By Dr Paula Robert­son

The Ox­ford Dic­tio­nary de­fines self-care as “the prac­tice of tak­ing an ac­tive role in pro­tect­ing one’s own well-be­ing and hap­pi­ness.”

Al­though a sim­ple con­cept, it’s some­thing we very of­ten over­look. Ef­fec­tive self-care is im­por­tant to re­duce stress, re­con­nect with your­self and view prob­lems as op­por­tu­ni­ties rather than ob­sta­cles. It’s al­so key to a good re­la­tion­ship with one­self and oth­ers.

Self-care is not on­ly about con­sid­er­ing our needs; it is rather about know­ing what we need to do in or­der to take care of our­selves so we can take care of oth­ers as well. A good anal­o­gy is the gold­en rule of air­plane emer­gency pro­ce­dures – you need to put your own oxy­gen mask first, be­fore you can tend to oth­ers. That is, if I don’t take enough care of my­self, I won’t be in the place to give to my loved ones ei­ther

Here are some key prin­ci­ples of good self-care:

Stick to the ba­sics. Over time you will find your own rhythm and rou­tine, and be able to iden­ti­fy forms of self-care that work for you.

Self-care needs to be some­thing you ac­tive­ly plan, rather than some­thing that just hap­pens. It is an ac­tive choice and you must treat it as such. Add cer­tain ac­tiv­i­ties to your cal­en­dar, an­nounce your plans to oth­ers in or­der to in­crease your com­mit­ment, and ac­tive­ly look for op­por­tu­ni­ties to prac­tice self-care.

Make con­scious self-care choic­es. In oth­er words if you don’t see some­thing as self-care or don’t do some­thing in or­der to take care of your­self, it won’t work as such. Be aware of what you do, why you do it, how it feels, and what the out­comes are.

Al­though self-care means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple, there’s a ba­sic check­list that can be fol­lowed by all of us:

• Cre­ate a “stop do­ing” list. This will in­clude things you know don’t serve you well. Ex­am­ples might in­clude: not check­ing emails at night, not at­tend­ing gath­er­ings you don’t like, not an­swer­ing your phone dur­ing lunch/din­ner.

• Eat a nu­tri­tious, healthy and bal­anced di­et.

• Get enough qual­i­ty sleep. Younger chil­dren need be­tween 10 to 12 hours a night, teens typ­i­cal­ly re­quire be­tween 8 to 10 hours and adults usu­al­ly need 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night.

• Ex­er­cise reg­u­lar­ly. Ex­er­cise is as good for both emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal health. It in­creas­es sero­tonin lev­els, lead­ing to im­proved mood and en­er­gy.

• Fol­low-up with med­ical care. Have reg­u­lar rou­tine check-ups with your doc­tor.

• Use re­lax­ation ex­er­cis­es and/or prac­tice med­i­ta­tion.

• Make time to spend with your loved ones and en­joy their com­pa­ny.

• Aim to do at least one re­lax­ing ac­tiv­i­ty every day, whether it’s tak­ing a re­lax­ing bath, lis­ten­ing to mu­sic or talk­ing a walk.

• Try to do at least one plea­sur­able ac­tiv­i­ty every day; from go­ing to the cin­e­ma, to cook­ing or meet­ing with friends.

• Look for op­por­tu­ni­ties to laugh!

• Prac­tise grat­i­tude. At the end of the day, think about two to three things you are grate­ful for in your life.

Don’t for­get: Good self-care takes prac­tice, so be pa­tient with your­self.