Written by: Rita Farruggia, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
This article could change your life if you implement these self-care practices daily. Stress is the top challenge all of us face in our day-to-day lives. We live in a competitive society with pressures that we face in our careers/businesses and personal lives.
The feeling of not living up to society’s standards can affect our self-esteem, stress, and energy levels. We also experience stress by what we put on our bodies, our thoughts, and the choices we make throughout our day. Some of the most stressful things we can put into our bodies are sugar and processed foods. This extra stress affects our immune systems, energy levels, and emotional well-being. It is essential that our self-care practices do the opposite.
In the past, I would neglect self-care practices allowing stress and anxiety to control my life in a toxic way instead of controlling stress and anxiety to release it in a healthy way using self-care practices. I would turn to a quick and easy method to feel good by eating excessive amounts of high sugar and processed foods such as pizza, cakes, ice cream, chips, cookies, and drive-through burgers. This would give me a temporary increase in my serotonin level along with a rush of dopamine to feel good at the moment.
The reality is this easy, quick-fix behavior further damaged my mental, physical and emotional health through weakening my immune system, gaining extra weight my body couldn’t handle, then feeling bad about it. This is very harmful when we don’t release stress in healthy ways because this toxic behavior activates our amygdala when we are always in a state of stress. This trains our brain to always feel stress, so we always think there is danger around us even when there is none (feeling anxiety). It was a downward spiral affecting my energy levels, mood, and relationships until I gained control through exercising daily self-care rituals. Self-care is a pillar and foundation for self-confidence and vitality.
Self-Care Rituals to Reframe Your Thinking to Calm Your Body and Mind
To achieve high success in all areas of our lives, we have to have high energy, enthusiasm, and a relaxing presence to instill confidence in ourselves and be more charismatic, allowing others to have confidence in us to solve problems be great leaders. Therefore, we have to take care of ourselves if we want to uplevel our game of success. When we are not experiencing the results (successful business, successful career, happy marriage, or lifestyle of freedom & luxury) we want in life, we feel less motivated, thereby not wanting to do anything, which leads to depression.
Self Care Strategy and Plan
The first thing I learned on my self-care journey was to master meditation. Since our mind controls our behavior & body, it’s the first thing to master to change our behavior and focus. In moments of stillness and silence, we achieve peace and clarity. We are bombarded by the noise every day — the TV, the radio, social media feeds, ADs, traffic, our kids yelling at us. The loudest voice of all is the voice in our minds. We have, on average, 60,000 thoughts running through our minds a day.
For some of us, 80 percent of those thoughts are negative. When we meditate to have moments of stillness and silence, it brings awareness to that internal voice, and when we have that awareness, that is when we can choose what thoughts we are holding onto and which we want to let go of. We can also adjust the volume on how loud that internal voice is.
The first time I meditated, it was difficult because my internal voice got so loud with all the things I need to do that day — what to pick up at the grocery store, what rooms in the house need to be cleaned, what to cook for dinner and all the other things on my to-do list.
After doing group meditation classes, I got better at meditating alone. I would start off with 5 minutes a day then upgrade to 10 minutes a day to gradually achieve one hour a day of meditation. I use tools to help me achieve long meditation sessions. I burn sage while meditating. It increases mental concentration and helps increase intuition, especially for answer-seeking meditation sessions. I place crystals around me and hold crystals to increase the intensity of my meditation session.
During a clarity meditation to seek truth from my higher self, I hold an amethyst crystal in one hand and a selenite crystal in the other. For self-love meditations and increasing compassion for others, I hold a rose quartz crystal during meditation. Detailed explanations on what each energy frequency each crystal amplifies and meditation techniques can be found at HappyBeingWell.
For days when I experience stress, I take long hot baths infused with bath salts, bath bombs, bath herbs, and bath oils. All these bath products have healing elements in them to increase relaxations in your body, thereby allowing your mind to relax and easily release negative thoughts. For example, bath salts eliminate muscle tension and stress, as well as increase magnesium absorption. Adding bath salt to your bath helps eliminate muscle aches, insomnia, moisturizes the skin, decreasing inflammation, relieves internal swelling, and many other health benefits.
The second self-care practice that is vital for our physical, mental, and emotional mastery is moving our body. Yoga is a great body movement practice, especially for those who want to increase their mediation abilities. Yoga is great because it involves using our mental focus when holding a pose. When we move our body, it releases endorphins, which naturally reduces our stress, and it also produces a feeling throughout our body that is a similar feeling to Morphine. Even if you start with just 5 or 10 minutes a day, it makes a difference in your life as opposed to not moving your body at all, plus it creates a habit. As you progress in your yoga practice, gradually increase the time, you practice yoga since your body is getting used to doing yoga poses daily. For a list of basic yoga poses you can do at home, visit the website link in my bio (blog section).
Live in an Organized and Clean Environment
Living in an organized and clean space helps you feel calm, energized, and have mental clarity instead of seeing disorganization and taking extra time to find your things. Your mind will feel cluttered living in this type of environment.
In fact, a study conducted by associate professor Nicole R. Keith, PhD, research scientist, and professor at Indiana University, discovered that people who regularly cleaned their houses are healthier than people that didn’t. Professor Keith and her colleagues monitored the physical health of 998 African Americans between the ages of 49 and 65, a demographic known to be at an increased risk for heart disease. Research participants who regularly cleaned their homes were healthier and more active than those who didn’t. Another study published in the scientific journal, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin discovered women who had clutter in their homes were depressed compared to women who had organized homes.
In the past, I would look around in my house, look at the mess and the disorganization. I wasn’t great at organization and cleaning in the past. Things would build up and stress me out. It wasn’t like I didn’t have enough time because, in my leisure time, I would go on Instagram. I would go on there, and I would see everybody with their organized and clean house. I would say to myself, “oh my, I am the only person who isn’t organized.” There is more to this problem than just you not wanting to organize or clean. You have to look at your beliefs you have adopted over the years that lead you to neglect to organize your house's stuff.
Clear Up False Beliefs Influencing for Your Behavior
This is the process I use to understand and address problems based on what’s actually happening. This might change your life because when you start realizing that you’re dealing with a problem, your emotions are a result of the problem, and if the problem is left long enough, you might even form a painful belief about yourself.
We have all experienced this before, for example, “I am bad at organizing.” “I wish I was like so and so” “No point in having nice things” The problem is this is a result of strong emotions. When we have a problem, let’s just put the problem (problem-emotion-belief) to the side. We can address the emotions, therefore, clear up the beliefs about ourselves that were painful before we did this. By doing this, you put yourself back in a headspace where it’s easy to clean the house, or it’s easy to solve that problem. You become self-actualized because your head is in the right space.
If you have adopted false beliefs about yourself that affect your behavior that stemmed from your past, for example, perhaps when you were growing up, your mom always cleaned the house. Whenever you attempted to clean, she stopped you because she preferred to clean the home her way. Therefore, you adopted a belief you are not capable of cleaning. Discover whatever false beliefs you have adopted, say it out loud in a funny mickey mouse voice, then say to yourself, “That is not true; I am fully capable.” You can practice eliminating false beliefs in any area of your life that prevents you from taking action to achieve your full potential.
Having a Skincare Routine Can Improve Your Self Worth, Confidence and Self-Love
Think about it. When you consistently apply quality skincare to your skin, you see results when you look into the mirror and in your photos of glowing, radiant, and more youthful-looking skin. This would make anyone feel better about themselves. I feel calm when I apply skincare because the process of applying good quality facial cleansers, exfoliants, facial masks, and moisturizers feel great on your skin because I can feel the sensations of the soothing healing properties of the facial mask on my skin, and it feels good. The physical motion of a facial massage is soothing.
For me, it is like meditation that gives me a feeling of empowerment and optimism. It also feels good when I see my skin improving. It helps increase our self-worth when we do things to improve ourselves. Plus, we can focus on how our body feels when applying skincare to help us go into our body more. It is important to pay attention to how our bodies feel because this is how we can get out of our thinking minds and into how we are really feeling in our body to listen to our truth and strengthen our intuition. It is also a great opportunity to say positive, empowering affirmations to ourselves as we apply skincare to our faces. One affirmation I say to myself as I apply my skincare daily is, “I am improving every day.” We must use organic ingredients in our skincare to feel the healing properties' sensations and get results of healthier, younger, and glowing skin.
When you combine these daily activities, this will increase your positive mood, joy, cognitive abilities, and energy levels. This will allow you to be able to do more in life to ultimately lead to more happiness. Imagine if you practice self-care for 30 minutes a day. Ten minutes of mediation, ten minutes of yoga, and ten minutes of a skincare ritual and eating plant-based foods (List of healthy snacks on the go). That is over 180 hours of self-care in a year.
People’s typical reaction is I am so busy to practice daily self-care. The solution is you can start looking at the 5 hours a day the average person watches TV or the 50 minutes a day we spend on social media. Use that time instead for yourself, for your future self that you are becoming right now by choosing to take action to mold your mind and body into the person you want to become. It is about showing up for yourself every day. What would be possible for you if you showed up for yourself?
I would encourage you to choose yourself over and over again. Nurture yourself. The way that a person who loves themselves unconditionally would. It’s a sign that you are reading this article because you are on the journey of self-love/self-care. I commend you for that because that is not easy, and it is not a given. You are powerful, and I really love that you are on this journey to improving yourself. I am happy to have sparked some ideas, habits, and systems to make it easier for you to come back to feeling good and increase your motivation to choose actions that lead to more success and happiness in your life. Feel free to learn more about products to help with your daily self-care rituals at happybeingwell.com
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Rita Farruggia, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Rita Farruggia, is the CEO and Founder of HappyBeingWell.com with the mission of being the 1 Self-Care Community in the world. Her mission is to awaken a billion people globally to their love while teaching them how to love themselves, reprogram their subconscious, align with truth, universal laws, and create a daily spiritual practice that involves self-care practises. HappyBeingWell.com offers the tools/products, education and inspiration to use in our daily spiritual & self-care practice. Rita believes a daily spiritual practice is not limited to yoga and/or meditation. The truth is when we are manually cleaning our dishes we often go into a trance, this is also a form of meditation. Rita believes our personal hygiene (self-care) and home cleaning sessions can also be our spiritual practices. Self-care and spiritual practises changed Rita's life, increased her ability to love herself.
