The new year brings fresh starts and new goals, and I feel like it is a great time to think of our own self-care plans and what helps each of us recharge. We all have different definitions of what self-care might mean for us as individuals. Activities such as exercise, reading a book, listening to a podcast, spending time with family, and/or taking a bath are often considered self-care—essentially, self-care can be whatever fills our cups and helps us take care of ourselves. As I reflected on this past year, I started thinking about why self-care can be so challenging to prioritize for many of us. Our bodies need self-care time to recharge, but we often p ush it aside. Life catches up to us and gets busy- so it is easier to skip the reading time or skip the workout to get other priorities done. Last year, I often experienced the pressure of what self-care should be and then felt overwhelmed by the time it would take to do that activity, so I felt it was just easier to skip for the day, leading to many days of not doing a self-care activity. Instead of potentially feeling recharged by adding self-care, I started to feel stressed and burdened by the possibility, which is not the way it is meant to be! 

Now sitting here realizing that I got in the habit of not prioritizing self-care activities because I felt overwhelmed by it, I realize just filling my cup a little bit each day is truly better than nothing. Doing 5 minutes of a workout or reading my book is better than doing nothing for days and then getting out of the habit of thinking of myself. A few things I plan to do this year in order to prioritize my own self-care time are being intentional about my time and setting aside time for me in my schedule, being gracious about the time I use because this is supposed to be “recharge” time not a stressful time, and finding more activities that do feel recharging to me. A question I often ask myself to emphasize the importance of self-care is, “How do we care for others fully or care for all the other things in life if we aren’t first caring for ourselves?” Let’s remember to engage in our own self-care plans in 2024…a little bit goes a long way so take a few minutes to create a plan that helps to recharge and fill your self-care cups.

Michelle Molina, LCSW
Licensed Clinical Social Worker