What is Self-Care and how exactly does it create BALANCE in our daily lives?

Logically, there is an understanding that self-care encourages us to think about prioritizing parts of our lives that make us feel better. But, in practice, how often do we go about making these moments of pausing, resetting, and relaxing part of our daily lives and habits? 

At The Centered Life, our women-owned therapy center invites us all to think about Self-Care as not a luxury, but a necessity. It’s essential that when we look to build up our self-care, we are able to show up in the world fully as our best selves. 

Earlier this year, Val hosted the Self-Care Soiree as a part of the celebration of Mental Health Awareness Month and encouraged us to think about these key takeaways in order to make self-care stick in our lives. 

Here are some of the highlights from what Val guided the virtual community through: 

Add a gentle reminder

For me, I use stickynotes. One of them says, “What do I need today?”

I need to be reminded of that hot pink sticky every time I look behind my computer, because it's not automatic for me to ask myself these questions.

I spend a lot of my day giving to other people. And so I need a visual reminder to ask myself, what do I need? Do I need to just like get up and walk around right now? Do I need a drink of water? Do I just need to breathe?


Pause intentionally
You know, I call it the power of the pause. Like what happens when we just pause for a minute, so that we can think through what our next feeling is going to be or even what our next response is going to be.

I think that's a tangible emotional self-care that we can practice.

Write down how you feel

Journaling is a great way to be able to kind of look back and reflect on where was I earlier this week.

What did I do to help myself? And how did I work through that?

Whether we're stressed out or, you know, we're feeling upset about something it can be as simple as  taking 30 seconds to one minute, that's it, to just pause and ask yourself how you're feeling?

Observe what works best for YOU
I think the answer to what gets in the way of your self-care is really a unique and individual to each person. A lot of times therapy can really be helpful with we know all the things that really go on.

The beauty of the internet is that you can google and find 1 Million ‘Ways to practice self care.’ 

But there's a reason that we're not all practicing self care. And that reason is very unique and specific to you and who you are, and your experiences and how you feel about yourself.

Give ourselves grace for the things that we're working on. And if trying to improve on, you know, self care is all about self love, then we don't want to be criticizing ourselves, 

Stop Criticizing about Self-Care

How likely is it that we're going to practice self care if we're constantly criticizing ourselves about it- why we can't practice it in the way that we want.

So I just want to thank you all for being here and for making time for yourself to shift a perspective. I'm so grateful that you gave me the chance to just share something valuable around guiding you into a new way to look at Self-Care!

I hope this acts as a gentle reminder for why this is so important for us as women and why just now more than ever, in our world and in our lives and all the things that are different things that we're all facing, why this is such a necessity that it's not a luxury. It's an absolute necessity. 

• Val of The Centered Life 

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