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Hey, what a wonderful day to start our Self Care Weekly series at oilswelove.com! Self Care – someone sees it spa days, self-pampering with chocolate and tasty food. But it is not just that (although, why not?).
According to recent studies, self care is mose efficient when your body works together with your brain. Therefore, it is extremely important not to just rely on external sources of relaxation (e.g. warm bath, a day off, a nice movie etc. belong to the external self care activities).
More importantly is to take a moment and reflect on your relationships with stress. It helps to make an audit of your thoughts and feelings in a form of a list. List down:
- Things I do when I am sad?
- Things I do when I am bored?
- What influences quality of my sleep
- Things that recharges me the most?
- What things make me anxious?
After the audit is done, you can proceed with filling in your daily and weekly routines with actions, hobbies and trackers that support your inner self.
You can use this FREE Weekly Self Care Check List as an aid to plan all your self care activities accordingly.
Another thing to focus on, is lowering your anxiety and stress level. Yes, youga, long walks and journaling can help. However, a lottle supplement boost won´t harm.
For example, L-Theanine provides relaxation without sedation. what is better, taking L-Theanine won´t require from you to cut on your usual morning coffee. Quite the opposine, a study (1) showed, that L-Theanine in combination with caffeine helps people stay focused if they are faced with demanding tasks.
My final thoughts on the topic: you do not have to have lots of free time to take care of your self – most of the times we are so busy with taking care of our family, kids, pets and work, that we are only left with couple of minutes for ourselves.
And if you only have 5 minutes, here is what you can do:
- text a loved one
- drink a glass of water
- take your supplements
- smile and take a photo of yourself
(1) Giesbrecht T, Rycroft JA, Rowson MJ, De Bruin EA. The combination of L-theanine and caffeine improves cognitive performance and increases subjective alertness. Nutr Neurosci. 2010 Dec;13(6):283-90. doi: 10.1179/147683010X12611460764840. PMID: 21040626.
