resilient, helping you weather hard times and enjoy good ones. Here are some suggestions for personalizing your self-care strategy. Self-care simply means self–you—and care –deliberate or intentional effort to maintain/protect yourself in all aspects on a daily basis. People who don’t indulge in self- care on a daily basis lead a mechanical, reactive, robotic, angry, and dissatisfied life. While living a reactive life day in and day out, we eventually lose connection with ourselves. And, we can’t understand our dissatisfaction. Our relationships suffer, sleep patterns are disrupted (45% of us lay awake at night as per some recent surveys), and we develop unhealthy eating habits. How many of us live this kind of a monotonous life? Our lives resemble a sergeant’s drill where we’re doing the exact same things, having the same thoughts, and feeling the same emotions day after day. We get up at exactly the same time, on the same side of the bed, brush and bathe in the same exact way, commute to our work on the same route, greet our colleagues the same way, have the same work experiences, crib the same way about our work and bosses, leave from work at the same time, get frustrated about the traffic in the same way, reach home exhausted with the same dull face, and greet our families the same way. Then we sit dazed
for a couple of hours until our partners pick up a fight with us, which is also routine. We stay glued to our phones and gadgets for mindless entertainment until it’s time to hit the bed, all the while worrying about the next day. And, then we hit the repeat button again as the next day begins. Even if a miracle happened, and God appeared in front of us, I bet, we would still hit the repeat button. Most of us think that self-care means slowing down and being mindful. But to the contrary, self-care means getting to a place of optimum balance. Take for instance, a talkative person who is quick to speak her mind without thinking about how it would affect other people. Such a person needs to slow down and talk mindfully. But at the same time, a person who doesn’t talk, and is numbed, needs to get in touch with herself and her emotions to build her self-esteem and confidence, to connect with others compassionately and empathetically. Self-care, as a concept, was introduced in popular culture during the mid-1900s. Back then, it simply meant physically taking care of yourself and your hygiene– haircuts, bathing, taking care of your look, etc.
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