I love essential self-care activities that are simple, affordable, and enhance wellness. Especially self-compassion and spiritual wellness activities that can decrease anxiety, perfectionism, and judgment.
How can practicing self-care activities help you grow in compassion and spiritual wellness?
Let’s see how many affordable self care activities can be done in 15 minutes and relieve stress!
In this blog post:
This blog post shares essential self-care activities that are affordable, simple, and enhance wellness:
Compassionate Self-Care
4 Compassion Breaks
10 Compassion Affirmations
Spiritual Self-Care
10 Spiritual Wellness Activities
7 Contemplative Spiritual Practices
Disclaimer: This article has educational resources about restoring wellness through trauma recovery, and is based on my research and my experiences. This information is not meant to take the place of medical treatment, counseling or therapy. If it would be helpful to talk to someone, wellness resources has information on how to contact a mental health professional in your area.
Compassionate Self-Care
#1 Self-Care Essential Activity: Self-Compassion
The first essential self-care activity may seem easy to do, yet sometimes we don’t even know we’re missing it.
Who do you give love to?
I am really good at giving love to others. So it surprises me when I realize I am not giving love to myself.
Compassion and Self-compassion can be defined as giving love to others and giving love to yourself. The difference is who you are giving compassion to, whether it’s to others or to yourself.
Are you hard on yourself?
Can you relate? When you make a mistake, are you hard on yourself or loving to yourself?
Trauma Recovery & Low Self-compassion
Before I realized I needed self-compassion for inner healing, I didn’t even know I was being so hard of myself.
Let’s start at the beginning of when I learned about self-compassion being vital in my own trauma recovery journey.
Many people are hard on themselves; especially trauma survivors. When someone experiences a trauma, they may blame themselves for somehow causing or not stopping the traumatic event. So, from that point on, trauma survivors may have a hard time giving themselves compassion and giving others compassion.
Opposite of Compassion
So what happens if we are stop giving compassion to ourselves and others? The opposite of compassion is hatred, cruelty, indifference. Other similar terms could be judgment, criticism, and insignificance.
Judgment and criticism can be familiar daily battles. For me, It is especially difficult to admit and accept that I expect way too much from myself and that I cannot reach my own expectations.
I think I can always do better, always improve. But this expectation drives me into perfectionism.
For example, I have a hard time admitting anything negative. Especially when things are too difficult for me to handle (anxiety), or when I cannot reach my own expectations (perfectionism).
Anxiety and perfectionism just burden me with more judgment.
Self-compassion is a healing path
Self-compassion heals self-judgment.
Having self-compassion gives me permission to accept when I’m being judgmental and critical with myself. Then I am able to give myself compassion and love myself even when I make mistakes.
I can be aware and accept things that are less than positive while giving myself self-compassion.
It’s important to choose to see things positively, and this is where self-compassion continues to becomes a pivotal healing path for me. I can choose to love myself during difficult times, using self-compassion breaks.
10 Quality spiritual self-care & wellness activities in 10-15 minutes:
10-minute meditation
praying while driving (with eyes open 🙂
reading a sacred text
a walking prayer, where you walk and talk to God (quietly to yourself or out loud 🙂
sitting outside in nature for 15 minutes
laying down and resting
being still and listening
mindfulness practice (being present and aware, with acceptance and kindness)
coloring a mandala
prayer doodling
Spiritual practices, such as mindfulness can help you grow in self-awareness, stay in the present moment, and grow in emotional regulation and self-control.
Mindfulness can be simple or in-depth if you choose. So, you can practice mindfulness during the day and night to help relax and calm the body, mind, and spirit.
How does taking care of myself help me grow spiritually?
You may hear that to grower close to God, you need to give up something. Many people will sacrifice themselves for others, and stop focusing on themselves.
So, this focusing on self may sound counter-productive. It may feel like you’re going against the norm and could be an obstacle to grow closer to God.
Consider the possibility that enhancing your self-care could help you grow in compassion.
The practice of slowing down and practicing spiritual practices builds self regulation and compassion for self and others.
How does sharing compassion with others help me grow spiritually?
The more compassion you have for yourself, the more compassion you will have for God and others. Loving God, loving yourself, and loving others helps you growspiritually.
Practicing self care can help you grow in compassion and grow in your relationship with God.
I hope you join us on your journey of improving your wellness. This tribe is a gathering place to improve wellness & connections, receive life-giving coping skills, and restore health in mind, body, and spirit.
I’ve struggled with time management my whole life, so finding successful time management skills is a big deal for me! One of the most important skills I use is setting boundaries to protect my time because it helps improve my mental, emotional, and physical health. This blog post lists 4 steps to create more time by setting protective time boundaries and also includes steps on how to Create Your Own Personal Assistant!
How to Create More Time in your routine, in your day, and in your health.
Attention planner lovers, BUJO (bullet journal) friends, and all those who love planning. These are great tips that help me daily with planning!
Struggling with Time
Do you struggle with enough time?
Not enough hours in the day to get everything done?
Are you late to appointments? Not enough time for self care?
In this Blog Post:
How to Create More Time in your routine, in your day, and in your health.
Create More Time by Setting Protective Time Boundaries:
Step #1: Set Boundaries with Routine
Step #2: Create Margin in Your Day
Step #3: Set Boundaries to Protect Time
Step #4: How to Block Time & Margin
Create Your Own Personal Assistant <– coming soon!
FREE printable of 15 Self Care Activities you can do in 15 minutes. (at bottom of blog post)
Benefits of Time Management
These Time Management Skills: Setting Boundaries with Time can help you develop time management which will help you:
reach your goals
improve relationships
increase productivity
find more free time
and even improved mental, emotional, and physical wellness!
How to Create More Time:
By Setting Protective Time Boundaries
Improving time management & setting protective time boundaries can help you reach your goals, improve relationships, and find more free time!
Managing time by setting healthy protective time boundaries helps create enough time for work, relationships, and hobbies.
Create more time in your routine, in your day, and in your health.
Step #1: Set Boundaries in Routine
We are all busy with a packed daily routine, that’s the nature of our modern world and the current status. We all need more time, more energy, and more restoration.
We each have our own daily routine, whether it’s as a stay-at-home mom, a working adult, a student in school, or someone in retirement. So, how can we create more time in our busy routine?
Routines are important; they give us stability, familiarity, and time to recharge your batteries. A routine can give you time to nurture your emotions, calm your thoughts, and relax your body. Sound good?
To improve your routine, start by setting good protective time boundaries; such as, creating space for Margin in your routine.
Real Life Application:
Think about your routine, when are times overloaded, stressful, or overwhelming?
Is your routine packed full? Do you have time to relax?
Catch up? Recharge?
When thinking of your daily routine, how many things do you do in one day? For example, do you schedule more than 3 big things in one day? Consider 3 big things a day as your limit and see how much better you feel.
Step #2: Create Margin in your Day
It’s amazing what happens when you create Margin in your day, it’s literally one of the foundations to creating more time. Want to improve your mental, physical and relational health?
Consider the margin around a piece of lined paper, it’s white space, empty space. Our eyes need the empty space around the page so we can focus on whatever is written or drawn on the page.
The same goes for our margin in our day, we need the extra empty space around the edge of our day to be able to better focus on the main goals. This margin, this empty space around the edges of our activities gives us time to refresh and recharge, to have the energy to complete our goals.
Margin is the time you can reserve in your routine, for restoring your emotional, physical and financial investments.
“Creating space and time for margin
helps restore rest, relationships, and resiliency.”
Resiliency is the time to bounce back from challenges.
Real Life Application:
Where can you reserve time (margin) in your routine?
How much margin will help restore your wellness and invest in your self care?
Maybe one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening would be a good starting space for daily margin. Try it for a week and see how how it helps.
Step #3: Set boundaries to protect time
This 3rd step has helped me improve my daily routine, create more time, and protect margin to recharge & restore my wellness! By setting and protecting my time with boundaries, I am able to get more done in my day, take better care of my health, and focus on what’s important to me.
Protecting time can be easily accomplished by setting reminders on your phone or computer’s alarms. I know, it sounds too easy, right? Well, it’s so important that one of my bosses told me it was the most important productivity tool introduced to the company.
Imagine a therapist has many clients waiting to be seen, and the therapist is way behind schedule, so the clients are waiting a long time. So, when the therapist implements reminders on his/her phone to remind the therapist and the client that the session has 10 minutes till closing. The reminder is helpful to the therapist, the client, and to all the client’s waiting to be seen.
Make it fun with exciting ring tones to remind you to leave for your appointment, or calming sounds to give you a heads up that your meeting needs to wrap it up.
Real Life Application:
How could you protect your time with reminders on your phone or computer?
What reminders are the most important to set?
Learn how to create more time by setting reminders in this easy-to-read workbook: Create Your Own Personal Assistant <– coming soon!
4. How to Block Time & Margin
Every semester, I get overwhelmed by a change in routine and weekly schedules because everything changes. Changes effect my mental health, my physical health and my relational health.
The number one tool I use is setting protective time boundaries with this essential tool: blocking time and margin. This is how I improve my overall wellness, blocking my time and margin to recover!
The first step is to create habits by blocking time and cluster similar goals & tasks together to get the most out of your time. This is also called time batching and blocking time.
Every time we multi-task, we lose time because our brains take awhile to switch between two or more different tasks. We need space and time to focus on what’s important. Try to avoid multi-tasking so that you have more time to focus on similar goals or tasks and save time.
Block Schedule:
Schedule 90 minutes to focus on a cluster, a block of similar goals or tasks.
Then take a 15-minute break.
Example, focus on one area of goals for 90 minutes, such as time for family.
Block times will have details written down to keep you focused, don’t worry about writing down details for your breaks. When considering time for breaks, allow space and time to listen to your body’s needs to recharge.
Example of Block Schedule:
7:00-8:00 am Margin
8:00-9:00 am Breakfast and get ready for the day
9:00-10:30 am Blog post
11:00-12:30 pm Lunch
1:00-6:00 pm Clients (with breaks in between)
6:00-7:30 pm Supper
7:30-9:00 pm Family time (visit, games, play)
9:00-10:00 pm Margin
Real Life Application:
Block Time: Cluster similar tasks together into 90-minute segments. What grouping do you see that share a similar goal? Work, school, family, blog?
Block 15-minutes for self care: grab a cup of coffee or tea, sit outside in the sun or shade, talk to a friend.
Only have 15 minutes for self care? No problem!
Get a FREE printable of 15 Self Care Activities you can do in 15 minutes.
Summary of this Blog Post:
How to create more time in your routine, in your day, and in your health.
Create More Time by Setting Protective Time Boundaries:
Step #1: Set Boundaries with Routine
Step #2: Create Margin in Your Day
Step #3: Set Boundaries to Protect Time
Step #4: How to Block Time & Margin
Create Your Own Personal Assistant
Every time I use these 4 Time Management Skills, I see an improvement in what I can accomplish as well as improvements in my self care. Especially using the skills: “Create Your Own Personal Assistant” it’s my favorite time management tool that I use every day!
Create Your Own Personal Assistant <– coming soon!
I get a whole lot more of my goals accomplished using time management skills, and I feel calmer and not overwhelmed.
This blog post is part of a series on time management, read more about how to improve your self care with time management.
Create More Time with Time Protective Boundaries: How to create more time in your routine, in your day, and in your health.
***THIS BLOG POST***
I hope this journey of improving your time management skills helps you find more time and improves your wellness. I’d love to hear about your journey towards wellness and what helps you find more time?
Disclaimer: This article has resources about restoring wellness, and is based on my research and my experiences. This information is not meant to take the place of counseling or therapy. If at any time you feel uncomfortable or need to talk to someone, wellness resources may be helpful.
Disclaimer: This blog post contains affiliate links to my favorite products, which means I receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase using the link.
