this is what great self-care looks like.

Let’s rip the band-aid off, shall we… we’ve flirted with self-care for a while now. Making pampering part of our weekly routine, using self-care as resolutions and buying glow up masks. Ginger shots and cold-pressed juices, yoga, setting boundraries with coworkers and pooshs, goops and doops regimen… self-care is a de facto life goal at this point.

Knowing how to take care of ourselfs is a sign we’re doing better than we sometimes think we are. We know how many hours of sleep we need to feel okay the next day, who to turn to when we’re heartbroken, what’s fun doing and truely feels well, what to do when we don’t feel well, ect.

But why are we suddenly obsessed with this concept of self-care as a society?

Perhaps, nowadays power is slippery, it’s liquid. It used to be passed down through family name or inheritance and now it’s called Old Money (for a reason). The power held in land, titles and property lies more in the past than the present. Wealth is now a combo of cash, reputation, and exerting your power as an individual by choosing what to buy.

Capatalism guarantees that there are thousands of ways for us to buy self-care (subscription boxes, apps, skincare and the like) and thousand of purchases that can represent who we are as unique individuals.

We express ourselves by buying stuff and with online personas built around the ‘lives’ we buy.

But newsflash, the market isn’t interested in improving our health and happiness. The market exists to sell us things. More things that we’ll ever need.

In order to create demand for this stuff, the market has to convince us we have secret, unmet needs and problems that need solving. While holistic wellbeing want us to choose to do the stuff because we want joy more than we choose to do them because we want to avoid pain. (also a great way to not let irrational thoughts ruin your life versus the-painpoint-marketing strategy sold by an ad #selfcare)

If we want to debunk the common myths about self-care and opt for a wholesome approach. We have to calling quits with the bs and the supposedly quick fixes. Taking care of your wellness shouldn’t involve fixating on an A to B problem. Because we are not built linear: our lives have their own cycles and seasons. Just like nature does.

When we allow ourselves time to process everything we are experiencing, we allow ourselves to exist in our natural state. Happiness or ‘true’ self-care becomes a choice, knowing that we don’t feel the need to make it all the time.

Here, at Whatswell we are not stuck in the illusions that “wellness” is a sustained state of well-being, joy and checking out our self-care to-do list. Funnily enough, we find in that process of non-resistance; contentment, ease. The smell of spring.

Once you have identified a few of the most important aspects of your ‘true’ self-care I would encourage you to define your values around your well-being. What qualities or attitude do you want to bring to this area of your well-being?

You could use following exercise to check in and see how closely you’re living in line with your values at the moment. The star shape has 6 measures, one on each point of the star. Label each measure with an aspect of your ‘true’ self-care that is especially important to you. On the scale of 0-10, mark a cross that represents how much you are currently living in line with your values in this area.

For example, imagine you believe that being true to yourself is the most important thing in life (aka finding your authenticity, having fun a 10 out of 10). But if you're constantly chasing the latest wellness trends or feeling pressured to be perfect, you might only be living in line with that value a 2 out of 10. Than that gives you a prompt to look at making some positive changes in that area of your well-being.

This exercise doesn't tell you what to do, but it can help you see where you might need to make some changes. It just offers paths, a overwiew of things as they are now. All this does is give you an idication of areas of your well-being to turn towards. It's a great way to get a bird's-eye view of the sometimes competing priorities.

From there, we get to choose what action we take to bring ourselves closer to the path that we want to be on.

Once you have given them all a mark, you could draw lines to join the marks and see how your star takes shape. If the star is uneven, the shorter point are the aread that need your attention. You are no use to anyone, if you are running on empty. The moment we stop nurturing and filing ourselves up, things just don’t flow quite the same.

screenshot this blank values star and try to fill in for yourself

It can be easy to feel confused about how much of our values represent our own wishes and how much they are dictated by the expectations of others. More often than not we got influenced by ads and others ideas about #self-care. This is an important issue to clarify. Working out what values our truly your own and wich ones feel imposed can reveal why certain aspects of your well-being feel less fulfilling or disconnected.

We expand when we allow ourselves to embrace, own and express who we truly are. We retract when we turn our back on our being of well, trying to be more like someone else. When we retract, we go against the flow of life.

If you see what your Self cares about, why not take a risk?

But if we are seeing things are not what we want, we know we are going to pay for it. We shouldn’t lie to ourselves. Don’t invent in people or stuff what is not there. When you buy something you don’t need, it ends up in the garage (it’s the same in a relationship). This is the message. If we know what our Self cares about, we will find it.

Well done!

Now, go outside and look at the stars and drink a glass of wine (or a glass filled with 2/3 beetjuice and 1/3 cranberry juice).