Self-care is nothing without this. (And science proves it.)
I know in the midst of the holidays, life can get busy. Between family, friends, parties, presents, there’s a lot that goes on and usually our self-care regimen is the first thing to be put on the back burner until January. It’s just so much more snuggly to stay cozy in bed than to go for that morning run, right?
You’re normally on your game with your self-care routine.
Maybe you’re not 100% every week perfect. But you get in your stretching, your workouts, your regular manicures, and occasionally indulge in a massage or a facial when you feel you need it bad enough.
The thing is, while practicing that self-care routine is great, it’s all external.
You can do the tasks. You can hit your workouts. You can get your mani-pedis on the reg, but if you’re missing the internal self-care those tasks are just a brief boost of endorphins. Kind of like watching a motivational video on Facebook. You feel good for a minute, maybe even an hour, but after that initial endorphin rush drops, you’re left back in your own head.
And that can be the place where your self-care routine is lacking the most.
That crappy inner critic that whispers lies and questions your worth starts chiming in, and BAM! Suddenly you start questioning if you it was worth it to get the extra 15 minutes of massage. Or you start down the shame spiral of bashing yourself that ONE chocolate chip cookie, even though you kicked ass in your workouts everyday that week like a rockstar.
The key to a healthy self-care routine is self-compassion.
How can you practice self-compassion regularly? Like daily, if not by the minute?
NO. 1 - Get Out of Your Head + Into Your Heart
Your heart, like your brain generates a powerful electromagnetic field. In fact your heart generates the LARGEST electromagnetic field in your body. Scientists at the HeartMath Institute have discovered that...
Your heart actually sends more signals to your brain than your brain sends to your heart!
Luring stress and negative emotions (especially that self-directed shame, like when you’re beating yourself up), it causes your heart rhythm to be erratic and disordered AND the corresponding pattern of neural signals traveling from the heart to the brain actually inhibits higher cognitive functions, limiting your ability to think clearly, remember, learn, reason, and make effective decisions.
Now what’s even cooler is that during positive emotional states, the more ordered and stable pattern of the heart’s input to the brain, actually facilitates cognitive function AND reinforces positive feelings and emotional stability. This means that being able to sustain positive emotions - like joy, compassion, love, gratitude, bliss - not only benefits the body but it also profoundly effects how you think
NO. 2 - Start with Gratitude
o, whenever that bitchy inner critic gets turned on or you start heading down the shame spiral, stop! Pivot. And think of something that you are so powerfully grateful for that it fills every cell in your body with love.
More importantly, it fills your heart with love.
Find that gratitude. Find that moment, that person, that experience from your past or your present that totally makes you vibrate with gratitude. It could be the first smile you got from your baby boy. I could be the moment your husband got on one knee and asked you to marry him. It could be sharing a profound belly laugh with your girlfriends that came at just the perfect moment.
Meditate on this experience until you’re so overwhelmed with gratitude that you feel every cell in your body vibrating with love.
Love only finds you when you love yourself enough to let love out from within.