Yep, we’ve all been there. The new year’s resolutions of practicing daily gratitude, the weekly meditation or yoga, healthy eating or reading before bed every night. Starting with a whole heap of enthusiasm, and then before you realise it, you can’t remember the last time you picked up your book or got out the yoga mat…
It’s hard!
It’s not that the intention isn’t there, but those self-care practices slip by the wayside too easily sometimes and that can be for a variety of reasons. Let’s talk about some very common reasons why you can’t commit to self-care – and what we can do to change that!
What is Self-Care?
Firstly, self-care can look different to everyone. And there are lots of different things you can do to look after your mind and body. For some people it might mean exercising three times per week, for others it might mean gratitude and meditation practice, or simply a hair mask, Netflix and bubble bath night each week. Self-care is simply making the time to nurture your mental and physical wellbeing; prioritising yourself over others if necessary.
Why You Can’t Commit to Self-Care
1. You over-commit and overwhelm yourself
Self-care and the world of wellbeing can be a little overwhelming at times. It seems that the more you learn about and attempt to take on, you find out about twice as many things to help you achieve the ultimate state of ‘wellbeing’. But it’s a journey and not something to stress about. Nobody can meditate, make a morning smoothie, take a lunchtime walk in nature, catch up with a friend or loved one, practice gratitude, go to the gym or a yoga class, cook a nutritious meal and read a chapter of your book EVERY day while also working a busy day at the clinic!
So while it’s great to have ambitions of making self-care a real priority in your life, take it slow and implement a new practice gradually and allow yourself to reach a state of automation before adding a new one.
You are more likely to give up sooner if you try to start with a mountain of new things to cram into your day or week.
2. You don’t create back-up systems
When we decide we want to practice gratitude, for example, the novelty is still fresh and we can clearly remember the article we read about it the other day. It’s very easy to remember to complete our gratitude journal for the first few days…
But then as life gets busy, it’s easy to forget to make time for our self-care. And the more time that passes in between our self-care sessions, the easier it is to forget to do it again.
This is why creating fall-back systems and reminders is really useful when starting out! According to James Clear (author of Atomic Habits), it takes on average 66 days for a behaviour to become automatic. And for people to really form steadfast habits, it can take from 2 to 8 months!
Interestingly, he also found that even if you do miss a day here and there, it didn’t make a difference to the overall habit-formation. This biggest factor was time!
If you’re like me and have way too many plates spinning, relying on ‘just remembering’ to practice meditation before bed isn’t very reliable.
But you can counter this with a little organisation and fore-thought. Your phone reminders app is extremely useful for things like this. If you don’t have your phone on you all the time, then a little post-it note on your bathroom mirror can help.
Alternatively, hold yourself accountable and make plans with friends. Want to implement more exercise to your schedule? Plan a gym session or evening run with your friend or partner so they can remind you and make sure you don’t back out (within reason of course).
3. You don’t see immediate effects
As mentioned above, it can take up to and sometimes longer than 2 months to form a habit. So sticking with something for that long when you can’t see any tangible positive effects from it can also be really difficult.
In one study about gratitude practice, they had participants write in 2 types of gratitude journal and others write a control journal. After 1 month they saw a significant reduction in depression and negative outlooks in the gratitude journal groups, compared to the control.
This means that, if you started to see a benefit in your mental wellbeing after 1 month, it could give you a boost to continue the practice in order to reach that habit forming threshold of 2 months.
In writing, a month seems like no time at all, but I know how hard it is to start something new and maintain it for more than 2 weeks, let alone a month.
When the novelty wears off and it’s harder to find time to squeeze in these practices, not seeing any tangible benefits can be pretty unmotivating, and all the more reason to stop.
So what can we do?
As I’ve alluded to in each of these points, there are definitely things we can do to help ourselves out and give ourselves the best chance of success on our self-care journeys.
Firstly, try not to over-commit. Sure, other people might seem like they’re doing way more for their mental and physical wellbeing but for every marathon, you need to take the first step. Building up your self-care, one step at a time, is bound to leave you in much better stead for forming good, strong habits and therefore seeing long-lasting benefits.
Hold yourself accountable and set reminders on apps or around the house in order to help yourself stay consistent and committed. Hopefully after a period of time, these practices will be so ingrained and habitual that you won’t need reminders at all. But there’s no shame in needing them early on!
Finally, push on when you don’t see or feel any effects in the first couple of weeks. This can be the hardest part of the journey but keep the long-term in mind and keep consistent for future you.
ThisVetCan 