Micro Self-Care or How To Take Care of Yourself Daily
It’s Monday when I’m publishing this post and some, perhaps many of us, get the Monday blues not because we do not love what we do (although that may be true for some) but rather because there’s just so much going on in our lives and Mondays tend to remind us of that.
Today, I thought I’d introduce you to the concept of micro self-care.
Coined by psychotherapist Ashley Davis Bush in her book Simple Self-Care for Therapists, micro self-care practices are “the simple daily tasks that we can do to nurture, protect, and heal ourselves during our regular days, have the integrative capacity to improve our mood, decrease our emotional reactivity, and increase our mind-body awareness.”
Unlike macro self-care practices, which are what we traditionally think of when we think about self-care, micro self-care acts can be done in 1-2 minutes and they are simple things. While they cannot replace macro self-care, they can help to ensure you’re taking care of yourself daily.
Here are a few examples of micro self-care practices, informed by Bush’s book, that you can try out on a busy weekday:
-Wake up and set an intention for your day, such as “today, I am going to honor my boundaries and treat myself with kindness.” How you start your day matters.
-In between meetings you give yourself 10-15 minutes to ground yourself and be more mindfully aware. This can include deep breathing or putting on hand lotion and turning your attention to the feeling of the lotion against your skin.
-On your lunch break, you give yourself a silent still moment to enjoy your favorite beverage. Put your phone away and do nothing else but enjoy the smell, taste, and feeling of the beverage going down your throat.
-At the end of the workday, you give yourself a moment to honor yourself and the good work you’ve done.
-At the end of the night, think of three things that you’re grateful for and consider what your life might look like without them.
Try them out and let me know how it goes. Have a great week!
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