Self-Discipline Solution #1

The first solution I’ll suggest is in terms of strengthening your self-discipline. And to do this I encourage you to turn it into habitual behaviour. A great way is to create a list of self-care activities and schedule them into your calendar. Then you cross them off your calendar each time you complete them. This is a great way to see if you’re on track or off track. 

Self-Discipline Solution #2

The second self-discipline solution is to strengthen your self-discipline with the following concept:

DWYSYWD

The cool thing is you can read the alphabet letters backwards or forwards and it still says the same thing!

The alphabet letters stand for:

“Do What You Say You Will Do” – James M. Kouzes

In his article 5 Ways to Do Exactly What You Say You’ll Do, Paul Jarvis shares the following tips that can help to implement this concept:

1. Only agree to things you are 100% sure you can (and want to) do
2. Say no to anything you can’t or aren’t really interested in
3. Schedule your commitments into your calendar and set reminders to keep you on track
4. Take on full accountability – even if you weren’t at fault, do what it takes to make it right
5. Be honest even if it’s hard to admit to others and yourself

And to be candid…

Becoming serious about your self-care starts with self-discipline (making a deliberate decision that it’s now or never – and it’s never too late). And the truth is it continues as your personal duty until it finally becomes your delight.

I like these words:

“If we don’t discipline ourselves, the world will do it for us.” – William Feather

So…

Make it your duty to discipline yourself to become serious about your self-care.

Self-Discipline Solution #3

A third solution is to find yourself an accountability partner who will hold you accountable for taking care of yourself. What you do here is find someone you trust, like and respect who has your best interests in mind. Then you share your goals with them and ask them to check in with you to keep you on track. 

This works two ways:

1. you push yourself to do what you have set because you don’t want to let them down, and
2. your accountability partner keeps you on track by encouraging you toward your goals

Of course, to set up these goals with your accountability partner, you first need to be clear about what you want to accomplish. And you must also know what success with your goal looks like.

The Value of Self Care Strategies

One of the things I want you to keep in mind when it comes to not taking self care seriously is that we often don’t value self care.  We don’t often see the benefits associated with it. Unfortunately, sometimes we think self care is just a fad – it’s like another diet or something that’s just popular for the moment.

In many respects, we often don’t see simple self care practices as the valuable life skills they are.  But self care very much IS a life skill that can benefit us for the rest of our lives, particularly if we turn it into habitual behaviour and adopt consistent self care strategies. The thing is… this also means we need to actually prioritise taking care of you; we need to see the value in it.

Not practising self care ties into the concept of not prioritising it; we don’t see the importance of it.  We can take our wellbeing for granted and so we don’t put the time and energy into our health, happiness and prosperity that we should. Often our mindset goes along the lines of:  “If it’s not broken, why fix it?”  And we tend not to take a preventative approach.

Don’t worry if this is you, because the fact is most human beings take an all or nothing approach. So to put that into context… when things are going good with our health, wellbeing and our relationships, we will often de-emphasise it – we don’t value it, we don’t appreciate it and don’t pay it any attention

The Consequences of Taking Self Care for Granted

For example, do we sit down with our partner and work through the things that we need to do to take our relationships to the next level? Or do we tend to take it for granted when things are going great and when it all stops, we try to kickstart it again. And the question we need to ask ourselves is:

“What happens when we continue taking things for granted?”

What happens when the relationship has soured or deteriorated?  What happens when our health has declined? Well, what happens is we usually go into ‘fix-it’ mode or damage control.  But we need to avoid getting to this point in the first place. Instead, we should be focusing on maintaining the good.

It doesn’t matter what it is…

“If we take things for granted, we may get away with it over the short term; however, over the long term, it will catch up with us.”

It will often end in negative outcomes and results and negative emotions such as disappointment, frustration, anger, despair, and powerlessness. And that’s not what we’re looking for. Instead, we need to look for better outcomes and results.

The key lesson here is to never take self care for granted.

 Self Care is Bigger Than Most People Realise

Most people don’t realise there are many aspects to self care.  Which is where we like to educate you on the different areas and how to improve each one.  For instance, in our On Track Wellbeing Mastery Program we break down self care into 6 key areas:

1. Mental self care

   Training our mind to think in the right way (our goal is optimal mental health)

2. Emotional self care

   Regulating and managing your emotions (how you feel matters and we want to become masters of our emotional wellbeing)

3. Physical self care

   Create mental cues to get active and increase your motivation (moving your body is essential for health and quality of life benefits)

4. Relationship with oneself

   How to nurture the most important relationship of them all (understand how to have a happier relationship with yourself)

5. Self care in your relationships

   Both your personal and professional relationships are important (after all… life satisfaction is measured by quality relationships) (Kaufman, Rodriguez, Walsh, Shafranske, & Harrell, 2022)

6. Self care in your career

   Strategies to make your work life even better (find the value in what you do)

We help you build your own personal self care plan, find out what does self care mean, provide you with self care suggestions, and share ways for how to improve self care. We share with you the psychological tools to stay on track in every one of these areas.  We also share how to get back on track when you get off track in each of these areas.  But the best part of this workshop is you will have a personalized and completed self care plan in every one of these areas (and the tools to put it into action).

Take Action to Ensure You Are Practising Self Care and Valuing Yourself

So, I want you to check in with yourself and ask yourself honestly:

“Do I take my wellbeing for granted?”

And if so, then ask yourself:

“What are the small things that I can do today to take care of myself so that I don’t take my self care for granted?”

Here’s the thing… self awareness is that starting point. Now that I know I’m taking myself and my self care for granted, what am I going to do to fix it? What am I going to do to put things in place so I practice self care and keep valuing myself?  Because, remember, we know that if we take it for granted, it will catch up with us and end in negative outcomes and emotions.

So if you are guilty of taking your self care for granted, or even if you are practising good self care, what can you put in place to take it to the next level? And if you’re a parent or role model, how can you lead by example? How can you share this with your kids or those you mentor and encourage them not to take their self care for granted? And in leading by example by practising self care and promoting self care, you are gifting others the opportunity to dramatically transform their lives.

So that’s the question we unpacked for today – why people don’t practise self care consistently? Because they take some of the important core areas of their lives for granted.

Self Care Strategies Will Reduce Your Chances of Becoming an Ill-Being

Fact is…

Your wellbeing is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.  And if taken for granted, it could lead to the condition of becoming an ill-being; low or no wellbeing leads to higher and more ill-being.

The definition of ill-being according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary (Merriam-Webster, n.d.) is:

“A condition of being deficient in health, happiness, or prosperity.”

As you can see, it’s way more than just health, which is why our On Track Wellbeing Mastery Program is so unique and covers way more than any other wellbeing program.

If you enjoyed these self care tips be sure to read Practising Self Care for Health, Happiness and Prosperity – Part 2 where we talk about the importance of self discipline for self care.

This is Brad Everton, psychologist and international author… thanks for engaging and may you have an on track day!

P.S. “Wellbeing is not a goal.  Wellbeing is a responsibility for success.  As a matter of fact:  Better Wellbeing = Personal and Professional Success.”

For more information about our On Track Wellbeing Mastery Program, go to www.mywellbeingmatters.com