This page is a collection of helpful resources on the subject of Self-Care.
If you haven’t already, make sure to check out the printouts at Self-Care Practice and Exercises.
Links
- What We Can Learn from a Mindful Emergency Room – An emergency physician shares what she has learned about embedding mindfulness practice into a busy, complex, and chaotic ER.
- How to Help Teens Become More Self-Compassionate – Self-compassion may be key to supporting teen mental health. Dr. Karen Bluth shares lessons from her mindful self-compassion program.
- This Is What ‘Self-Care’ REALLY Means, Because It’s Not All Salt Baths And Chocolate Cake – This very short article clarifies the meaning of Self-Care.
- Developing Extraordinary Resilience – this article from Zen Habits on resiliency ties in to self-care by focusing on perspective.
- Sleep Needs – This article is awesome for breaking the myths and clarifying your needs around sleep.
- The Self-Compassion Solution (Scientific American Mind) – A more-detailed article about the power of self-compassion.
- What’s Missing From Our Conversation on Self-Care – An article about giving, touting it as a ‘self-care miracle drug.’
On Burnout
- Is Burnout Real? – The World Health Organization says so. But it’s in danger of medicalizing everyday stress.
- Stress, Not Working Too Much, Causes Burnout – An attempt to get to the real cause of Burnout.
- Our best bet against burnout is self-care, just not the kind you think – This long and detailed article is super helpful for understanding and solving burnout.
- From Burnout to Balance – 30 tips to get yourself back on track or avoid burnout altogether.
- Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on Fulfillment Beyond the Limiting Notion of Work/Life Balance – “We are each a river with a particular abiding character, but we show radically different aspects of our self according to the territory through which we travel.”
- Suffering = Pain x Resistance – This concept is so important. It bring perspective into question.
- The Ultimate Guide to Stress at Every Age – Every life stage brings its own pressures, from worrying about exams to juggling the needs of family. Here are the best coping tactics for each generation.
- Self-Compassion.org – This website by author Dr. Kristin Neff details her research and provides resources and more.
- Self-Confidence and Self-Compassion from OptionB.org – This video is a testimony to the power of self-compassion.
Time and Work/Life Balance
- Why You Never Seem to Have Enough Time – We feel pressed for time due to our own psychology, not just the tyranny of the clock.
- There’s No Such Thing as Work-Life Balance—Just Choices – A personal call to use drop the dichotomy and use some simple tips…
- You Have More Than Enough Time, You’re Just Not Spending it Right – If you keep running out of time, it’s typically because you are spreading yourself too thin.
- Work-Life Balance May Have More to Do with Your Personality Than Your Job – Let’s dig in to the psychological profiles of work/life balance.
- Work/Life Balance Is Hurting Us – A Manifesto for a Better Life Because of Work, Not Despite It.
- You Will Never Find Work-Life Balance – Instead of struggling to balance responsibilities, we need to aim for finding our flow.
- What If Work/Life Balance is the Problem? – A helpful perspective from the folks at Conscious Leadership.
Books
Videos
A Self Care Action Plan – From How To Adult with Hank Green, this video is fantastic. Pragmatic and useful. 5 min.
Self-Care: What it Really Is – A TEDx talk by Susannah Winters. 10 min
Self Compassion – A wonderfully-animated and insightful video as always from School of Life. ~5 min
The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion – A TEDx Talk by Krisin Neff, author of Self-Compassion. 19 min
Journaling:
‘I write out my feeling, including anything and everything that’s bothering and wounding me.
I ask myself why I’m feeling this way. And I try to be as brutally honest with myself as I can.
I then ask myself if what I’m worrying about is something I can change.
If it is, I ask how can I change and improve and do better?
If I can’t, I acknowledge the worry, think it for helping me grow, and ask myself to gracefully let it go.’
Why I’m sick of ‘Self-Care’: A Rant – A vlogger rips apart the instagrammable trend masquerading as self-care. 13 min
How to Love Yourself to the Core – A TEDx talk by Jen Oliver. 17 min
50 Simple Self-Care Tips – Some of these are perhaps too simple, and there are some good ones in there. 11 min
Quotes
“Busy is not the point
There’s a common safe place: Being busy.
We’re supposed to give you a pass because you were full on, all day. Frantically moving from one thing to the other, never pausing to catch your breath, and now you’re exhausted.
No points for busy.
Points for successful prioritization. Points for efficiency and productivity. Points for doing work that matters.
No points for busy.” – Seth Godin
“One day you’re going to wake up and there won’t be any time left to do the things you’ve always wanted to do. One day. Day One. You decide.” – Paulo Coelho
“Accept, Then Act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” – Eckhart Tolle
“‘Someday’ is NOT a day in the week: Create more meaningful work NOW…not someday. […] We need to wake up to the fact that we’ll never have more time than we have right now.” – Sam Horn
“Your choice is to keep running the thoughts through your head and experience the consequences, or become a good gardener of your mind, root out the weeds and allow only the flowers to grow. A sleeping gardener is not attentive and will soon have a jungle of weeds. A good gardener is awake. He knows exactly what is happening and will guard his territory with a keen eye, removing the weeds as soon as the first shoots appear.
Be a good gardener of your mind. A mind that is being observed is an unsuitable environment for anxiety and depression to take root. Both require a lack of awareness as a suitable breeding ground.” – Patrick McKeown, from his book Anxiety Free
“If you are depressed, you live in the past. If you are anxious, you live in the future. But if you are at peace, you live in the present.” – Lao Tzu
“It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.” – from Brianna Wiest’s article on Thought Catalog
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.” – Lawrence Pearsall Jacks