20 Ideas to Nourish Your Life

Do you take time to nourish your life? Yes, your social, emotional, physical, mental, financial, professional environmental and spiritual health and wellbeing?

If you do, congratulations! If not, maybe it is time for some self-care? Before I start though, let’s make sure we are on the same page about nourishment and self-care!

 

What does Nourish Mean?

Nourish means to –

  • “provide with the food or other substances necessary for growth, health, and good condition.” ~ Google and Oxford Dictionary
  • to sustain with food or nutriment; supply with what is necessary for life, health, and growth. ~ Dictionary.com
  • “to provide people or living things with food in order to make them grow and keep them healthy” ~ Cambridge Dictionary
  • “To nourish a person, animal, or plant means to provide them with the food that is necessary for life, growth, and good health.” ~ Collins Dictionary

“Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort.” ~ Deborah Day

 

What is Self-Care?

Self-Care –

  • “refers to actions and attitudes which contribute to the maintenance of well-being and personal health and promote human development.” – according to Wikipedia
  • “care of the self without medical or other professional consultation.”Dictionary.com
  • “These are our daily activities in looking after ourselves. The process of looking after one’s self. Avoiding all threats and issues that may make a person face irritable and uncomfortable circumstances.”Psychology Dictionary
  • “activities and practices we engage in on a regular basis to reduce stress and enhance our well-being” ~ unknown.

A simple way to think of self-care is putting your face mask on yourself, so then you can assist others.

 

What Self-Care is NOT –

  • about adding more to your ‘to-do’ list – it can be about identifying your essential needs and then prioritising them
  • about a ’emergency response plan’ when stress becomes overwhelming and are close to burnout – it is about creating behaviours or healthy habits that you can do to nurture yourself
  • being selfish – it is about looking after yourself, so you can then give your best and provide value to the world by living your purpose and sharing your gifts.

 

The Core Elements of Self-Care

When I first started practising self-care, it truly was a foreign concept (a bit like self-compassion). For me it took a lot of “inner work” to realise that I was worthy of looking after myself, was allowed to have needs and then prioritise and nourish them.

Throughout the adventure, I started to realise the core elements of self-care were your mind, body, emotions and spirit. Following are 20 ideas to start to nourish your mind, body, emotional and spiritual self-care, however please note many of these ideas can be nourishing the mind, body, emotions and spirit at the same time.

 

5 Ideas to Nourish Your Mind

Our mind can often be overwhelmed from all of the things on the ‘to-do’ list or multi-tasking, so it is important to take some time to focus and be mindful of what is going on. Following are 7 ideas to nourish the mind.

  1. Start that thing you have been putting off – whether it is completing a simple task or starting a new project – start it. If the new project feels overwhelming, break it down in to small chunks and complete one task per day until the project is completed!
  2. Adopt a growth mindset – when you adopt a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset, you embrace challenges, learn from criticism, persist in the face of setbacks and find lessons and inspiration from others.
  3. Go offline for 1 day per week – yes truly! Take one day per week to stay offline and completely away from your computer (I often choose the weekend).
  4. Do a media detox – have you ever noticed all of the messages that are being sent your way each day? If so, remember it is always a choice on how much time you spend ‘plugged in’ to these messages. You can take time to disconnect and then reconnect later on.
  5. Allow yourself to receive – yes you may like to give, however you also have to learn to receive. It may be you start saying thank you to a compliment. What ever works for you, however allow yourself to receive with grace – giving and receiving is a flow.

 

5 Ideas to Nourish Your Emotions

This can be a tricky space as many people have forgotten how to identify and manage their emotions. Remember emotions are natural and are essentially energy in motion. Following are 5 ideas to nourish your emotions –

  1. Learn to say yes to yourself and your needs – yes, we all have essential needs and it is important to honour yours!
  2. Cultivate emotional intelligence– honour and respect your emotions, however be aware they are not really you and you can choose to let them go.
  3. Realise the importance of having boundaries – for yourself and others. Then decide to have and cultivate them.
  4. Ask for help or get support – from a coach, a mental health professional or someone you trust to support you on your journey.
  5. Accept yourself “To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh.

5 Ideas to Nourish Your Body

We know how important movement is, however how many of us do the recommended amount each day? I imagine eating nutritional food is another things we know, however do we do it? Here are 5 ideas to nourish your body –

  1. Find a movement activity you enjoy – movement doesn’t have to be competitive, it can be fun! Find an activity that you love to move your body. It could be dancing, pilates, yoga or running. What ever makes your heart sing!
  2. Prepare your meals for the week – ever find that you run out of food or are grabbing food on the run? Why not designate a day of the week to prepare your meals for the week? I often do mine on a Sunday.
  3. Start paying attention to your body – start paying attention and listening to your body. By paying attention and listening to your body, you will notice it is giving you signals in relation to how it is feeling and what it needs.
  4. Drink adequate water – do you drink enough water throughout the way? There are lots of recommendations, however find what works for you. A trick I learnt playing sport was to look at the colour of your urine. If it is too yellow you might be dehydrated.Tune in to your body and you will will start to know how much water is adequate for you.
  5. Eat when you are hungry – I know this may sound simple, however occasionally people eat when they are thirsty or emotional and not actually hungry. You can check this for yourself before you eat by asking yourself how hungry you are on a scale of 0 – 10 (0 not hungry at all and 10 being extremely hungry) and then make the decision of whether to eat or not.

 

5 Ideas to Nourish Your Spirit

Ah the spirit – how often do we forget about this part of life? What do you mean by spirit? For me, it is related to faith, trust, love, learning and remembering. It is a vital part of life and can relate to any area of your life from your career to your relationships and hobbies. Following are 5 ideas that can help to nourish your spirit –

  1. Focus on what you can control – remember we cannot control other people, we can only control ourselves, so focus on what you can control – your decision, choices, feelings, where you invest your time etc.
  2. Take time out to reflect – yes, I realise you may be busy, however reflection is important during times of change. By reflecting, I mean taking the time to review a current situation or activity, your week, day, month or year. It is a great tool that allows you to take notice and become more mindful of what is happening in your life now. If you would like some ideas on reflection, click here.
  3. Learn something new – when was the last time you learnt something new? You could start tap-dancing, playing a musical instrument or learning a language – it is totally up to you. Remember – you are learning, so be kind to yourself (yes I know some perfectionists read this site :))
  4. Practise mindfulness – yes I know mindfulness is a bit of a “buzz word” at the moment, however mindfulness is something that needs to continually be practised. Here are 3 simple ways to practice mindfulness.
  5. Start a gratitude jar – before you go to bed or early in the morning, identify 3 things you are grateful for and then put them in the jar This could be anything from the clean water you have access to or the job you have, it is totally up to you. More information is here.

 

Over to You…

What are some other ideas that nourish your mind, emotions, body and spirit? Feel free to share them below!

Remember – self-care is a personal journey and each day life is changing. So it is important to continually look after yourself (i.e. make it a habit) and reflect on your health and wellbeing.

 

If you are ready to reclaim your courage and take the next step towards freedom and opening your heartwhy not join our Toolkit?

 

Leave A Response

* Denotes Required Field