At some point, because it’s an additional responsibility for you to tend to, you’ll probably take a day or two off from sticking with your usual self-care guidelines in favor of doing more work or getting something urgent done.
At the time, you’ll feel like this is fine, and it might be a necessary sacrifice every now and again. However, if you start to make a habit out of giving up your self-care, you’re going to find yourself in a less than desirable state rather quickly.
Workouts – the First to Go
The first aspect of self-care that seems to go most often are workouts or anything having to do with physical fitness and well-being. People often find this to be the least enjoyable part of self-care, so if they need a little extra time, they’ll skimp out on this most often.
This could mean missing a few workouts or getting some unhealthy fast food instead of cooking at home. On a rare occasion, yes, missing a workout isn’t going to be the end of the world for you.
But you need to be careful, because it’s so easy to turn that into a long running habit that can tank your health. One week you just miss one workout – the next week you miss a few more – the week after that you don’t work out at all – but you promise yourself you’ll get back in the gym soon.
The problem is, it gets harder to make the commitment again. This same thing goes for dieting. People will frequently turn towards an unhealthy diet, making it gradually more frequent over time.
Your Mental Health
They also lose sight of their mental health goals as well. It can become a serious problem quickly, though people tend not to be too upset about it until it’s too late. You might think that you can get away with focusing a lot more time on work, and you might feel fine about it at first.
However, over time, whether you recognize it or not, you’ll start to wear yourself out, and you won’t even realize it until you’re feeling overwhelmed. Then you’ll realize the strain you’ve put yourself under and you’ll regret the decision to slack on your self care.
Take an objective look at how much time you should be spending as a bare minimum on self-care and never dip below that. No matter how good you feel at that time, you always have some room for improvement, so don’t let yourself fail to try. Continue to strive for a better version of yourself.
