For the past couple of weeks I have gone down a rabbit hole of the day in the life/mini vlogs of Black Women on TikTok. These are the videos where you edit together snippets of a portion or all of your day and condense it into a 30 second to 3 minute bite sized video. After the first few videos, I was all in and then my ‘for you page’ just kept suggesting these videos. I really had to reflect and ask myself why I liked this particular content style so much and it was simple; these women were celebrating their daily lives and showing how they cared for themselves each day.
The appeal in all of this to me, was in the fact that so often we think that self-care has to be something huge to matter or have an impact. Is it self care if it’s not a weekend at the SPA, mini solo vacations or having your family members leave the house for hours so that you can be alone? I say it most certainly doesn’t have to be. You can find ways to celebrate the small moments throughout your day as ways to refill your own cup.
This shouldn’t be that revolutionary right? But we often get so wrapped up in the routine of what we are doing that we forget how Blessed we are to be able to do certain things that we take for granted. Glamorizing the mundane tasks of our everyday lives is a good way to breathe new life into our enjoyment and appreciation of certain tasks. Grocery shopping and then preparing dinner, taking a shower and using a new body scrub, or even cleaning your home as part of your daily or weekly routines can be simple things that refuel you, if you look at them through the correct lens.
Although, I want to be very clear so please hear me when I say that I am still here for the weekend getaways and spa weekends. But I know that we can’t do those things all the time so I am learning to respect and appreciate the small ways I refuel my mental well being through self care that matters to me.
Below I have compiled a list of easy ways that you can incorporate self care into your daily routine. I’m willing to bet you are doing many of these already and looking at them as chores and not as something you GET to do.
- Exercise
- Take a walk
- Light a candle
- Clean/Rearrange your space
- Take a shower/bath
- Do a face mask
- Call a friend and catch up
- Read a book
- Take a nap
- Wearing nice pajamas
- Wearing sexy lingerie under your clothes to work
- Try a new recipe
- Put on some music and have a dance party
- Journal
- Turn off your electronics
