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Self-care shouldn’t be a choice, even though we all have busy work schedules, demanding family lives, and limited time to be able to manage our daily chores. If we are aware of its benefits, we should consider making it a habit. We may think who has time to take care of themselves until we see a perfect-looking family while shopping or a post from a friend who seems to have it all. The sad truth is that most of the time, seeing others managing their lives better than us doesn’t help us. It may depress us even more. So, what does self-care mean, and how can we make more time for it?

Self-care is any activity that we do to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health. As a result, we feel better and face our challenges more effectively. When we feel good, we become more positive and motivated. Some people don’t practice it at all; some people do it at specific periods of their lives. I’m sure we have so many examples around us who give up taking care of themselves when they marry or have kids. I agree that when we marry our priorities change; however, we are still responsible for our happiness, and we should still take care of ourselves physically and emotionally.

When we have so many things going on with our lives, we may give up on our hobbies, friendships, or daily routines. If this is something temporary, that’s understandable; however, if we forget to take care of ourselves totally and dedicate our lives to our husbands, parents, kids, or other things, we may create long-term unhappiness. What we forget is, if we are not happy, we can’t make anyone happy. For example, when we fly, we all have to listen to safety warnings about emergency landings, and how to use the oxygen masks. The flight attendant says, “Please place the mask over your own mouth and nose before assisting others.” We should have the same logic for self-care to take care of others: first, we need to take care of ourselves.

Here are some simple self-care activities that we can effortlessly apply to our lives and see their benefits quickly.

Physical self-care

We all need to be physically healthy to be able to do any activity. So, we need to take care of our bodies. Sleeping at least 7 hours a day, exercising, and eating nutritious food are some of the few steps we can easily take. It sounds simple, but their impact on our lives is undeniable. Also, when we look in the mirror, we should love ourselves. We can put on some makeup, wear the clothes that give us joy, and treat ourselves with a manicure and pedicure once in a while. In this way, we will feel more confident and happier. A healthy body will lead us to have a healthy mind.

Emotional self- care

We are not robots, so it is easy to feel distracted and stressed over personal and work issues. So, we all need to learn to be more resilient when things get tough. Life is not perfect; we will have some ups and downs. The only thing we can do to reduce the impact of the negative events is to learn some of the coping skills. We need to get to know ourselves, identify our weaknesses, and improve ourselves as much as possible. Learning how to manage stress and become aware of our actions will help us to find proper solutions that fit our needs. One of the most recommended activities is journaling. I know, who wants to write about all of the annoying events they have in their lives? However, this is the most effective way to empty our minds. Also, meditation is another activity that is recommended by many health organizations. Since we are talking about self-care, you may want to try meditation for self-love. On the other hand, creating a tidy and organized environment at work and home will change our mood. So, taking little actions will make a ripple effect on our emotional health.

Social self- care

We have to be careful with whom we surround ourselves because the people around us and the activities we do shape our lives. If possible, we should eliminate the people from our lives who drain our energy. Primarily, we need to avoid social media if we can because we are wasting our time watching other people’s lives. Social media has more negative impacts than positive ones, so if we can, we should reduce the time we spend on it and remove it from our lives. Unfortunately, it becomes an addiction and creates unrealistic expectations. Our goal should be having positive friends and families around us with whom we can spend quality time. To me, social self-care means eliminating the things and people from our lives that don’t take us one step forward.

Overall, everyone can define and create their self-care routine, such as: sleeping well, spending time with the loved ones, spending their money wisely, having hobbies, exercising, meditating, journaling, eating healthy, learning new skills for our work, and decluttering our lives of the people and things that don’t serve us anymore. It doesn’t mean we are selfish; it means we are on our way to becoming emotionally, mentally, and physically healthy to become better parents, partners, and family members. As Charles Buxton says, “You will never find time for anything, if you want time, you must make it.” I hope we can all make time for some self-care. When we start practicing it, we will immediately experience its positive impacts. As we practice self- care, it will become part of our lives.

Since February, I have read countless articles and taken courses such as well-being, happiness, mindfulness and resilience and found out that they all have one important trait in common. It is practicing gratitude. These courses shared numerous research that show practicing gratitude has a positive impact on our lives when done consistently. I’ve started to keep a gratitude journal to make use of this positive effects. I must admit my life isn’t transformed, but I feel happier. During the resilience course last week, it came as a surprise that my way of thinking about gratitude was pretty narrow. So, what is gratitude, and how can we benefit from it?

Gratitude means recognizing all the good things we receive and appreciating our blessings. It helps us to focus on what we have instead of what we lack. Even though life isn’t perfect, when we focus on the positive things, we will have better lives. So, that’s what I was doing, counting my blessings. However, there are two other beautiful ways to practice it and increase our life quality and happiness.

One way of practicing gratitude is by seeking goodness in negative situations. Not only will it help us to better deal with difficult situations, but it will also help us look at them with a positive approach. For example, when I was new in my current job, my manager was very hard on me.  Now I see that the pressure she put on me helped me to learn a lot in a short period of time.  At that time, I was so unhappy, but now I’m grateful that I can do any job with the knowledge I gained, without needing any supervision. I wish at that time I had kept my positivity, focused on the benefit of having a new job and found ways to learn my job quicker instead of concentrating on my supervisor’s attitude.

Another way of practicing gratitude is to be kind to those around us. When we express our gratitude and are kind to our family, friends, and coworkers, we will build stronger relationships. On the other hand, so many researchers discovered that when we are kind to a stranger it surprisingly helps us to feel better throughout the day.

Practicing gratitude seems to be easy, but when it comes to doing it daily it becomes somewhat challenging. We may easily identify all the good things coming our way but to get more benefit from it we should definitely seek positivity in negative situations. In addition to that, we need to practice it consistently to be able to see long-term results.  When we truly practice this priceless mentality, we will feel happier, become more resilient, build stronger relationships, and even sleep better.

Here are some Coursera courses and articles if you want to learn more about gratitude and gain more insight about it.

In Praise of Gratitude – Harvard Health

Positive Psychology: Resilience Skills by University of Pennsylvania

A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment by Indian School of Business

The Science of Well-Being by Yale University

Positive Psychology: Martin E. P. Seligman’s Visionary Science by University of Pennsylvania

Next time you put your head on the pillow, please try practicing gratitude and hunt for the good in your experiences instead of overthinking negative thoughts and ruminating on your mistakes. Be aware that we all easily get used to the things we have in our lives; we can clearly see that what we have today used to be our dream, when we slow down and look around. Hopefully, practicing gratitude makes us notice our achievements, empowers us to future success, helps us manage anxiety, and increases our positive emotions and overall health.

While my husband is stressfully watching one of the last games of his favorite soccer teams season, I keep asking myself why his team put itself in this situation. They are in the relegation zone, and they are fighting to stay at the premier league. They have 7 games to play, and they’ve already played 31 games until now. So, how did they miss planning their strategy and leave all their hopes and their future for the last 7 games? At this point, Aston Villa is desperately hoping to get some points to be able to stay in the league, while we all are praying that the other teams that are in the same situation lose some games. Unfortunately, there is no time or money left to get a better coach or footballers. They have to stay optimistic and still believe that they could do it with what they have.

Leaving things to the last minute is not limited to Aston Villa’s situation; we all do it from time to time. We don’t see the big picture and just try to save the day. Some days, we leave studying for our exams to the last minute, some days, we leave preparing an important presentation to the last minute, or some days, we leave buying an anniversary or Christmas gifts to the last minute. However, as we grow up, our responsibilities and the consequences of our actions get bigger. Not only do we add more stress to our lives, but we may also create a damaging habit for our health. So, if we see a negative trend in our lives, such as leaving things to the last minute and procrastinating, we need to consider changing ourselves and our lifestyle.

Foremost, we need to understand that unfortunate things happen to everyone; the only difference we can make is to find a way to handle them and learn from them. We need to have a plan and a positive attitude because one failure or leaving one thing to the last minute shouldn’t define our remaining actions. It is a learning experience. If we let this one misstep define our future and see ourselves as a failure, that’s what we will get. By thinking this way, not only will we invite more failures to our lives, but we also let stressful emotions take over it.

Recently, I’m taking an online course, which is about how badly we react to negative situations. Last week, the professor gave an example from her life. At the age 29, she developed rheumatoid arthritis because she couldn’t handle the bad grades she had and saw herself as a failure. Whereas the bad results had nothing to the with her future, it was the result of that semester. It was an eye-opening example, because each time I watched her videos, I could see the damage she had on her hands. However, she was very positive and she shared her experience to warn us and used it as a learning experience which gave me hope and power. So, we need to learn to react to the negative events proactively and don’t let them impact our health and the rest of our actions.

We also need to believe that our future is bright and better. We all need to learn to reset our minds to prevent ourselves from ruminating on past events. It may not be easy, but the health professionals say that it is possible to train ourselves. If we let one failure define our future actions and let our procrastination become a habit, we will invite more failure, even long-term health issues.

At the end of 90 minutes, Aston Villa lost another game. It may be too late for them to turn things around and stay in the premier league. However, we can learn from them and stop procrastinating. We can still have some success when we leave things until the last minute, but it is not sustainable to live this way. Instead of delaying things and creating more problems for ourselves, we can take small steps and start taking actions against anything that we are procrastinating. Once we get started, we will see that it is not as tough as we think.

The year 2020 started very well for me. We had an opportunity to visit my parents in Turkey and my husband’s parents in England. We made yearly plans at the end of December with excitement. Needless to say, as we expected, we started a busy year with new assignments and challenges. However, our plans, our busy schedule, and our lifestyle changed almost overnight.

In the beginning, we heard China had some health issues caused by the Covid-19 Corona Virus, which impacted their lives. However, we didn’t really pay attention until some of our suppliers couldn’t supply some of the necessary components. We found quick solutions and continued our lives.

Later on, we learned that it wasn’t just a problem in China. Actually, the virus was spreading all around the world. To be honest, we didn’t take it seriously again until it impacted our lives.

It was Friday, March 13th. My husband had to drive separately because he had to be at work before 7:00 am. I left shortly after him and had a chance to park my car right next to his car. I took a picture of our cars that day to prove to him I was as early as he was. It was an ordinary Friday, even though we were bombarded with some more news about the corona virus. We were not aware that our lives were about to change. Friday evening, we were asked to work from home until further notice. It has been 13 weeks so far, and we will be working from home until July. So that ordinary parking lot picture has a special meaning now.

A lot of things have changed in our lives. We started to watch the news periodically to learn about the virus and its impact. We couldn’t go out even for shopping because we were scared of getting sick. We were still working, but it was different. Soon after these changes, we were asked to take furlough one week a month. I had no idea what furlough means before. We canceled our travel plans. We learned to stay at home and not eat out.

Now, we hear that most of the companies will have job cuts. Instead of job cuts, there should be other solutions. If a person does not perform well, I can accept the situation and the reason that they can be let go. My husband and I are hardworking people. Our performance review was positive and reflected our commitment and hard work. However, there are many other hardworking people out there who may lose their job. So, it makes me sad.

We can’t change the situation if we lose our jobs at any time of our life. Of course, we should understand the reasons. If it is global job cuts, the reasons seem to be obvious, but we still need to review what we have done so for and what we could have done differently. Also, we shouldn’t limit ourselves with the pandemic job cuts; some businesses may be doing better during the pandemic. This may be our opportunity to try something new. On the other hand, it may be a good time to focus on family and take a break from work and refresh ourselves. It may be an opportunity to learn new skills.

I am not sure what will happen next. We don’t know what changes and unexpected situations are ahead of us. But All we can do is focus on what we can control, and leave what we can’t. Here are some of the news that I came across.

BP to cut 10,000 jobs worldwide amid virus pandemic 

IBM Is Latest Tech Giant to Cut Jobs in Midst of Pandemic

Renault, ZF Friedrichshafen each to cut up to 15,000 jobs

U.S. Layoffs Ease in April; Hiring Slumps to Record Low

When I was working on my PMP exam, the first question I was asked was, “What is the most important criteria that a project needs to have?” The answer is, every project has to have start and end dates. If it does not have start and end dates, it is not a project, it is a process. This always reminds me that my personal goals are my small projects, which need to have start and end dates. So, I can start working on it, see my progress, and hopefully accomplished my desired outcome in a certain time frame.

Mostly, starting is the hardest thing for everything, so we need to find our cues, and focus on the idea of accomplishing our goals. Once we start working on our goals, we need to check our status and compare it with the baseline. For example, back in July, I started to lose weight. I was around 142 pounds. We signed up for the gym again, increased our activities, and ate healthier. Until September, I managed to see 138 pounds on my scale, just before our vacation. When we were back from our vacation, we continued with our daily routine, but the progress was not as fast as I wanted. However, I have seen lately 135 pounds on my scale, so I am still in progress. Checking my weight periodically makes me aware of my progress. When I see lower numbers, it motivates me, and I want to get better. When I see an increase in my weight, I feel sad, but I still try to get better.
The key is checking our progress periodically and keeping on working towards our goals. My goal is to become 130 pounds by the end of the year. I still have 2 months to lose 5 pounds. I can do it, and I will do it.
Getting fit and having a healthy routine is one more step for me to achieve my dream life and to be the best of me. So, I hope we all set goals that help us to shape our future the way we desire to live.

In this section, you will find the ways and guidance on how to create habits to build a better you.

• A life to Live