Personal Care: Nourishing your mind and body
Taking care of yourself, in terms of keeping a healthy mind, body, and spirit, is no small matter. It involves constantly maintaining homeostasis of your physical and mental health, as well as your surroundings, which can be done in a million different ways. Each person has their own unique needs and methods for staying healthy, and figuring out what yours are is part of the process of becoming independent. Still, there are a number of general tips for how to keep up your personal wellness, as well as some specific recommendations to get you started.
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Cleaning & Homemaking
One of the most overlooked areas of personal care is probably “homemaking” - the upkeep that goes into creating and maintaining your home environment. While no one really gets excited about cleaning (besides Marie Kondo), how you organize and take care of your living space can have a major effect on your mood and mentality. A decluttered room is a decluttered mind! But there’s more to homekeeping than just cleaning your room. As the name for this section hints, there are really two parts to this: designing your home space, and then maintaining that space.
While everyone has their own preferences for how to design their home, it’s generally a good idea to create separate spaces for work and leisure. So if you’re going to be studying at home often, try to do that at your desk and not on your bed - otherwise, you may start to mentally associate your bed with work, making it harder to relax and fall asleep. Creating a style for your home/room can also make it feel more like your home, allowing you to feel comfortable and easily destress when you get home. If you’ve ever played The Sims, you’ll remember that adding plants and paintings/wall decor to a room makes your Sim much happier. Well, the same is true in real life too. Find what you like, be it plants or plushies or pictures, and decorate your space to reflect who you are! Giving your living space a personal touch can be both fun and relaxing, and keeping different sections to their different purposes (desk = work, bed = relax) will help your well-being too.
Great tips for homekeeping during lockdown - and for after as well!
Hygiene
Now this category may seem obvious, but it is easily overlooked. Doing things like brushing and flossing twice a day and establishing a skincare routine (sunscreen and moisturizer!) are habits that take very little time day-to-day but have massive rewards. The hard part is actually sticking to it every day and maintaining that habit. Try out different methods to see what works for you: keeping a morning/nighttime routine checklist, giving yourself little rewards for meeting goals, etc. Another key aspect of hygiene is wearing clean clothes, which means building a habit of doing laundry! Marie Kondo’s YouTube channel actually has some fun tips for doing laundry and organizing your closet as well. Laundry can be a dreadful way to spend time, but making it less boring by listening to a podcast or watching TV while folding and organizing your closet can help. And if you’ve never done your own laundry, here are some simple guides to start. I promise it’s easy. Besides that, it’s also essential to get your regular check-ups: physicals at the doctor, teeth cleanings at the dentist, vision checks at the optometrist. These types of visits are almost always covered by your health insurance, if you have one provided by your parents or school.
Fitness
Perhaps one of the hardest things to do yourself is exercise. For many of us growing up, the structure of a regular fitness routine was thrust upon us: our parents signed us up for sports leagues, we had mandatory P.E. classes at school, or were expected to join one of the high school sports teams (all your friends are in one, it’ll help your college app, etc. etc.). Once you’re out of school and an adult, no one can make you work out. But getting exercise doesn’t suddenly become unnecessary. In fact, it’s probably even more important to do so, because much of adult life involves sitting at a desk all day, whether you’re studying at the library or have an office job. So if you aren’t setting up a routine for yourself, your body is going to suffer - the number of detrimental health effects from getting little to no exercise is too large to count.
The good news, though, is there are tons of ways to get your needed dose of exercise. The important thing is to get at least 2-3 hours of endurance work and 2-3 days of strength training per week. How you do this is totally up to you! It can be anything from lifting weights and running on a treadmill at the gym, to joining recreational sports leagues, to picking up fitness hobbies like yoga or rock-climbing or biking. The options are basically endless, and the only limit is what you’re willing to try yourself. For those who simply want to get their exercise in, signing up for the local gym is probably the easiest. On the other hand, joining community leagues or finding new sports to play can help you make friends and discover new hobbies. I would recommend keeping an open mind and trying different things to figure out what you like most, because it’s much easier to consistently get in your work out if you’re actually enjoying the activity itself. The important part is that the exercise is at least of moderate-intensity and that you’re doing it repeatedly throughout the week. And if you’re reading this as someone who hasn’t exercised regularly in a long time, don’t stress too much - just slowly build up a routine, and with time you’ll find it’ll be both easier to stick to it and more enjoyable.
Mental exercise
I’ll keep this one short, because we have another map on our website that actually focuses entirely on self-care, and I would highly suggest checking that out. “Mental exercise” is equally as important as physical exercise for your health and well-being. This comes in two parts: balancing your work-life balance and finding ways to enjoy your free time. The first is essential because too much work (in the form of studying, a job, or anything that requires sustained effort on your part) without any breaks will lead to burn out. Too much stress without any breaks or release will lead to mental health issues down the road.
The second part is important because you need to have ways to actually enjoy the non-work part of your day, and also because being happy is a big part of the point of this crazy thing we call life. Being an adult can often feel overwhelming - dealing with the many responsibilities and the non-stop pace of it all. Make sure to take time out of each day to do things you enjoy, like hanging out with friends or reading a book or watching TV. It may sound silly, but doing things like streaming Netflix or grabbing food with a friend are critically important for your mental health. Meditation and other de-stressing techniques can also reduce the mental burden of adult life. And of course, if you feel that you might need it, never hesitate to reach out for help. There is nothing shameful in asking for support from friends, family, or doctors.
Diet
Since so much can be discussed about cooking and eating habits alone, we’ll come back to this later on in this map. For now, just keep in mind that establishing healthy eating habits are just as important (if not more!) as exercising and taking breaks are for your health. Eating well makes doing everything else in your day-to-day much easier since you’ll have the energy needed to do all those other things too. Cooking meals at home rather than always eating is also better for your body and your wallet, but we’ll get into all that soon.
