Tight schedules, meetings, and deadlines; the weekdays are pretty busy and stressful for most of us.
The urge to finish all the tasks within the deadline often makes us ignore our physical and mental well-being. Therefore, we should use weekends to take care of ourselves, refuel our bodies and minds.
Here are 9 acts of self-care you can try to restore your wellbeing
You've been working hard all week long. Juggling between meetings, trying to find a piece of paper in the piles of files on your desk, and trying to chase down those deadlines like a flock of chickens, you have already been too rough on yourself.
Have a Lazy Morning: Because You Deserve It
Now is the time to lay back, let all the drama pass, and get some rest. You can take 12-hours to sleep if you wish (trust me, it's not as long as it sounds) or lay in bed the whole day scrolling through social media. It is totally up to you what you want to do. The idea is to relax and get some rest. If you have some obligations, schedule them for the afternoon so that you can selfishly enjoy your lazy morning.
Organize Your Life
Organizing is underestimated. Organizing your room, your wardrobe, and your kitchen will leave you with a clean space and provide you with mental satisfaction. Studies have revealed that cleaning works like meditation. Try to notice, whenever you clean and organize your living space, your mind automatically starts organizing your thoughts and ideas.
It is like, the mind is doing to your thoughts, what you are doing to your room- organizing it to find the important information easily and get rid of the mess that has been cluttering your thoughts for so long. I have personally experienced that whenever I find myself in a mental conflict, cleaning helps me to resolve it and reach a solution.
Apart from the mental and emotional benefits of organizing, you will have a clean and beautiful living space once you are done. Plus, you won't have to turn your wardrobe upside down every morning to find your sock. Yes, that one darn sock we all seem to misplace or gets eaten by the dryer.
Get A Spa Experience At Home
Nothing beats pampering yourself with a spa. The bubbles, bath salts, and the soothing and mesmerizing fragrances of essential oils will help to dissolve the whole week's worth of tension and stress. The facial cleansing and nourishing face masks work as a cherry on the top. What if you could have all this at the comfort of your own home? Who is going to say no to this?
Just grab a few bath bombs and salts along with essential oils of your choice, and retreat yourself with a spa-like experience at home. For face masks, you can go all DIY. It will give you the fun of making your own face mask and will also allow you to pick up the ingredients according to your skin type. Here are a few recipes for homemade face masks created to target specific skin conditions:
1. Turmeric For HyperPigmentation
Ingredients:
- 1 tbsp of turmeric powder
- 1 tbsp of fresh lemon juice
- water to make to paste
- 1 tbsp of honey or 1/2 a beaten avocado
Preparation
Mix up all the ingredients together and apply to your face leaving the undereye area and lips. Leave it on for 3 minutes and rinse it with cold water.
The turmeric in this mask will address hyperpigmentation, reduce skin irritation and wrinkles over the course.
2. Honey to hydrate
Ingredients
- 1/2 Avocado
- 1 tablespoon of honey
- A handful of oats or oat bran
- 3 spoons of milk (alternative to avocado)
Preparation
Blend the ingredients together to form a paste. Apply it on your face and leave it on for 15 minutes before rinsing off.
The honey in this recipe works as a humectant, which means it helps skin retain moisture without feeling oily. Apart from that, this miracle ingredient will help with the appearance of scars and increase healing and tissue regeneration.
But wait, there's more! The ultra-nourishing oils in the mashed avocado will banish any roughness, leaving your skin silky smooth. Don't worry if you are out of avocados. Replace it with 3 tablespoons of milk. The lactic acid in milk will gently exfoliate your skin while providing a glow that comes from within.
3. Aloe Vera for Glowing, Radiant Skin !
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon of cacao powder
- 1/4 papaya
- A squeeze of Aloe Vera gel
Preparation
Stir these ingredients in a bowl. Put on the face for 10 minutes and wipe it off with a tissue.
Rich in vitamins A, C, E, B1, B2, B3, B6, and B12, aloe vera has radiance-boosting, skin-soothing, and hydrating properties. Perfect for sunburned or weather-worn skin. Aloe will help bring back your glow.
Papaya, which is packed with exfoliating enzymes, will dissolve dead skin cells.
And last but not least, cacao powder brightens and boosts circulation for a plump and pillowy look and feel.
When teamed together, these three ingredients work wonders in giving that red carpet glow that even a highlighter can't give!
Release The Stress With Sweat
Yes, exercising can be exhausting, but its effects on the mind are miraculous. Exercising releases endorphins in the brain that leaves you feeling great after a long run or lifting some weights. In addition, it helps to relax the muscles and relieve tension in the body. And since the body and mind are so closely linked, when your body feels better, so, too, will your mind.
Surprisingly, exercise is also an effective anti-anxiety treatment.
Exercise eases tension and stress, promotes physical and mental energy, and enhances well-being through the release of endorphins in the body. Any exercise that gets you moving can help, but you’ll get a bigger benefit if you pay attention instead of zoning out. Add the mindfulness element to your run by paying attention to your feet when they hit the ground. Focus on how the ground feels and actually feel when your heels leave the ground even though your toes are in contact with it. This will not only improve your physical condition faster but will also interrupt the flow of constant anxieties running through your head.
Grab A Book
For those who enjoy it, reading can provide a better form of relaxation than sleep. Reading helps you escape to a whole other world, and the only thing your mind focuses on is recreating the world on the page and helping you experience every bit of it. For a person who is typically anxious and overthinks situations all the time, reading is the one thing that can help the mind to stop freaking out and go to a happy place. Yes, reading can calm down an anxious mind and it works in moments not hours.
Reading forces the brain to stop and do something that has a positive outcome, and by the time the person is done reading for the day, they are in a much better mental state to deal with whatever they were confronting at the time. If you enjoy reading, then this is a must for your self-care plan.
Reading also boosts creativity and works as a fun exercise for the mind. While watching a video, you don't have to imagine. The director shows you everything you need to know about a character and a scene. But when you read, you make mental pictures. Your mind imagines the looks of a character, their costume, and the scenery of the story. A mind that imagines is a mind that creates.
Cooking for Your Mental and Physical Health
There is no doubt that eating is therapeutic. But what most people don't know is that even cooking can be therapeutic. A little creativity and creation in the kitchen can make you feel happier. A study suggests that people who frequently take on small, creative projects like baking or cooking report feeling more relaxed and more joyful in their everyday lives.
Cooking can be so good for your emotional well-being that therapists are now recommending cooking classes to manage clinical disorders like depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, ADHD, and addiction. Read more about cooking and mental health from an article in the Wall Street Journal.
Cooking and baking are therapeutic because they fit a type of therapy known as “behavioral activation,” which can alleviate depression by increasing goal-oriented behavior and curbing procrastination. Cooking can help you focus on a task, giving you a sense of power and control that you might not experience outside the kitchen.
Also, cooking can work as a great outlet for your budding creativity. Throw in a few ingredients that go together and invent a recipe of your own.
Nourish Your Body And Your Soul
If you are like most people including me and work on a deadline, there is a high chance that the only time you eat is in between the meetings. Unless you are meal prepping, you are undoubtedly depriving yourself of some essential nutrients. Utilize Saturday as a day of nourishing your body with a healthy and tasty meal. Use this opportunity to prepare your own meal, using your creativity as mentioned above.
Apart from the type of food, the way we eat also plays a vital role in our well-being. It is a scientifically proven fact that the way we eat and the mood that we eat in greatly affects our body and the way it processes that food. So pick up your plate and go to a comfortable and peaceful place where you can enjoy each bite of your meal.
Now that you have taken care of your body's nourishment, it is time to pay attention to your mind's nourishment. Feed your mind information. Whatever information you get through your eyes and ears directly affects your mind.
So take a break from crime shows and crime news on Saturdays and listen to a good book on audible or try a new hobby. Try meditation to clear your mind of all the garbage that you got filled with during the week.
Taking care of body and the mind, now this is a Self Care Saturday!
Get Some Fresh Air
Sitting in your office all day long is bound to impact your sanity. No one likes to feel trapped. So, if you can, try to get some fresh air. Step out of your house with a picnic basket, or simply sit on your lawn basking under the sunlight. Head to the beach or to the woods wherever is the most relaxing for you.
Enjoy the natural vitamin D boost. Appreciate the warmth of the sun, the feeling of the breeze on your cheek, and the shade of trees falling on you. You can take a book outside to read, or you can take your tablet and read or listen to a good book. As long as you are taking a break from that old couch in your living room.
Cuddle With A Pet
Pets are truly our best companions. They are always more than ready to spend time with you; they don't complain, they don't judge, and best of all, their fur makes them best for cuddling. You can't help but feel blessed when your dog jumps at you to lick your face, to tell you how much it loves you and misses you when you are not around.
You are bound to feel at peace when your cat sits on your lap, purring in the hope of getting a few soothing strokes on its back. When feeling stressed or being confronted with negative emotions, just find your pet and cuddle with them for some time. Spending a few minutes with them will evaporate all the stress and tension from your mind and the body.
Take Fido for a walk and melt all of that stress away. Give him/her a bath or take them to the nearest dog park. spending time with pets is one of the best stress relievers we know of.
We are all Stressed. Take a Day to Recuperate and Rejuvinate.
In this hectic lifestyle, we often forget to pay attention to ourselves. While this negligence might not seem to be a big deal now, it can manifest itself into physical ailments in the long run. Most people don't have enough time on weekdays to spare some for themselves; therefore, Saturdays came as a blessing. Make the next Saturday your Self Care Saturday and spend some long-overdue quality time with yourself.