Doctor C J's Blog

5 Ways to Balance Practicing Personal Self Care with a Busy Caregiving Life

Caregiving changes everything including how you care for yourself! One of the most difficult challenges a lot of women face with self-care, is finding the time to fit it in. When you live a busy caregiving lifestyle, it can seem almost impossible to find extra time to look after you.

So, how can you balance practicing ‘guilt-free’ self-care with a busy lifestyle? Let’s explore, below are some great tips you can follow.

1. Schedule it in

A good tip you can follow to ensure you can fit self-care into your busy routine, is to schedule it in. Think about it, you schedule in everything else, so why not self-care? When you set a time to focus on yourself, you are much more likely to stick to it. No matter how busy you think you are, there will always be time for guilt-free self-care somewhere in your schedule. Remember “no time” is no excuse because self-care is not an option.

Be number one on your schedule – it’s your time

2. Establish a morning routine

If you are struggling to find the best time of day to practice self-care, you might find it easier in the morning right after you get up, before the day’s distractions can overtake your day. If you’re a busy parent, you might disagree here but think about it. In the morning, you could get up just 30 minutes earlier, or 15 minutes if you want. This can be the perfect opportunity to practice self-care. Make it as automatic as brewing coffee or tea.

Alternatively, if you are a caregiver you could focus on self-care in the evenings when the others have gone to bed. It doesn’t take long to practice self-care so you should always be able to squeeze it in somewhere. You are worth the squeeze.

You are worth the squeeze, unapologetically

3. Look at automating daily tasks

There are all kinds of tools and gadgets that can automate various aspects of our lives. If you are constantly busy, you’ll find automating certain tasks can be a game changer. Delegate what you hate. There’s an app for almost everything these days.

For example, you could switch from going to the grocery store, to ordering groceries online for curbside pick-up at the store or delivered to your home. If you have items, you frequently purchase, these can be added to your favorites list, making it easier to add them to your order next time. Doing your grocery shopping online can free up a lot of free time during the week that can be used on you. This helped me so much during the COVID 19 pandemic; I didn’t have take time to pick out an outfit, put on make-up, or walk through the aisles.

Let others help you

4. Start small

You don’t have to start by completely overhauling your lifestyle. Instead, you can start small with self-care. Begin by taking just 10 minutes out of each day to focus on your favorite self-care activity. Focus on developing one positive self-care habit at a time. Once you have mastered one, you can move on to the next activity.

By starting small, it’s easier to fit self-care into your busy life. Many people mistakenly think they need to begin with at least 30 minutes a day. But the truth is, however, much time you can free up for self-care is right for you. Once you get started with a routine and it becomes an enjoyable habit, you’ll find it easier to keep up the routine. You will begin to notice a more relaxed energetic you.

I know, balancing and practicing ‘guilt-free’ self-care with a busy caregiving lifestyle isn’t easy. No one said it would be easy – but indeed worth it for you and your loved ones.

Start one step, one habit, or one routine at a time. NOW!

5. Just do it for you!

Sometimes you just have to do You. Yes, do what’s best for you not what’s best for everyone else but you. It’s not selfish to do self-first because you cannot give what you do not have. If you don’t have energy how are you going to take care of others effectively? No matter how busy you are find ways to carve out time, space, and energy to take care of you spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, and financially.

You got this gurrlfriend go for it!

a criticism without knowing the whole story?

We’ll discuss the above picture in a little bit.

Context, context, man we’re talking about context (in my Allen Iverson’s voice). Putting things into context means telling the whole story or knowing as much about the situation as possible. For me context includes: the information or backstory, my knowledge about the situation or the commonly accepted knowledge, and last but not least what part does wisdom play in this story.

Ever wonder about the difference between the words: information, knowledge, and wisdom?

Information is a gathering of words, documents, data which have been organized for a purpose… You can Google information and gain some knowledge, but you can’t Google wisdom.

Knowledge is a skill set, understanding something, and or comprehension of information

Wisdom is knowledge, information, intuition, and most often something you have experienced

Here’s my favorite analogy – Information tells a boxer he’s going to be in a ring fighting on March 10, 2020. Knowledge tells the boxer while in the ring he will have to bob and weave to stay in the fight. Wisdom tells the boxer when to bob, weave, and throw a punch, to win the fight. See, there truly is a difference. Let’s look at some examples of all three used in context.

A black man dresses up like a woman, puts on shoes, full corset, and even a hat or bonnet. He goes out into the dark streets on the arms of a white gentleman; giggling at the gentleman’s jokes. But – wait before you judge, dismiss, or criticize this man dressed as a woman. He was a run-away slave escaping from those white men who wanted to return him to slavery. He sashayed right passed them without their knowledge of what was really happening. In context, they used information, knowledge, and wisdom to be brave enough to pull that off.

“Sometimes your greatest strength can emerge as a weakness if the context changes.” Harsha Bhogle

For the past three years, I’ve been trying to figure out why there are so many angry people at rallies of the winner of the 2016 presidential election. As I was working on this post about context; it came to me. What if, anger is fear out of context? What if these red-faced, middle finger pointing people are just afraid and don’t know how to handle their fears? What if, their fear is of being replaced, fear of becoming irrelevant, or the thought of a new normal they cannot handle? To put their fear in context; they shudder at the thought of living in my world, as a minority in today’s America!

“For me context is the key – from that comes the understanding of everything.” Kenneth Noland

What did you think when you first looked at the picture above? It looks like a gigantic mushroom doesn’t it? Most people say, “And so what is that?”. Because they don’t know what it is, it doesn’t mean anything special to them. BUT when I tell them, it is a picture, I took when I was in Cairo, Egypt, in 2008; and it’s the back of the  Sphinx! Then the reaction is, “Oh WOW, really?” Now, it’s a BIG DEAL! So, in context, this picture is a unique view of a great global icon; that is ancient, revered, and awesome!

“I do not fear truth. I welcome it. But I wish all of my facts to be in their proper context.” Gordon B. Hinckley

For you: where, who, what, or when have you judged, criticized, or dismissed something or someone because it is out of context or you just don’t have the whole story?

Come back soon for another cup of comfort!