What is Self-Care?
Self-care is any necessary human regulatory function which is under individual control, deliberate and self-initiated. From this definition, you can tell that these functions are initiated by an individual and made deliberately. It means you as an individual take charge and the responsibility to manage and improve your emotional, physical, psychological, spiritual and professional health.
Practicing self-care hence entails caring for the above six domains of your health. To clear up the myth, self-care is not being selfish or self-indulging. It means taking care of yourself to make you healthier, more productive in your job, and form better relationships with others at work and at home.
Why Self-care is Necessary for Working Moms
1. Better Stress Management
Practicing self-care helps you to have high resilience and emotional control. Self-care activities include emotional care activities that will help you improve your overall emotional health and become better at managing stress.
Being a professional and a mother at the same time presents major challenges that may leave you stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. Stress can also come from trying to keep up with the pace of daily life, feelings of loneliness and isolation among others. Self care helps relieve this stress.
When you are practicing self-care, you will learn activities and strategies of calming yourself, and importantly taking the much needed time to reset, reenergize and refocus. You will learn how to make priorities and know how best to manage stress by balancing your positive and negative emotions and feelings.
By learning to identify triggers, you will be less prone to stress and other negative emotions. When you are well yourself and emotionally stable, you will have the emotional capacity to be emotionally available to others such as your kids, partner or even workmates.
Read: How to Avoid Burn Out as a Working Mom
2. Self-care Improves Work Productivity
As a working mother, you have pressures and demands to deliver at your workplace. Your productivity is tied to focus and concentration which on the other hand is affected by physical, emotional and psychological health among others. You will not be able to meet your targets or goals when you have lost focus and concentration on your work.
This is why self care is important to enhance and boast your performance. You may have realized that your focus and energy is never the same when you are not feeling well. Self-care has been very important for such instances for focus and energy.
Read: How to Create a Self-Care Plan for Working Moms
Fortunately, major studies have confirmed the tremendous benefits of practicing self-care to work productivity. Experts have proven that selfcare enhances your mental focus and allows your mind to rest, reset, and rejuvenates.
Also, these studies have confirmed that working moms that look after themselves and practice self-care have better cognitive ability than those who do not. Cognitive sharpness is also directly related to productivity at work. At this stage as a working mom, you will have the concentration and the energy necessary to effectively complete work when you practice self-care.
3. Self-care Helps you Hone your Parenting Skills
Enhanced parenting is an immediate benefit and importance of practicing self-care as a working mom. The effectiveness of your parenting skills can be gauged on many factors including the quality of time you spend with your children.
A working mother is however at a disadvantage by having her time demanded by both her work and family. Therefore the amount of time that you spend with your children is relatively low.
As such you should focus on making this time with your child quality one by practicing self-care. You will not be able to achieve this if you are stressed, irritable or emotionally overwhelmed. You need to practice self care to be in control and be available to your children.
Through the various aspects of self-care, practicing self-care makes you a better parent and partner. You will be more in control of your emotions and feelings. You will have the focus and energy to create magical moments with your children and partner during the times that you spend with them.
4. Improves Your Relationship with Self
Women tend to care for themselves last and this becomes the main reason why working moms need self-care. After job and family needs, women tend make their personal needs and personal relationship the last on the list.
When you do this, the result is that your relationship is affected and your well-being is threatened. If you don’t practice self care, you may start hating who you are, feel guilty and beat yourself over failures. You feel less at peace with yourself and where you are in life.
When you are practicing self-care however, you will establish a healthy relationship with yourself. Self-care helps you learn how to love who you are and treasure your uniqueness. Your confidence, morale and self-esteem are boosted and all aspects of your life start flourishing when you are taking care of yourself.
Self-care and self-love are major steps towards regaining control, living a happier life, and a high life quality. Also through self care you learn a lot about yourself and this gives you key insights into what you need to be the best version of yourself.
Eventually, these benefits of self care will spill over to your kids and partner and others that you interact with at the workplace. This is because maintaining a healthy relationship with yourself first is critical so that you can transmit good feelings to others.
Read: Simple Treats for Working Moms
5. Enhances Your Me-Time or “Personal Time”
One of the major challenges of working mothers is lacking enough time to themselves. “Me-time” has become so elusive to working moms who barely have enough time alone to themselves. Through self-care, you will learn the need to have time alone yourself for personal care.
Read: How to Create “Me Time” for Yourself
5. Improves your Relationship with Others
When you take care of yourself everything else falls into place. As discussed above, effective and healthy relationships with others will only result from a well-rounded healthy you. If your emotional, physical, psychological, spiritual and professional health is suffering, your value to others is compromised.
You need to fill your cup first to fill others by taking care of yourself. Without practicing self-care, and focusing on yourself first you are less likely to enjoy healthy relationships with others be it your kids, partner or other workmates. When you practice self-care on the other hand, you will improve relations with others.
Self-care allows you to be confounded with yourself and gain values that allow you to form healthy relationships with people. You will find that you become more sociable and easy to interact with.
6. Self Care Makes you more Compassionate
One of the major benefits of practicing self-care is the resulting change in moral values. Practising self-care will allow you to have compassion for other people, especially those in need. Self-care will make you a better caregiver and volunteer especially in directly serving other people. You will be motivated and inspired to do more by learning how your actions have a tremendous impact on people lives.
7. Better Overall Health
Self-care targets your emotional, physical, psychological, spiritual and professional health. Overall it aims to make you more healthy by targeting the different aspects. One of the major benefits of practicing self-care for health is high immunity and reduced prevalence of lifestyle illnesses especially stress, depression, anxiety and other emotional health issues.
How to Practice Self-care as a Working Mom
To effectively practice self-care, and reap the benefits of self-care, you need a self-care plan. A self-care plan is a thoughtfully constructed and intentionally engaged guide that will guide into promoting your health and well-being.
It includes categories on the five key areas or domains of self-care. Also it includes goals and objectives in each domain with self-care activities and how you are going to achieve them.
As such you will need a self-care routine with consistent self-care habits that work towards your goals. A self-care plan will enlarge you by building a curriculum of knowledge, skills and attitudes to support your wellbeing in the sustainable long run.
