Being aware of common barriers to self care and what you can do to overcome them will help you towards succeeding in your wellness adventure.
Barriers to self care
Self care is often perceived as selfish.
One of the main barriers to self care is because we feel it is selfish.
It could be that you feel guilty when you take time to focus on you. Or, you may worry what other people think, or that you are a terrible parent for not focusing solely on your children’s needs.
It is a total myth that self care is selfish. In fact, it can help you to be a better parent, friend, spouse and relative.
If you need validation to take some time for yourself, joining in self care Sunday might be the perfect answer for you.
7 Best Tips for Overcoming Barriers to Self-Care
1. The more you take care of yourself, the easier you’ll find it to take care of others. You’ll also show your children the importance of looking after themselves. Teaching them to take care of their own needs is a crucial life skill that’s going to help them to grow up to be happier adults.
Self care requires effort and is hard work
There is no getting away from the fact that self-care does take some level of effort in the beginning.
When you aren’t used to making self-care a priority, you’re going to need to make quite a few changes to your routine.
Coming up with a self-care plan can feel like a chore, making it easy to put it off. However, there are ways to reduce the effort.
Focusing on one thing you want to improve at a time can really help.
Perhaps you’d like to start working out more? Scheduling time to exercise as soon as you wake up for example, can be a great start. Or, if you’re looking to drink more water, focus on that goal first.
2. If you break down your self-care tasks, it makes them much easier, reducing a lot of the effort involved.
Different approaches work for different people
Every one of us is different, which means we enjoy and dislike different things. When you look at examples of self-care, you’ll find a lot of them relate to things like reading a book or taking a hot bubble bath. These types of activities aren’t for everyone so you might feel this really isn’t for you.
Self-care isn’t just bubble baths, yoga, and meditation.
It is anything that relaxes and takes care of you.
If you find going for a run is a more effective way of feeling good, that is self-care.
3. If you find one approach isn’t working, try something else. Self-care should be personal to your own needs.
Common blind spots as barriers to self care
When it comes to working on self-care, all of us have different blind spots as barriers to self care.
These are basically aspects of our ourselves that we aren’t fully aware of.
It could be personality traits, feelings, or actions.
These blind spots can really hamper our efforts. That is why it is so important to become fully aware of them.
What are your blind spots that are barriers to your self care?
You avoid conflict
A lot of people hate conflict, but sometimes it is needed to resolve situations.
If you tend to avoid conflict, it means you’ll often do or say things you don’t necessarily agree with. This is a common blind spot that can really be a barrier to your self-care efforts.
The trouble is, when you give in to others just to avoid conflict, it reduces your credibility.
You’ll also find you are frequently miserable due to not standing firm in your own beliefs and values.
4. If your blind spot is avoiding conflict, it’s important to address it.
Not letting toxic people go
Do you have toxic people in your life you just can’t seem to let go of?
Whether it is a friend, partner, or family member, associating with toxic people is going to be a barrier to self care.
If you learn to let toxic people go, it’s going to significantly improve your life. You’ll be happier and much more able to make positive changes in your life.
It’s hard to remain positive in life when you are surrounded by negativity.
5. Assess the relationships in your life and if there is a toxic person around you, work on distancing yourself and instead surround yourself with positive role models.
You are continually late
Frequently running late might not sound like a problematic barrier to self-care. However, it could be negatively impacting various aspects of your life.
This trait can make it harder to stick to certain changes you make. For example, you may find it more difficult to stick to a schedule you set yourself.
6. Get yourself organised and track how long tasks take. Giving yourself a cushion of time and setting a timer will help with making sure you’re on time.
Impatience as a barrier to self care
If you tend to be an impatient person, you may find self-care more challenging. This is because you won’t necessarily see any results overnight.
It takes time to adopt new habits and see the benefits. So, if you’re impatient, you might give up before you’ve experienced the benefits of your hard work.
When you are impatient, it makes you frustrated when you don’t see instant results.
Work on becoming more patient as you start your self-care journey is essential if you want to keep it up.
7. When you feel yourself becoming impatient, relax and take deep breaths. Taking slow deep breaths can help calm the mind and body. Notice what triggers your impatience and spot patterns. Do something that you know will show immediate results.
It might help you to have a 21 day plan to set your new self-care habit.
You’ll be able to see that the small steps you’re taking towards your mental well-being are having results.
Identifying your blind spots will help you to reduce the barriers to self care and make you much more likely to succeed with any changes you make.
Related self-care posts
Free resources in brackets ( )
- Plan and manage your self-care like a pro (self-care planner, self care checklist)
- Self Care Activities to do if you’re short on time (self care checklist)
- 17 Affordable Self Care Ideas (anxiety tracker, mindful baking tips, mandala colouring book, craft project plan, self-care kit list, morning routine checklist, sleep tracker, meditation journal)
- Self-care Pamper Boxes for Busy People (self care kit list worksheet)
- 30 Day Self-Care Challenge (30 day tracker)
- 7 Best Tips to turn your negative self talk into a positive (free chart)
- 27 Ideas for what to put in a Self Soothe Box (blank postcards, colouring book)
- 7 Fabulous Benefits from using Positive Affirmations (30 card deck positive affirmations)
- 25 Self Love affirmations to Change your Reality (25 self love affirmations)
- Self Love Challenge – a guide to healing the relationship you have with yourself (this challenge as a PDF)
- 20 Life-Changing Tips for a Better and Happier You (66 page workbook, affirmations)
- 7 Day Healthy Habits for a Positive Mindset Challenge (workbook)
- 60 Gratitude Quotes for Inspiration (60 gratitude quotes)
- 30 Day Mindfulness Challenge (challenge calendar, mindfulness journal)
- Easy 2-minute Mindfulness Exercise
- Gratitude Challenge (gratitude journal)
How to Balance Practicing Self Care with a Busy Life
Here’s some more tips to help you balance your self-care with your busy life.
Even when you know how important self care is to your well-being, it isn’t always easy to make it a part of your daily routine.
One of the most difficult barriers a lot of people face is finding the time to fit self care in.
When you live a busy lifestyle, it can seem almost impossible to find extra time to look after you.
Self-Care Tips for a Busy Lifestyle
How can you balance practicing self-care with a busy lifestyle?
Schedule it in
A good tip you can follow to ensure you can fit self-care into your busy routine, is to schedule it in. Think about it, you schedule in everything else, so why not self-care?
When you set a time to focus on yourself, you are much more likely to stick to it. No matter how busy you think you are, there will always be time somewhere in your schedule.
Establish a morning routine
If you are struggling to find the best time of day to practice self-care, you might find it easier in the morning. If you’re a busy parent, you might disagree here but think about it. In the morning, you could get up just 30 minutes earlier, or 15 minutes if you want. This can be the perfect opportunity to practice self-care.
Alternatively, if you are a parent you could focus on self-care in the evenings when the kids have gone to bed. It doesn’t take long to practice self-care so you should always be able to squeeze it in somewhere.
Look at automating daily tasks
There are all kinds of tools and gadgets that can automate various aspects of our lives. If you are constantly busy, you’ll find automating certain tasks can be a game changer.
For example, you could switch from going to the supermarket, to ordering your food shopping online. If you have items you frequently purchase, these can be added to your favorites list, making it easier to add them to your order next time. Doing your food shopping online can free up a lot of free time during the week.
Start small
You don’t have to start by completely overhauling your lifestyle. Instead, you can start small.
Begin by taking just 10 minutes out of each day to focus on an activity. Focus on developing one positive self-care habit at a time. Once you have mastered that, you can move on to the next task.
By starting small, it makes it easier to fit self-care into your busy life. Many people mistakenly think they need to begin with at least 30 minutes a day.
The truth is, however much time you can free up is enough.
Once you get started, you’ll find it easier to start focusing more on self-care due to the benefits you experience.
Overall, balancing practicing self-care with a busy lifestyle isn’t easy.
The tips above can really help. You’ll find a lot of tips online too from busy people just like you.
It can be difficult overcoming barriers to maintaining my self-care strategies. However, once I fully understood what those barriers were and how I could overcome them, I found it much easier to stick to a routine.
If you’re looking to lead a happier life, now is the time to start focusing on your needs and making self-care a priority.