that the act of self-care and the concept of wellness go hand in hand. In short, self-care is the act of doing something that increases your well-being in the moment or for a shorter duration while wellness is performing those acts over an extended period to increase your long-term well-being from a more overall and holistic perspective (Holloway, 2020).
Whether your goal is to practice self-care or wellness, your aim should first and foremost be to do what feels right for you. While at first they may read or sound like cliches, these insights into what self-care is at its core from Project Rockit (2020) and Emily McKenzie (2021) are my go-tos:
Know Thyself
Knowing what your priorities are and your own capacity can help you set boundaries and draw the line between work life and home life when the physical separation is no longer as clear. Knowing yourself helps empower you to know when to say no, and that can be the biggest form of self-care you can practice.
Take Some Me Time
This point goes along with the former. Self-care is not selfish. We get so tied up in what we need that we forget to consider what we want. Even if it’s a quick 5-minute stretch break to get away from your computer, being intentional about setting time for ourselves is a necessary act for our well-being.
Detox & Declutter
While we often see these terms referred to in a more physical context, they are equally—if not more—important in an emotional and mental context too. Allow yourself to put space between the things that cause you undue mental or emotional distress. Healthy boundaries for your own well-being will never go out of style.
Practicing Self-Care & Wellness
Now that we know more about self-care, what are some ways we can practice it? Great question. Some great ways to determine what self-care might look like for you is to ask yourself the following:
- What do I need? Why is this a need?
- What do I want? Why is this a want?
- What is my body trying to tell me?
- What, great or small, would bring me joy in this moment? Is this feasible and good for my well-being? Why or why not?
While these are all great starting points for determining what individualized self-care might look like, the easiest, and perhaps most effective way to practice self-care is to do nothing at all. That may sound counterintuitive but hear me out. The act of mindfulness has long been shown to increase not only well-being in the moment but is very effective at increasing our long-term well-being too (National Institutes of Health, 2020; Till, 2020). While we’ll get more in-depth on the topic of mindfulness and how to practice it in a future blog, this TED Talk by a leading expert in mindfulness and founder of the app Headspace Andy Puddicombe (2013) acts as a great introduction to the subject:
Video Source: YouTube
Why Wellness Matters
Wellness matters because you matter, and your long-term well-being can only be tackled by starting in the here and now. Wellness is building onto the foundational blocks of self-care to take you from surviving to thriving, and the key to this is through completing small acts of kindness for ourselves over time (Pfizer, 2023).
You may be thinking “well what does all this have to do with me? All I do is work remotely!” I say this because I thought this too. While it may feel like we have less stress or pressure than ever because we don’t have to be in the office at all hours of the day 5 days a week, working remotely comes with its own challenges and stressors. In their BetterUp article on remote work stressors, Dr. Eatough (2021) shares the following infographic:
Image Source: BetterUp
As you can see, along with the usual technical difficulties, mental and emotional stressors such as loneliness and not being able to unplug also rate high on the list. While these struggles may seem trivial to you, the CDC (2021) cautions that loneliness alone poses a serious health risk, being significantly correlated with ailments such as depression and heart failure among many others. It is plain to see that in practicing self-care and wellness, we stand to gain not only short-term improvements to our overall well-being but long term too.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, April 29). Loneliness and social isolation linked to serious health conditions. https://www.cdc.gov/aging/publications/features/lonely-older-adults.html
Eatough, E. (2021, May 17). Smarter ways to work from home: 12 challenges and how to overcome them. BetterUp. https://www.betterup.com/blog/challenges-of-working-from-home
Holloway, T. (2020, January 19). Self-care vs. wellness. TLC Counseling & Consulting Services LLC. https://tlccounselingatl.com/self-care-vs-wellness/
McKenzie, E. D. (2021, September 21). Self-care A-Z: Self-care clichés and how they became important life lessons. SocialWorker.com. https://www.socialworker.com/feature-articles/self-care/self-care-cliches-important-life-lessons/
National Institutes of Health. (2020, June 2). Mindfulness matters. https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2012/01/mindfulness-matters#:~:text=Studies%20suggest%20that%20mindfulness%20practices,life%20and%20improved%20self%2Desteem
Pfizer. (2023). What is wellness? https://www.pfizer.com/health-wellness/wellness/what-is-wellness#:~:text=Wellness%20is%20the%20act%20of,how%20it’s%20linked%20to%20health
Project Rockit. (2020). Flipping #selfcare cliches into real ways to look after yourself. Project Rockit. https://tuneinnotout.com/factsheets/flipping-selfcare-cliches-real-ways-look/
TED. (2013, January 11). All it takes is 10 mindful minutes | Andy Puddicombe [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzR62JJCMBQ&t=52s
Tigar, L. (2022, July 17). This is what self-care actually is-and what it isn’t. Real Simple. https://www.realsimple.com/health/mind-mood/what-is-self-care
Till, J. (2020, April 21). Why mindfulness matters now more than ever. Brighter Strategies. https://www.brighterstrategies.com/blog/why-mindfulness-matters-now-more-than-ever/