5 Ways To Prioritize Self-Care in a World That Doesn't Seem to Care

This article was first published on Soulaia.com. This version has been lightly updated over time to reflect my current voice, links, and evolving understanding while preserving the heart and core message of the original article.

Are you a get up at 6 a.m. and go until 9 p.m. kind of person? Do you feel like you are “racing against the clock” nearly every day? Is your motto “rest is for the weary”? And when you do get “rest”, is it during those ten minutes you have in your car in between appointments, or those five to six hours of sleep you get each night? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, then this one’s for you.

While a good night's sleep is essential, many of us have learned the hard way that sleep alone doesn't always leave us feeling restored. You can sleep eight hours and still feel emotionally depleted, mentally exhausted, physically tense, or creatively drained. Rest isn't one thing. It's many things. And sometimes the kind of care we need has less to do with getting more sleep and more to do with understanding what, exactly, we're depleted of. It's time to expand our understanding of rest beyond sleep alone.

Rest isn't one thing. It's many things.

Here are five other ways to rest, recharge, and take care of yourself built on the understanding that supporting your well-being often means offering yourself different kinds of rest — emotionally, mentally, physically, creatively, and cognitively. As you read through these ideas, notice which type of depletion feels most familiar to you right now.

1. Time away.

If you feel mentally overstimulated, stuck in autopilot, or drained by the monotony of your routine, you may be craving novelty and a change of scenery.

Go for a day. Go for a week. Go for a month. Whatever you do, just go to a different place. Because when it comes to an all-encompassing body, mind, and brain recharge, there is nothing quite as powerful as a change in our physical environment. It’s why the travel and tourism industry will never die. It’s also why people will never stop coming back from Hawaii saying “I want to move to Hawaii”. Sure, the place is beautiful and there are plenty of reasons to move there, but first and foremost, for most people it’s simply a welcome change from the environment they’re used to.

You needn’t wait for that two-week vacation to reap the rejuvenating benefits of time spent away. Take a day off and visit a neighboring city, sit and read in a coffee shop or library you’ve never been to before, and enjoy lunch in a new local joint. You may be surprised by how restorative even a small change in routine and scenery can feel.

2. Connection to art and nature.

If you feel creatively depleted, disconnected from joy, or weighed down by screens and information overload, you may need inspiration, beauty, and connection with the natural world.

Not to knock television, but many of us find a different kind of restoration when we reconnect with what’s true within our internal world (i.e., our creativity) and external world (i.e., nature), and not from the world portrayed on popular TV shows and social media. So the next time you want to truly recharge, consider connecting with your own nature by doing something that encourages your creative potential like journaling, scribbling, decorating, or taking an art class. You could connect with the creative potential of others by visiting an art gallery, eating a meal full of color and texture, or taking an extra moment to ponder the sculpture in front of the state capitol building.

Don’t forget to look up, down, and around. One of the best ways to rejuvenate is to reconnect with the natural world. In fact, spending time in nature has been associated with reduced stress, improved mood, and greater overall well-being. So, whether it be going for a bike ride up the mountain, taking a walk barefoot through the sand, lying down in the grass, gazing up at the stars, or just opening your windows to allow sunlight and fresh air to flow through your home or car, let yourself be soothed by nature’s elements. Time spent in nature can support our body’s physical well-being while also helping us slow down, reconnect with ourselves, and feel more grounded too.

3. Solitude.

If you feel emotionally overwhelmed, constantly "on," or unable to hear your own thoughts, you may be craving quiet, reflection, and time alone.

Introvert, extrovert, ambivert… no matter what you consider yourself to be, taking time to yourself is a well-known effective way to recharge your system. Taking time to be alone, sit in a quiet space, gather your thoughts, and process your emotions can be incredibly restorative. Especially if you are always “on” and playing a leadership or mentorship role for others, taking some time in solitude to switch “off” for a few moments can be invaluable.

Self-reflection, self-understanding, and self-soothing all happen when we are in solitude because by being alone, we give ourselves a chance to step back from the noise that is our daily life and thereby take a much-needed mental and emotional vacation, and give our brain a cognitive rest. The important thing to note is that you are spending time in solitude by choice, not because there is no one around and you have to. Chosen solitude can be deeply restorative, while prolonged loneliness often has the opposite effect.

4. Permission to not be helpful.

If you feel responsible for everyone else's needs and struggle to prioritize your own, you may be experiencing emotional exhaustion or caregiver fatigue.

Whether it be around the house with family, at work with colleagues, or with friends over the weekend, stay the kind person that you are, and see if you can simultaneously be okay with not being the one to always lead the charge to help. This is a good example of why sleep just doesn’t cut it when it comes to providing the kind of rejuvenation that allows you to function optimally. If you devote yourself to meeting the needs of your family between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., your co-workers and boss between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., and your family again between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m., get a night of rest, and then rinse and repeat, you'll almost certainly find yourself running on empty. Not only will you not have restored your mental, emotional, and physical capacity on a daily basis, but you will have negatively altered your body’s ability to do so in the long term.

The moral of the story? Take a break from your responsibilities. Ask a neighbor to drop your kid off at school while you sip your morning coffee for an extra 30 minutes, hire a housekeeper once every few months to relieve yourself of having to clean the whole house, and/or learn to say “no” to that favor your friend is asking you for just this once. When you give yourself permission to not always be the one who helps, you give your body-mind system permission to turn its attention from “them” out there to “me” in here. When your attention shifts, even briefly, from everyone else's needs to your own, it can create space for real restoration!

Learning to care for ourselves without guilt is often a lifelong practice. If this is something you’re wanting to make a priority, you might enjoy reading my article This Year, Choose Yourself.

5. Something “unproductive”.

If your worth has become tied to achievement, productivity, or checking things off your list, you may be depleted by constant striving.

We live in a world obsessed with producing things that can — wait for it — make us even more productive (goods, gadgets, dollars, brain hacks, children, etc.). Inherently, there is nothing wrong with that, but if all we are doing is producing, then it’s safe to assume that we are not restoring and rejuvenating. So the last (and some say, best) tip is to do anything at all that isn’t waiting to get checked off your never-ending to-do list. While running around accomplishing things on our list of to-dos makes us feel important and worthwhile in the moment, it eventually leaves us feeling devoid of meaning and worth if we (a) never stop to investigate to what extent this list is made up of activities that give us meaning and if we (b) never stop to realize that we are incredibly and inherently worthy (of love, success, happiness, etc.) whether or not we check most or all of the items off the list.

So set your list of to-dos aside, reassure the part of you that worries the world will fall apart if you step away from your to-do list, and go do something– anything– that you’d consider “unproductive”. You may be surprised to see how rejuvenating and restorative this period of “unproductivity” can be for your creative capacity, mental power, neural networks, and physical strength. From this perspective, the most productive thing you can do is to be unproductive!

When we begin to expand our understanding of rest, we often discover that caring for ourselves isn't a luxury — it's what allows us to show up more fully for our lives. If you can learn to intentionally weave different forms of rest into your days, you may find yourself feeling more grounded, present, creative, and well-resourced than you have in a long time.

Many of us know how to push through exhaustion but were never taught how to truly rest. Learning to recognize our feelings and needs and care for our nervous systems is something I explore more deeply inside Happy from the Inside Out®. If you're ready to move beyond simply getting through your days and toward feeling more connected, supported, and well-resourced, I'd love to see you there.