Taking care of yourself is essential if you want to produce something meaningful out of your life. You cannot go through life living in fear, in a state of depression, or having unhealthy habits. Many people dream of having a good life, but they are not sure how to get to that place in life. A life where they have financial prosperity, material abundance, and fulfilling relationships. The problem with dreaming is that it is only the first step. Action must be taken with every dream dreamt so that you can begin to make it a reality. Living your dream life does not happen because you wish it. You have to be methodical in your way of approaching how to reach your goals in life. I have found that personal self-care has been one of my greatest assets when seeking success. In this blog, I want to talk about how self-care can help you achieve greater heights in your life.

The first thing that comes with self-care is to live a healthy lifestyle. Are you eating the proper foods? Are you working out for at least an hour a day? Are you exercising your brain by learning new things each day? For many of us, we are not living the most healthy lifestyle. We choose to eat fast food because it is convenient. We convince ourselves that we have no time to work out in the week while we continue to hit our snooze button for over an hour each morning. We allow our schedules to become filled with the mundane activities of life that bring us no growth. The brain, just like the body, needs to be worked out. The food you put in it each day is the fuel it will use to get things done. If you put poor-quality fuel(food) into your body, then your activity level will suffer.

The good news is that a healthy lifestyle is easy to attain. The first step is you have to create a schedule with set times to do the following tasks. Meal prep is the first task you should schedule. Cooking is not rocket science and can be simple and fun. People think you need hours upon hours to meal prep and eat clean, but that is not true. I delegate certain times in the week for cooking and have perfected my meals to be easy and delicious. If you need some inspiration for what to cook or learn how to cook, then try searching Youtube. There you will find videos for meal prep and several cooking channels to follow. I am sure you will find something you love!

The second area of a healthy lifestyle is working out. The great thing about this step is you can do it anywhere. You do not need a home gym or gym membership to get a workout in. There are tons of home workout videos on Youtube that you can follow that require little or no equipment. I prefer going to a gym because it gets me out of the house first thing in the morning. I have found that if I stay in my dwelling longer than needed in the morning, I become unmotivated to work out. That is why when my alarm clock rings, I am on my way to the gym. You will have to find out what works best for you.

Going to the gym gives me more energy for my day. There is a good amount of people that think going to the gym will get them tired, and they will be unable to do other tasks during the day. Yes, you do exert energy, but you get so many good endorphins from moving your body that it counteracts that energy loss. If you are just starting to incorporate workouts into your routine, then your goal should be consistency. Make sure to do it a set amount of times per week and hold to what you set forth. If you cannot commit to an hour a day, then start small and work your way up. That can be as simple as walking for 10 minutes a day during your lunch break or getting a quick 15-30 minute HIIT workout before you start work for the day. There is plenty of time in the day for working out. You just have to find what works best for you and your schedule.

The third part of a healthy lifestyle deals with the mind. The brain wants to learn new things and work out each day. I work out my brain every day through writing, reading, and listening. I haven’t always been a massive fan of writing and reading, but over the years, it is something I now look forward to each day. I love to create content that helps people get to a better place in their life. I love to read and listen to new things so I can learn new content to share with my community. There is a saying that if you don’t use it, you will lose it, and that is true, especially for anything learned. Think back to high school algebra. Do you think you can pass the final of one of the tests you have taken back then? The same is true with language learning. The brain needs constant reinforcement. If you stop reinforcing your learning, then the brain will not retain information for long.

The more you work out the brain, the better it will be. You can focus on your memory, knowledge gains, or ability to learn more quickly. As a child, we learned primarily through osmosis, but that changed as we grew. We still learn through our environment, but oftentimes our environment doesn’t change much. That means we would have to consistently change our environments to keep learning through osmosis at a high level. That means we have to get our learning from other sources. Those sources can be from books, schools(teachers), podcasts, trial/error, etc. The source you choose for your means of knowledge should be something you enjoy. You do not want to get a bunch of books that you dislike reading. Take some time to learn about topics you enjoy or would like to learn. Get the brain moving, along with the body, and your self-care routine will be on a good start.

Self-care is more than just living a healthy lifestyle. Self-care also entails how you treat yourself. We already spoke about how we should treat ourselves physically by working out and eating healthily. Self-care goes beyond that into our mindset. Are you treating yourself with love and care? Do you have positive thoughts and ambitions? Self-care is the start of you realizing what you need. For example, our current society is fearful of a pandemic, getting sick, a desire for government aid, and a looming recession. Also, politics and civil war are unknown variables in the future, and that idea has caused people to shut down. They are living in fear of what could happen rather than focussing on what they can do. The easiest way to get out of that type of thinking is to focus on yourself.

The person who will benefit the most from deliberate self-care is yourself. You have to start to ask yourself, “Who is the most important person in my life?”. The answer should be you. Not your spouse, kids, parents, or friends. The reason why is that if you are in a poor mental state, then your productivity and ability to help others are limited. You should not be afraid to do the things that will benefit you first. Start to treat yourself as number one and notice how your life changes. Taking care of yourself first doesn’t make you a bad person/partner/parent. What it does do is make you more efficient because your needs are taken care of, so now you can focus on other people’s needs. Many people make the mistake of putting themselves last and wonder why their life is miserable. For example, People try to please their boss, so they work late and fall into a poor self-care routine that affects more than just their career.

If you do not treat yourself as a priority, then others may treat that as an opportunity to step past your boundaries with no consequences. A healthy relationship is when people come together and have no need for the other person involved. That means two or more people are working at 100% for a common goal (most of the time). The moment you have someone who does not pull their weight, then it causes tension for the other person/people. Sometimes you will have to help these people when they are not operating at full capacity, but if they make this a habit, then that relationship starts to change from healthy to toxic. There is no reason an adult should have to rely on another person. If that person remained ambitious/focused on themselves, then they should be self-sustaining. Self-care is also understanding that you are not meant to be someone’s puppet. You have to be able to nurture healthy relationships and cut ties with toxic ones.

The best way I have found to remain on top of my self-care routine is to make sure what I do benefits me. Now, most of the time, what I do benefits more than just me, but I will not sacrifice my body or mind to make sure someone else is ok. I have learned that if I want to be able to help the world, I have to be able to stand on two feet. I have learned that I have to be strong to help those who need a lift. Me choosing to be a lesser version of myself for the sake of others is working backward. I make sure not to overextend myself because someone needs me to. I make sure that I stay within my scope so that I can focus on being great. I want to make sure my output is purposeful instead of just a good intention. Many of us have good intentions, but then we are the ones who get hurt in the end.

Daily life will often take the wheel and drive until there is no gas left in the tank. By this, I mean that sometimes we become so entwined in our lives that we forget to take care of ourselves. We forget to eat, sleep, or enjoy life. Constantly missing those self-care areas will produce a sort of wear and tear on our body/mind. We have to do our best to avoid that type of burnout because it is hard to recover from that. Self-care should be your daily priority, with a focus on you. You will be able to help so much more people in both physical and mental shape. Proper self-care will be the solution to your problems and the road map to the best version of yourself. Let today be the day you find the areas in your self-care routine that can be modified towards a better life for you first and, next, all your loved ones.

Until then,

Michael Rearden

CEO of Reven LLC.