Published On: February 26, 2025Categories: Blog, Uncategorized715 words2.7 min read

New Year Self-care Goals: Devise a Plan

February 26, 2025

With the new year, it’s a good time to assess your self-care needs. To take inventory. And to see what you are (and aren’t) doing for yourself.

I went back to work after a break over the holidays, and my first day back, I found myself sitting at my desk with my head in my hands, crying. How was I going to go back to work when my house was a mess? When my chores didn’t get done? When I hadn’t had time for self-care? I wrote in my journal for five minutes and felt better, proving to myself that self-care is indeed necessary.

So it got me thinking about self-care and had me assess what I currently do. With a one-year-old and a part-time job, self-care is usually the last part of my day. Some days I write. Some days I meditate. Some days I take baths. But not every day do I incorporate self-care.

Prior to becoming a mom, my days were filled with self-care. I wrote in my journal every morning. I read. I took baths and meditated and went for trail walks. Now, I’m lucky if it even dawns on me that I haven’t done any self-care in a day. Something I’m realizing in this new year that I need to fix.

For self-care is how I’m going to not only be good to myself, but good to others too. For it is only when we take care of ourselves first that we are good to anyone else. It’s the airplane air mask theory: you have to put your mask on first before you can help anyone else. The same applies to self-care: take care of yourself first before you are able to help others.

So I’ve decided to create a self-care routine. Here is my plan:

Develop a plan. The first part of any good plan is to have one. Simple as that may seem. So here is my plan. What will you include in yours?
Clean your space. Organization and cleanliness go a long way for mental health. I find that when my space is clear, my thoughts are clearer, so one of my first steps is rearranging my office and removing clutter.
Create a routine. It’s easy to let the day slip away. Life gets busy. And self-care is often what suffers. I find that by establishing a routine that I stick to most days, I am more likely to practice self-care each day. For now, my plan is to write and to meditate when my daughter naps. Since that’s the only guaranteed time I have in the day.
Include something for your mind. For me, this is meditation. Relaxing my mind one step at a time.
Include something for your body. When I meditate, I do a body scan, focusing on each part of my body and I move through my chakras. I also count my steps with a smart watch, and I will aim to have 7,000 a workday using my walking pad and standing desk.
Include something for your soul. Writing feeds my soul in ways nothing else does, but since I don’t have a consistent routine for myself, I haven’t been as consistent with writing. Journaling even five minutes a day helps me check in with myself, so that’s where I’ll start.
Go easy on yourself. Self-care is about being good to yourself, not about rigidly sticking to a plan, so I intend to be kind to myself on days I’m unable to practice self-care. And to have days where I eat ice cream and watch TV instead. Because that too is self-care.
Aim for progress, not perfection. Any plan requires action, but again, rigidity is not the name of the self-care game. Instead, I aim to be mindful of my progress, to adjust my plan according to my needs, and to practice self-love as my number one act of self-care.