One common mistake in self-care is waiting until it’s too late. People will wait until their life is falling apart and they’re at their breaking point before trying to start solving any of their problems, instead of doing things ahead of time or just as they’re starting to get uncomfortable.
You don’t need to, and in fact shouldn’t, wait until the last minute to start getting into self-care, because it won’t help you nearly as much once you’ve reached that breaking point.
Waiting Too Long
For some odd reason, people like to backburner their self-care for another time. They assume they’re too strong for it, and they’ll just power through their problems. Some see it as a sign of weakness to have to take care of yourself, which is simply absurd.
You should be willing to take care of yourself even if everything is going well, and you should definitely be taking a step in that direction if you’re feeling a bit rough. If you let your stress go unchecked for extended periods of time, it can have many adverse effects on your life.
Symptoms Start to Creep Up on You
You can start to see it physically in the form of hair loss, weight fluctuation, nausea, and even rashes or aches. Mentally, you can certainly feel the effects, with it bringing on anxiety, depression, and possibly even thoughts of hurting yourself if the situation is extreme enough.
Before you ever get to this point, you should be on some kind of self-care routine. You don’t need to wait for times to get tough before you start. You can start as soon as you want.
Practice Preventative Maintenance
In fact, it’s usually better to start early on so that you’ve already built a support system for yourself when the hard times do come around. Even if you feel great, start doing the basics of self-care.
Start getting on a workout routine and meditating for your mental health. By doing this, you’ll start to develop a great foundation that you can work off of in the future, making it far less difficult to handle stressful situations. You won’t need to lay the groundwork, because it’ll already be there.
If you really think about it, what’s the worst thing that could happen by getting into a self-care routine? Worst case scenario – you won’t get stressed out and you’ll just happen to be a slightly happier, improved version of yourself.
