Soul Sustenance: 7 Reasons to Practice Self-Care

This post excerpted from 7 reasons to practice self-care, compliments of life balance teacher/speaker Renee Peterson Trudeau, author of Nurturing the Soul of Your Family and The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal. Receive life balance tips and learn about upcoming retreats at www.ReneeTrudeau.com.

This past week I connected with several medical professionals and we discussed the concept of self-care. Like many in healthcare, they see self-care as something you “should do” for your physical health (exercise, eat well, get enough sleep), but that’s where it ends. They were curious when I shared that I define self-care as the art of attuning and responding to your needs and desires, moment to moment. You could see the wheels turning as they sat with my definition.

Pick up an onion and hold it in your palm. For me, self-care would be the outer layer, then a few layers deeper, you’ll find self-acceptance (as you learn to accept yourself warts and all), then self-compassion, and then a few layers beyond that you arrive at the holy grail: self-love. I see self-care as the first doorway we go through to begin to truly accept who we are, and ultimately, to begin to love ourselves.

The art and practice of self-care has been central to my work-life balance programs since 1999 and it has had a profound and lasting change on how I live. For me, practicing self-care (and ultimately learning to embrace self-acceptance and self-love) has helped me to:

• be more easy-going and to learn to “go with the flow”
• see that little things stay little (my son not picking up his dirty socks) and don’t become front page news
• have more space around my thoughts and become more present (more responsive, less reactive)
• be kinder and more compassionate (whether it’s with a waitress, family member or business partner)
• connect more deeply to the sacred and the spiritual aspects of every day life
• react less and Live Inside Out more (read more)
• sense my connection to everything around me and how interwoven we all are

But most importantly, this practice has helped me know that even when everything and everyone around me seems to be falling apart, I can still feel ok on the inside. And ultimately, this underlying, unwavering sense of peace and well-being is what we’re all seeking, isn’t it?