Walking is surely budget friendly self-care. Research has shown a person who walks daily has better overall health and an improved mental state of mind and even better skin health. For instance, did you know that going for a walk when you’re tired may be a more effective energy booster to you than grabbing a cup of coffee? Taking a walk has been proven to boosts energy flow through your body as it increases levels of cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine.

These are the hormones that help elevate energy levels.

Walking also has awesome benefits such as:

• Extending your life, with research showing that walking on an average pace daily reduces the risk of death by up to 20%.
• walking improves your mental health from anxiety, depression, negative mood, and thoughts. Need proof? Challenge yourself to a 30 minutes brisk walk 3 times a week for 1 month while keeping a wellness journal on your genuine feelings. Write down in your wellness journal your thoughts and read through the journal at the end of the month to see the difference in your thinking and importantly, how you feel.

TIP: If 30 minutes is too much, to begin with, try breaking it down to 15-minute walk 2x a day. Be flexible with yourself and give your body and mind time to catch up. As long as you are trying your absolute best and this is FREE anyways, cut yourself some slack and just keep trying. Don’t forget to engage with us on Instagram to tell us your results by the end of the month!

• Walking reduces sugar levels. Diabetes has caused so much trauma for many families, particularly within the black communities. For instance, did you know that Diabetes is significantly higher for black adults than for white adults (about 66 more cases of diabetes per 1,000 people), with the greatest difference was between black women and white women? Increased sugar levels in people of color are caused by many factors including emotional eating to not reading food labels leading to higher consumption of carbs and added sugar. Good news though…A small study found that post-meal walking for 15 minutes has been said to improve your sugar levels say more than say 45 minutes’ walk during another time in the day. So if your self-care goal is to also manage your sugar levels try incorporating walking for free after your meals. Again, you can be flexible with your schedule by walking in the mornings and evenings.

TIP: you can incorporate this into your work schedule by taking the stairs instead of the elevator. The beauty of self-care is that it’s all about SELF. It’s what works for you and when it works for you!

• Walking in the mornings prevents the growth of acne, pimples, and other skin-related issues because walking as a self-care activity, improves your skin glow naturally.

TIP: regular brisk walking provides better results.

CULTIVATE GRATITUDE

Cultivating gratitude is so important in shifting your mindset instantaneously. With life being so busy and you trying to balance everything and everyone, we can often get frustrated and impatient by things not going our way exactly or things taking too long to see results.

We want everything we want, right now #instantgratification, and when we do not get what we want or are having a bad day, we turn so conveniently to the device in our hands as a “temporary form of escapism” because it gratifies our brain chemicals and more time than not, the distraction does provide some form of temporary solace but we do not pay attention to the long-term effects. Soon, we begin to compare our lives and situation with the perfection we can see on our phones. We wonder why they are so happy when life sucks for us and this makes us feel worse that we cannot get what we want, and even more so, isolated because we feel that we are the only ones experiencing a dissatisfied life….Not true!

You are not alone in this! (Keep reading to see tip to Reduce Amount of Time Spent on Social Media below). So what does cultivating gratitude mean? It means finding the positive in your life. Again, this does not always have to be the big wins in your life only. It is and should also extend to the small wins. Yes, small wins as simple as I woke up this morning, I am breathing, I can walk without any pains today. While it may feel quite silly when you begin (partly because, your brain which has most likely formed negative thought patterns needs time to adjust and will subconsciously fight this new way of thinking), it helps over time to improve your view on life and people. Change your thoughts by cultivating gratitude daily, change your life.

TIP: Incorporate this Mindset Shift with your family by creating a “Family Gratitude Jar” where you as a family agree that everyone writes something (no matter how small), they’re grateful for on a slip of paper and put it into the jar each day. Share the slips with each other during a weekly dinner or family meeting.

REDUCE SOCIAL MEDIA TIME

As much as social media can be fun and a temporary distraction from our life issues, increased time of social media has been proven to increase anxiety, depression, feeling of loneliness, and most importantly, self-esteem. Are we surprised? No, because social media is simply put: a false reality.

It’s a world where we can escape to that is fun, people all look beautiful and perfect, everyone looks like they are living their best life and loving it. And so when we begin by spending some amount of time in this reality to escape from a tough day or a boring situation and over time, we find that we are spending more and more time within this “false reality”. What then happens? We fail to appreciate Real Life for what it is. We begin unconsciously to want to become more of what we see in this “false reality”, forgetting that people look very different and are very different in the real world. Therefore, a more thought-provoking question for us to ponder on is: What was missing from our lives that encouraged us to spend more time on social media in the first place? And even more importantly, how do we feel at the end of each social media session after we log off? Do we feel positive about life and encouraged about our situation or do we feel even worse at our life situation?

The answers to these questions are so diverse and personal that only you can truly know. However, if the answer to the most important question on how you feel after you log off social media is: unhappy, dissatisfied with your life, anxious and jealous, suicidal thoughts, not liking myself. Then, well done for taking the first most important step: Self-awareness, and Now is a great time to improve your self-care at no charge by setting some social media boundaries! How?

TIP: Do a Social Media Cleanse to only follow social media accounts that encourage you and make you feel good and positive about life. Follow us on IG @nugalaskin to be encouraged and motivated daily with tips on selfcare. OR…

Download and Set a Screen Time tracker to track how much time you are spending on social media. Set a realistic daily time limit on how much you want to spend on social media and commit to it. Be realistic and compassionate to yourself, in that, if you currently spend 5 hours a day on social media, it may be difficult to cut down to 30 minutes a day. Try instead to reduce to 4 hours in week one, then 3 hours in week 2, etc. until you have reached your desired goal.

GET YOU AND YOUR SPACE CLEANED UP!

During a 2010 study published in the Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, women were asked to choose adjectives to describes their homes. Results found that women with higher stressful home scores also had increased depressed mood over the day, whereas women with higher restorative home scores had decreased depressed mood during the day. Therefore, a simple but highly effective way to self-care idea at little or no cost, especially during this season, is to spring clean your space and you might as well add, cleaning your body and exfoliating too after that 🙂

TIP : A cleanup playlist helps immensely to get you motivated to begin the process of cleaning. Ours include Whitney Houston amazing voice singing “the greatest love of all” Create one today and share it with our community!

MORE TIPS TO SELF CARE…

Here are some more ways to self care to improve productivity and all good things…

• Drinking plenty of water. It is because when we stay hydrated, our organs work well. Skin remains fresh, and we have better mental health. Water with lemon first thing in the morning is one of our favorite easy self care ways.

• Sleeping well. Set a Sleep reminder 30 minutes before bed and unwind by listening to meditative music for 30 minutes to get your body and mind in a state of relaxation. TIP: try having a calming nighttime tea to support relaxation.

• Visit a museum for free. Art and walking have both great benefits for uplifting your spirit, your creativity and appreciation of life and beauty.

• Pray/Meditate/Be Still. Spending time in stillness with God and yourself, focused on your breathing has a lot of life-changing benefits (too many in fact, that we think this deserves a different and new post 🙂

• Journaling. Write down your thoughts over a period and read your journal when you are in commute or in the restroom (lol) to see overtime how your thinking is changing or affecting you. It’s truly becoming self-aware.

Final Thoughts

Self-care is not indulgent or selfish. It is not saying “only me” but rather “me too” because you matter. In an increasingly busy and stress-driven environment, self-care is an important and essential part of being a happy, fulfilled, and functioning adult. It simply means taking care of yourself in what feels good to you and setting up habits and systems to make your life more fulfilling and enjoyable. If you enjoyed this piece of content, feel free to share these tips with family, friends and colleagues and most importantly please remember to take actions to include some of these tips into your routine and engage with us on your results.

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