How many times have you thought, I just need to take a day for myself? While you may not have that opportunity, there are still several ways to relieve the stress of day to day life without going AWOL on your responsibilities. Check out these self-care ideas for students to feel relieved and stay on track!
Self-care is not an indulgence. It’s the practice of meeting personal needs. While you may not have extra hours to pamper yourself, you can fit self-care into even a busy schedule by creating small and impactful moments. The ideas in this article can help you add self-care to your day-to-day life.
Find Happiness and Contentment Every Day with Self Care!
Self Care is Imperative
The hectic life of a student makes it too easy to forget to address our own basic human needs. If working, studying, attending classes, doing laundry and grabbing meals on the go is what the usual week looks like, it may be time to make some changes.
Treating ourselves well or pampering ourselves should not be at the bottom of the priority list. Self-care doesn’t have to take a lot of time but it’s important to remember that it’s necessary to rejuvenate ourselves and to keep forward momentum.
Turn Everyday Tasks Into a Form of Self Care
Do you leap from bed and race to the shower each morning? Even if you’re taking a quick shower, why not indulge in a great-smelling body wash? Scents can be a great way to lift the spirits. Follow-up with a silky smooth lotion that makes your skin feel good. You’ve just turned your rushed morning shower into a soothing and pleasant event.
Likewise, almost any of your daily duties can be modified to make them pleasurable. Want to catch up on a positivity podcast but can’t possibly sit in one place for an hour? Cue it up on your phone and listen to earbuds on your way to classes.
Treat yourself kindly, and make the most out of everything you do!
Schedule Self Care
Maybe you’ve looked at your schedule and you don’t have time to fit in even a quick trip to the gym for the next few weeks. I get it. But give scheduling self-care a shot, you might be surprised at what you do have time for if it’s pre-booked.
Jot a few minutes of rest into your planner, set an alarm to wake up, and just chill. While we may not be able to commit to an hour-long yoga session 3x a week, most of us can indulge in a short 10-minute meditation or stretching session a few times a day. When looking at your schedule think short-and-sweet but frequent.
With a busy schedule like ours, self-care is not a frivolous indulgence or a luxury, it’s a necessity for our mental health.
Reward Yourself for Your Hard Work
When you finish finals or complete a large project, treat yourself. Have your own celebration even if it’s nothing more than a movie and ice cream. Enjoy your success before moving on to the next task. This small piece of personal time won’t ruin your schedule, but it may help you approach new tasks with positivity and renewed energy.
Taking the time to celebrate our achievements also helps us to remember that we DID achieve something, we’re not just spinning our wheels. The sense of forward momentum can sometimes be just the boost needed to get to the next level in other areas, too.
Speak Kindly to Yourself
One of the worst things you can do is to talk to yourself in a mean or angry way. When you get rushed or frustrated it’s easy to think of ourselves as too slow, too dumb or incapable. Instead of indulging in that, concentrate on treating yourself kindly and when faced with a challenge. Use positive thinking to boost yourself up instead of tearing yourself down. If you wouldn’t stand for someone else speaking to you or your loved ones with derision and scorn, don’t do it to yourself.
It’s important to get at the idea that self-care is not about fizzy bath bombs and spa days, self-care is about meeting your personal mental and physical needs. Whether that is making sure we pay our bills on time or that we call home so we don’t feel guilty, we should be taking care of our stuff in such a way that it’s managed.
Then, we can take care of our own well-being by interspersing pleasurable activities for an added boost. Sure, you’d probably love to take a spa day once a week, but how realistic is that with your busy schedule? Instead, spread your self-care throughout the week, a little at a time, and often.
Self-care, however you approach it, really is something that most of us have to work at. Obviously, we should eat balanced meals, and do so sitting down rather than in a rush. Hopefully, we go to bed at a decent hour, too. But self-care, like all things, is a practice. And if we don’t succeed at these things today, we have a clean slate to give it another shot tomorrow.
