Why You Should Prioritize Selfcare

A Lesson in Motivation

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The Brain and how we learn

We all know that each of us learns differently, we can’t all go through one lesson and have the exact same understanding.

This is because each of our brains goes through neuroplasticity differently. Neuroplasticity is how the brain changes (whether it’s the chemicals within the brain, the neurons and their connections, or the actual physical shape of our brain). Everything you do makes changes to your brain structure, with either a positive or negative effect. Also, everything you don’t do makes an impact on the brain as well. So when it comes to selfcare, due to our unique neuroplasticity, we all have to make choices based on our own bodies and brains. I can give suggestions and tips for how to achieve selfcare, but ultimately it’ll be your own choices that have the biggest effects.

Our brains also have long term and short term changes. Short term changes mean if you do an activity that challenges you today, you may not be able to carry that over into tomorrow, you may lose any progress. Long term changes are achieved by practicing over and over again (and the length of time will be different for each person).  So to see long term progress, you have to put the work in, over and over again, and eventually, your brain will change and therefore, so will you. Selfcare is also both a short-term and long term goal. In the everyday, we can make choices that positively affect our bodies and brains, and if we do those over and over again, we can alter ourselves for the better.

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Motivation

Just like anything worth doing, it’s not always easy to make yourself do things.

Even when we know that there’s this amazing outcome, we can literally change our brain structure! And still we will not do what it takes. There’s a really great Ted Talk with Mel Robbins where she outlines how to get what you want. She has some great key points, like how unique every single person is, how amazing it is that we in all our capacity are here right now. Then she demonstrates that no matter what we want to change in our lives, we will never want to do it. Sure it’s a great idea, but no matter what, we will never want to do it. It’s also called Activation Energy, the energy required to make yourself change from what you’re doing to something new.

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The 5 Second Rule

So to overcome this, the only way to make ourselves do something, is to force yourself, and according to Mel Robbins, you have 5 seconds to make that choice.

Once you go onto autopilot, that choice is gone, and you will continue doing whatever your body is used to doing. But there are ways to set yourself up to make that choice in 5 seconds. If we have those motivations and things we do for ourselves that make it slightly easier to make that choice, then we don’t need quite as much force.

For instance, if you have a really hard time getting out of bed, the first thing you have to do is be truthful about why it’s so hard.

• Is it that you didn’t go to bed early enough to get a good sleep?
• Do your kids wake you up in the night?
• Is it the comfort of a warm bed that makes you want to stay there forever

Now that you’ve admitted the truth to yourself, are there things you have control over?

• Can you go to bed earlier?
• Can you share kid duty with your partner so you’re not always the one getting up?
• Can you set out your slippers and a warm sweater right beside the bed so that the transition isn’t as bad?

The important part of motivation is when it comes down to it, you have to force yourself to do it but you can set yourself up to make it easier.

 

“You have to force yourself to do it”

And that’s the tricky part about selfcare, we don’t force ourselves to do it. It’s been put on the backburner for so long that our bodies don’t even have a memory of what that looks like. And that’s where Meraki comes in. I can give you the building blocks for how to start and continue to put yourself first, to make healthier habits, bring more movement into your life, help your body to be at it’s best. Ultimately though, I can’t force you to make the changes, only you can do that. You need to choose to prioritize your health and happiness, to acknowledge its importance and make an effort for yourself.