33. How You Can Find The Time For Self care Everyday (2/7)

today is about how to find self care for yourself every single day. So how to find the time to do it because you know, obviously, it sounds great, doesn't it saying to yourself, you know you need you need to do self care, you need to practice self care, but how do you actually find the time to do it? And it's like any new habit we discussed this in our habits episode. It can seem really tricky as well to begin, but one way to get started is to build activities into predictable parts of your day. So in order to make something a habit, it has to happen regularly. And again, we discussed this in habits episode. So what we're going to do is we'll show you some tricks into making self care part of your routine. But before we do that, we're just going to discuss a site section because we've got another great study for you this week, and I can see shots really excited to tell you

so the study that I've got for you this week is called the effect of health habit based intervention programme on self care and self efficacy of nursing students. So for this study, they looked at two groups, and they measured self care in areas such as disk activity, mental state interests and self efficacy. And initially, the two groups scored fairly similar, but one group they kept as a control and one group they implemented a habit based intervention. And when they measured again, they found that there was a statistically significant increase in cell and self care score across all of the measured areas. So I thought that was really powerful, and it just proves how much a habit can be of a real benefit. So that is going to form the basis of today's podcast is going to be how to implement self care and make it a habit because that's how things become part of our regular life.

Absolutely, because it has to be customised to you. If you don't enjoy it, and you just try and like follow someone else's list then it's never gonna take a hold because you're always going to be battling to do it. So although Sparky and I are going to give lots of examples of types of self care, what we're not going to do at any point is give you like a like a almost like a guide like you need to be doing this, this and this on all of these days, because it just wouldn't work for everybody. You know, self care is really individual and it needs to be that way to make an improvement. On your life. You know, you're not a robot. So I can't tell you to do X, Y and Zed because it's gonna affect everybody differently. Yeah,

I mean, it's like for example, having a bath. There are times where Yeah, I like having a bath but I wouldn't say it makes me happy. I would say for me a bath is more of a than a necessity and it's a bit more relaxing than say a shower but like shower could really enjoy having a bath. So we could say to you go and have a bath, go and have a hot chocolate go and watch a movie but if you don't like doing any of those things, they're not going to be beneficial to you each activity that you do should feel personal to you. It should feel relaxed, peaceful and you should be excited and happy. Definitely.

And I would say like you mentioned having a bath. So I really do like baths like I put like scented stuff in the water like just sitting there. Like watching the steam and like relaxing. Sometimes I put music on sometimes I wait. So definitely for me having a bath is really like part of my self care routine. But equally, I've got to be in the right mind frame for it because it is something that I do to relax there are times in my life if I'm really stressed about something or you know struggling to move past something that a bath is just like the worst thing for me to do because I'll just sit there and be like, not only stressing about what was bothering me but like then stressing that I'm not enjoying the bath that I should be enjoying the bath and then wanting to get out and I've tried a bit before in the past where like I've been really stressed about something so I've thought I'll just have a bath and see if that helps and it's just been the worst thing so yeah, for me if I like set a routine to have a bath, I don't know say six o'clock every Sunday. It just will work for me because I need to be I need to you know, have them in a timeframe where you know I can enjoy them and relax.

Yeah, you've got to have them in that time where you feel like you want to have a bath. I'm exactly the same. It's that that feeling that you can you just want to get out of the bath like it's been in there. It's like your legs get restless. When is this going to end? When does the relaxation end? Because sometimes this is again another another point that I'm just gonna go way off script here. But if you are really stressed sometimes these things that you set yourself that are self care, the relaxing things don't seem to have the same effect. So for example, if we talked about there should be those things there, which is peaceful, excited, happy, relaxed. If you feel that you can't relax, maybe you'd be better off in that moment doing something that makes you happy, or something that makes you peaceful so that could be instead of having a bath or go for a walk in nature or something like that, or watch or what should a good movie. Like for example, this is just my thing. If I'm having a really sad day I'll go and put friends on because I know that you know the comedy series Friends. Yes, I know that it's gonna it's gonna make me laugh. So I'm trying to do the opposite of what I'm feeling in the time. Whatever it is for you. Each activity should be accomplished in a short amount of time. You don't need specialist equipment you don't need specialist tools. It should be individual personal to you. It should make you feel excited, happy or peaceful. And it should be going in a very short amount of time. We don't want anything that's going to take too long, because then it's just going to be hard to start it.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's just the more complicated it is the more excuses you'll find to not do it or to put it off. And you know, you can make things complicated later. And so once the habits in place, you can start to add layers and make things more complex. But initially when we're starting that self care habit, I would just make it as simple as possible. Ideally, it should be something that you can do pretty much anywhere. So say you know you go on holiday or you stay with a friend for a few days, you should still be able to do some if not all of your self care routine while you're away. Because if it's not portable, it's not going to it's not going to work. For the long term. You know, even if you're someone that doesn't stay away from home very much there might be other times maybe you're at work late or you know there'll be there'll be times in your life when you can't be where you want to be at the time you've designated and if your self care routine can't cope with that is gonna crumble.

But speaking of 20s we need to we do have busy lives. So we need to think about as well where we can fit these these self care methods in. As with any habit make it easy, make it convenient, the harder it is, the less likely you are going to the less likely is that you're going to actually do it. We've all been there gets too hard. It gets too stressful. Oh, what's the point? I gave up this 100 day challenge because instead of thinking to myself on a daily walk could literally just be walking to the end of the road and back or go into the shop. I made it seem bigger than it was I made it seem like oh, well if I don't walk 5000 steps, it's not really a walk. This is what you've got to do. You've got to make you've got to get into your mindset that it's got to be easy. It's got to be convenient and it doesn't have to be a big thing. If you don't have time to do everything because we don't have time. Just do something that you can. That's the basis of what I'm trying to say is just do it. So it's small, simple, and you've started it.

Yeah, I mean another good thing as well is to try and make try and find a time there's got a little bit of flexibility in it already, so it's easier to incorporate a habit in so I guess the easiest ones are getting up 15 minutes earlier. So making it part of your morning routine. Or maybe starting a bedtime routine whatever you do before bed 15 minutes earlier. Another idea is to think like your lunch break. So I've got a couple of examples for each. So if you wanted to get into a practice of listening to relaxing or classical music, maybe you could do that in the morning. While you drink your morning coffee. Make breakfast. If you want to start gratitude journaling

As with everything, as we discussed on many occasions in this podcast, it's not about being perfect. It's going to take some trial and error. Don't give up. Give up on saying good give up. I'm gonna start this on your day challenge again, I promise you. But if if it doesn't work out, get up and try again. The thing is we failure if you just give up when you don't want to do something or if you don't do something and then you give up. You never push yourself past your comfort zone you never try again. So you become self defeatist and if you can go back and listen to that episode about fear of failure. Hopefully there's going to be a lot of tips in there for you. So I would definitely go back and listen to that one. But really, the message here is don't people. If the first few tries don't work out, just keep trying. That's all you've got to do. You've just got to be okay with failure. Yeah,

so I think sort of similar to what I was talking about before about trying to have a bath and unstressed and then being stressed that I'm not enjoying my stress relieving bath. That was that was great that I know Yeah. Say that again. Let's shine it's the same thing with your habit. So make a habit wherever you you decide you want to do and stick to it. But then don't make sticking to yourself, get habit your new stress. So some days are going to be more hectic than others. And there's going to be days that you just can't fit it all in and that's okay, that's totally okay. You just have to remember tomorrow is a new day and you can try again. And that is the important part is trying again, that's what sets you apart from someone who's failed to someone who's just giving it another guy who is actually getting up and trying it again. And it's really hard to do and you've broken a streak. There's a real temptation to just give it all up. But that's such black and white thinking you need to get back on the horse and I'm really looking at us

Yeah, I think like I was like I make a joke and laugh about it. But at the same time, I actually did enjoy it. Like the reason I actually wanted to go for more walks wasn't really to do with fitness. In a sense. It was just the fact that I like going out and doing work. So sometimes you can lose sight of why you're doing it because it's some repeat and I've realised that one of my bad habit says, If I have to do something on repeat, I get bored really easily and I don't want to do it anymore. So I need to work on that one as well. But I do really want to do this 100 Day Challenge. And I know that if you persist. And this is another point that we need to mention, if you persist you know, like you've just said, you'll find yourself wanting to actually take part and doing it so I'm going to persist and I'm going to do it and I think that everyone listening should as

well. Okay, so that's all we've got time for on on this episode. We're just going to leave you with our little kicker and our little kicker is an app this week. So it's an app called Habitica. It's a really addictive little free app and it rewards you for sticking to your habits. So basically what it does is it turns your life into a game so your daily habits and like winning streaks will gain you experience points that allow you to level up. So if you're into this sort of gaming anyway, then why not use it to improve your daily habits and self care rather than just a pure time sink. And I love games like this I can get really sucked into them. addictive. Oh, they are addictive. They are what was the last one that I did? It was something like you have like a farm you had to like sow the seeds and you have to come back later and like harvest them and I loved all of that. So yeah, it's not quite the same as that but it's similar. So you have to keep up your daily habits in order to progress. So

actually went there? Actually, I do play games you know. I do I played this game is called Animal calf. What's that I've had what does that one involve? All you have to build your own cafe and different animals come to visit you and you can buy like I don't know like different types of food and they could arise can come in in a fish and they give you money for it and yeah, it's quite addictive. Okay or am addiction right I think I think we I think that's a sorry, we should end this episode because