The Wellness Edition No.75 // Self-Care Upgrades

Lately I asked myself how to take better care of myself since if you have been following along for a while, self-care is something that was always quite hard for me. Ever since I started blogging about self-care, I certainly started taking much better care of myself but as always, there is always still some room for improvements.

Here I sum up some of my recent Self-Care Upgrades and maybe it inspires you to upgrade your Self-Care routine as well;

• in the past I bought many onine-courses (that are dear to me) but as life goes, I did not finish them. So one upgrade was to order beautiful prints with all the worksheets in spiral binding and now I feel like being in university again and it helps me to focus on working myself through this gorgeous material

• I am a people-pleaser and until I found the blog ‘Baggage Reclaim’ written by Nat Lue, I did not even know what boundaries are. So from the month of October on, I do not accept the behaviour of people anymore who disrespect and waste my time and I won’t agree anymore to things / situations / agreements and so on that make me feel unwell, that drain my time and energy and things i simply DO NOT WANT. So no more people pleasing, setting strict boundaries and saying no from now on

• I started baking my own sourdough bread which is something that I have been wanting to learn for a very long time already and tadaaa - I baked my first loafs now and it worked out well and I am very proud of myself for finally getting the hang of sourdough bread baking

• I ordered beautiful bento box items from Japan, so whenever I am out and about all day, I make sure to nourish myself well with delicious snacks I take from home; so far my favorites are green olives and raw cheese cubes, fruit like sliced apples, a banana, grapes and homemade onigiri (japanese rice balls - oh when I traveled to Japan and it was a very hot summer, food was incredibly expensive there so I pretty much lived on onigiri and sushi that I bought at the Kombini every day and living on that I felt very good)

• sticking to a pro-metabolic Dr. Ray Peat inspired way of eating; fresh fruit, lots of milk, greek yogurt, shellfish, liver (that I smuggle into onigiri filled with korean beef bowl or into German meatballs called Frikadellen), butter, honey, maple syrup, white rice, homemade vanilla ice cream, orange juice.

• making sure I get lots of sleep and that I go to bed early

• a friend recommended an awesome yoga app so now I try to do 10 minutes of yoga at home with that app - Down Dog is the name if you wanna try it out as well

• I bought an app by Chloe Brotheridge that helps me deal with my fears and anxieties. My whole life I have been suffering from tremendous fear, panic attacks and so on and now I finally try to figure out how and how to deal with it once fear kicks in and how to let go of my fears and anxieties, it already got better since I cut contact with very toxic ‘friends’ and since I am not with my ex-boyfriend anymore but of course I still struggle with fear and anxiety

• every day I dedicate some time to write down all my goals in my journal and it helps me to stick to them and to get proactive in making them happen

• I bought Marie Kondo’s onine class that teaches you how to tidy and declutter at home and also I ordered her book. Haha who knows, maybe one day I will also buy her class to become a KonMari consultant myself but until then I still have to become a pro at decluttering ;p

• I bought a project book in order to organize my personal projects (digital design resources, creating online courses, a podcast…) because I need a tool just for planning and tracking my own business

• I want to join the gym and work out

• I starting painting with watercolor

• Saturday mornings are blocked out and non-negotiable to work on my own business which I finally take serious now since before I always saw it more like a ‘hobby’ but now I am determined to turn it into a real business with real products that you can actually buy very soon. During the week I never find enough time to work on my own business projects because I am so busy with teaching at Merck, so I need to block out time slots for myself now (as I do for my students during the week) in order to create products and to put them up for sale

• spending less screen time (especially screen time on mobile devices) and more outdoor time. I notice when I don’t spend much time outdoors walking how uncomfortable I feel in the evening and how much better I sleep after spending time outside moving. Even when the weather is crappy, I want to try to keep the routine up of going outside and walking

• more watercolor painting, creating marbling textures, drawing, writing…just more time getting creative with analog media

• doing more of what makes me happy

I think now I pretty much wrote down all of the major self-care upgrades and as you can see it is quite a lot I would say.

I hope you get some inspiration to upgrade your self-care as well.

Love,

Phyllis