When it seems like you don’t know who you are anymore… When worries plague your heart and mind… Find a way to unplug yourself for a little while.
Sometimes, you simply need to recharge to keep going. You need to achieve inner tranquility by engaging in mental and emotional self-care.
Stay in the present moment but also let your mind take you to a place you’ll feel more relaxed, happier, and fulfilled.
You owe it to yourself to let go of everything from time to time and focus on yourself. Focus on reconnecting and falling back in love with yourself.
What Is Emotional Self-Care?
Emotional self-care means simply accepting and understanding your emotions. It means that you’re devoted to embracing and fulfilling your own emotional needs.
I’m sure we’re all well aware, but life is not all sunshine and roses. We all encounter some bad and difficult times and emotions we have to deal with.
And the fact is that you’ll never be able to handle those kinds of situations if your emotional health has been neglected. If you are not in touch with your emotions, how will you be able to understand and handle them?
Why Is Emotional Self-Care Important?
Focusing on your inner self allows you to ally yourself with your thoughts and feelings. It helps you discover your true self.
Being aware of your emotions and handling them with deep acceptance and understanding will help you enhance your inner beauty. And that will change your life in so many positive and beautiful ways.
Also, emotional, physical, and mental health are closely linked to each other. If any of these has been damaged, it directly affects your overall well-being.
It allows you to stay in sync with others!
Proper emotional self-care allows you to stay connected with your loved ones.
If you’re struggling with understanding and meeting your own emotional needs, you’ll never be able to fulfill your partner’s, and that’s a fact.
The truth is that self-compassion allows you to be empathetic and compassionate towards others too.
On the other hand, if you keep neglecting your emotional well-being, it’ll lead you to a state of emotional numbness, which will make staying in sync with other people impossible.
How Can I Improve My Emotional Self-Care?
There are some super simple ways you can affect and improve your emotional well-being on a daily basis. The first and definitely the most important is to be honest with yourself always, no matter what.
Don’t ever seek comfort in avoiding your negative emotions or deceiving yourself that what you feel is not real. No matter how bad or good, your emotions are real and won’t go away just because you want them to.
You don’t need to change your life to improve your emotional health, but you definitely need to improve your self-care routine. Below, you’ll find some very efficient self-care ideas that I hope you’ll put on your self-care routine list.
Letting go of emotional baggage is a sure path to happiness!
Yes, you need to face all of your emotions, but that doesn’t mean you have to obsess about them. Sometimes, you simply need to come to terms with the fact that some things (and emotions) can’t be changed as much as we try.
Then, the only option you have is to let go of them. Let go of those emotions that feel like a burden to your soul.
When you feel like your life is a mess, that’s when you owe yourself a fresh start. A new beginning. The one without the emotional load and baggage that can only be holding you back.
The value of staying positive…
Have the ‘glass half full’ attitude in life. Always be optimistic and positive, and it’ll help you find the way out from even the darkest and most difficult situations.
Positive thinking will also help you get rid of all the negative energy and vibes. Your soul will feel brighter. It’ll feel relieved.
Also, don’t forget, if you think positively, positive things will happen to you. It’s simply the law of attraction: “You attract what you are.”
Emotional Self-Care Checklist
Once you cross off all (or at least most) items from this checklist, you’ll find the inner tranquility we all long for so deeply. Because, honestly, that’s the only key to a more fulfilled and happier life.
1. Morning mantras.
You have two choices: you can run your day, or the day will run you. That is, if you start your morning right, you’ll be rewarded with a positive and happiness-filled day.
Unlock your happiness and remind yourself of how strong you are and how beautiful life truly is with some empowering morning affirmations and daily mantras. Remember, the only way you’ll conquer the day is by having a good and positive attitude.
2. Stream a smile in the mirror.
Smile. As soon as you wake up, put a smile on your face. Forget about all the obligations and tasks that are waiting for you that day.
Forget about the hectic world that is waiting for you outside and focus on yourself. Look at that person you see in the mirror.
Remind her of how proud you are of her, and let her know that no matter where the day takes her, you’ll stay proud of her. Smile at her because all that person in the mirror needs is to be reminded that life is still full of reasons to be happy and smile.
3. Deep breaths in, negative thoughts out!
Unfortunately, most of us aren’t aware of the huge impact that our attitude has on our emotional health and general well-being.
Most people don’t even believe in the powerful law of attraction. But it’s real, and it’s definitely true.
If you think positively and keep an optimistic attitude, good and positive things will happen. On the other hand, a negative attitude will never result in a positive life.
4. Listen to your body, mind, & soul.
Take care of your physical health. If you feel sick, if your body is trying to tell you that it needs a rest, call in sick and don’t go to work that day.
Pay attention to your mental health too. If you’re experiencing brain fog, don’t try to fight it to get rid of it. Allow your brain to take a rest and indulge in some mental self-care to regain full mental clarity.
And nurture your emotional health as well. If you feel overwhelmed, if you feel like you can’t be around people, like your soul is pleading for help, then take some alone time. Spending time alone will help you recharge and stay in touch with yourself.
5. Say yes to your imperfect but utterly beautiful self!
This means you have to embrace yourself just the way you are. You have flaws, make mistakes, and you are far from perfect… So what? You’re just a human being, and none of us is made perfect.
Shake off that fear of imperfection by allowing yourself to be imperfect. To be a simple, flawed human being.
You need to love yourself despite all of those things that make you feel unworthy of love. Say ‘YES’ to loving yourself infinitely, despite your weaknesses.
6. Tune into your emotions…
You have to be in touch with yourself emotionally. No matter how bad, negative, and deep they are, you should never try to suppress your emotions.
Pushing those difficult emotions out of your consciousness doesn’t make them disappear. Shutting yourself down emotionally is the absolute worst thing you can do to your health.
7. Locate them…
Most people think that all of our emotions are located in our chest. Well, believe it or not, different emotions spark activities in different parts of our bodies. And that’s the link between our emotional and physical health.
Thanks to four Finnish scientists and experts and their Body Atlas, we can now map and locate our emotions easily. For example, happiness overwhelms our entire body, and anger is located in the head, and love is associated with the activity in our chest area.
8. And accept them just the way they are.
This is definitely something you need to put on the very top of your self-care needs list!
You should never try to change or push away your feelings, no matter how bad they get. Be mature and embrace and deal with all of your emotions in a healthy and productive way.
The exposure of your negative emotions will show you how strong you truly are. And whatever you’re feeling right now, you just need to know that it’s perfectly okay to feel that way.
Practice self-compassion by validating your own emotions. It’ll make you emotionally stronger and more intelligent, which will help you to stop being dependent on others.
9. Be aware of your emotional needs.
Being in touch with your emotional needs is another form of self-compassion and awareness.
First of all, you need to identify those needs. Ask yourself what makes you truly happy and what brings you inner peace… Your emotional needs are hidden in the answers to these questions.
Emotional awareness is a sure path to healing your sad soul. It’ll also help you re-establish personal boundaries and prevent you from becoming emotionally dependent on other human beings.
10. Recognize your stressors.
You need to understand that all of your emotions have a root cause. And you can’t handle your emotions until you understand what causes them.
You can recognize those triggers in a very simple way… Just learn to listen to your body.
To help you identify the sources of your negative emotions and stress, I’ll tell you that those triggers are almost always built up in your daily environment and surroundings. Sometimes, a small and seemingly irrelevant thing can put you down and fill you up with negative energy.
11. And navigate them in a productive way.
Once you find your stressors and the root causes of your negative emotions, you need to focus on handling them properly. Actually, you need to deal with those triggers if you want to permanently get rid of those bad vibes.
And keep in mind, you shouldn’t try to avoid or suppress those negative emotions. Instead, you should learn to move through them.
Cut off every person and every single thing that is blocking your inner peace. Change what you can and come to terms with those things you can’t.
12. Positive self-talk.
Life is challenging, and the truth is that we all need a bit of encouragement to keep going. We all need to have a support system that will boost our motivation to fight those challenges.
And you know who the strongest loop in your support system is? You, yourself. You need to be your biggest fan and keep supporting yourself to carry on, no matter how bad times get in life.
For this reason, you need to stop seeking validation from others and develop positive self-talk, which is one of the most important emotional self-care practices. Because you’re the freaking hero. The hero of your own life, and that is something you must never forget.
13. Cultivate your boundaries.
Having strong and clear personal boundaries is a must. It’s something that will keep the wrong people out of your life and preserve the right ones inside of it forever.
The fact is that no one can affect your emotional and mental well-being unless you allow it to them. And being a boundaries-free type of person only allows others to behave the way they want towards you.
14. Give yourself love.
Everyone should have their own customized emotional self-care plan. However, the bottom line is that it needs to start and end with self-love.
Be patient and gentle with yourself. Remember, embrace your emotions, but don’t let them control you. As much as your emotions represent a huge part of you, they are still not you.
Don’t let your emotions get the worst of you. Don’t let them make you doubt yourself or feel any less worthy.
Shut the door on self-loathing by falling in love with taking care of yourself.
15. Give love to others generously.
Once you engage in emotional and spiritual self-care, you’ll understand that love is the most important thing in the whole world. Forget about water, air, and food… No one can live without love.
Love is the fuel for your soul. And every time your soul feels tired, it only means that it has run out of fuel.
However, the truth is that you can’t be sincerely loved if you’re not ready to give love to others. True love is all about giving and receiving.
But, again, that’s the whole point of life. To love and to be loved. That’s the one and only secret to a meaningful life.
16. And receive it graciously.
If you neglect your emotional well-being, it’ll undoubtedly affect your self-esteem. In a very bad and negative way, of course.
It’ll completely wreck your self-image. You’ll feel unloved like there is not one single person in this world who loves you or, even worse, you’ll feel that you aren’t worthy of being loved.
You’ll be afraid of trusting others and letting people into your life. You’ll be afraid of love, which will eventually break your heart.
That’s why you need to take care of yourself and your emotional and mental health. You need to fight these dark thoughts and feelings.
And, most importantly, you need to allow yourself to feel worthy. Worthy of respect, appreciation, and love.
Let people into your life. Give them a warm welcome. Open your heart and let it be filled with nothing but the most exceptional, undying, unconditional kind of love.
17. Forget balance and seek harmony.
I know that we’ve all been told that we need to find balance if we want to live a more fulfilled and happier life. But, what is balance? What does finding balance mean exactly?
To live a balanced life simply means that you need to accept some things you are not okay with at all. It means that you need to accept some things that make you sad or angry to gain some other things that will fill the void… Well, that definitely won’t work for me.
Nor for any other person who truly wants to achieve inner tranquility. That’s why we need to seek harmony in life.
We need to reconnect with ourselves and with others. We should feel thankful and appreciate life for what it is… A wonderful but overwhelming journey filled with many surprises and constant exhausting crossroads.
18. Before going to bed… Meditate or pray.
Praying is definitely my favorite spiritual self-care routine. It helps me to stay connected with God and myself.
Of course, if you’re not a religious person, you can choose meditation. The only important thing is to finish your day with a bit of gratitude and a whole lot of positive thinking that will help you recharge and get you ready for a new day.
Emotional Self-Care Activities
You can also boost your emotional well-being with these simple yet undoubtedly effective emotional self-care activities.
1. Wake up with gratitude
Waking up to live for another day is a privilege, and many people are left without that privilege every single day. So, that’s the first thing you should be thankful for every morning.
This kind of mindset will ensure you always start your day off right. Being alive is truly the biggest reason to feel thankful and happy about every single moment.
2. Establish a self-care routine
For your general well-being, you need to develop a healthy emotional and physical self-care routine. And, most importantly, you need to stick to it.
All of these self-care tips I listed above are very easy to adopt. But, I guarantee, they’ll completely shake up your life and make you feel calmer and happier.
3. Deep breathing exercises
Focus on your breathing. It’ll help you relieve stress and manage those feelings of being emotionally overwhelmed or drained.
Every time you feel stressed or emotionally overwhelmed, try to calm yourself down with breathing exercises. Forget about the world around you and just focus on your breathing. Breath happiness in and breathe out all the negativity!
4. Relaxing massage
I swear, as soon as I hear the word ‘massage,’ I already feel a bit relaxed. And yes, you guessed right, it’s by far the most favorite part of my physical self-care routine.
A nice massage doesn’t only help your body relax. It can also be beneficial for your mind because it’ll distract your overwhelming thoughts.
5. Playlist of calming music
You need to make a playlist out of your most favorite songs that have a calming effect on your soul and listen to it whenever you find time for that.
Or, you can also listen to some empowering podcasts during your lunch break or before going to bed.
6. Mood journal
Keep a journal where you’ll write your deepest emotions, fears, needs, and insecurities. Let it become your best friend and confide your deepest emotions in it.
The best way to rest your heart and soul is to release the emotional load that was stuck in them for too long.
7. Meditation
This is another physical self-care tip that will improve your emotional well-being. Mediation will allow you to tap into the zen feeling almost instantly.
It’s proven that meditation has a healing power. It’ll help you relax and significantly improve your emotional and mental health.
8. Connecting with nature
Go outside and try to connect with nature. You’ll see that just a simple bird chirping can make you feel more fulfilled and relaxed.
Also, many experts agree that being in nature reduces stress and feelings of anxiety. I hope we don’t have to talk about all the benefits of being in nature for your physical health.
9. Get support from a life coach or mental health professional
If you feel like you can’t go through this journey alone, you have every right to seek professional help to guide you through this challenging process. You can also seek support from your close friends and loved ones.
Key Takeaways
I hope these emotional self-care tips will help you get in touch with your inner self. But, what I hope the most is that you now understand how truly important your emotional health is and why you should never neglect it again.
It really has a huge impact in all spheres of your life, and it influences your general well-being in more ways than you’re aware.
We all feel down sometimes, but we need to keep trying to stand up and fight. Fight to beat the emotional burnout.
I know you feel like you need a hug right now. And I’m sending you one… Unfortunately a virtual one but also a sincere and tight one. One full of support and motivation to keep going.