How to do Self Care: An Ultimate Checklist to Improve Your Wellness

There is no specific ‘right’ or wrong to answer how to do self care. The name itself suggests it is highly personal and depends on the elements you want to include in life to feel at your best. Hence, any of your activities that involve looking after your physical or other dimensions of wellness fall under self care. It does not matter if it is a huge change you are drawing or is just a small incorporation.

Have you ever noticed that when you start taking care of yourself – you start feeling better overall? Thus, self care checklist helps in attaining the best wellness version. A person should work to get the answer of how to do self care like he works for any other important task.

Are you ready to incorporate an ultimate checklist to improve your wellness? Here are some helpful ways that you can use to create your own version of self care.  

Why Making a Self Care Checklist is Important?

There are lots of delusional and misleading answers on how to do self care. Taking bubble baths, buying new face care products, and getting facials can bring you temporary happiness. However, these activities cannot provide long-term benefits and essentials to attain a complete well-being state. When you talk about the word self care – it actually means practicing beneficial actions to improve your mental and physical health.

Self care encompasses numerous aspects including:

• Lifestyle
• Socioeconomic factors
• Hygiene
• Nutrition
• Self-medication
• Environmental factors

It helps to achieve and maintain a healthy and well-being lifestyle. Therefore, creating a self care checklist is as crucial as your financial needs or career growth. Making your own sort of self care checklist is going to help you without becoming a burden. Do not go for anything you find on social media or do not get obsessed with what others are doing. Instead, make it your own, distinct and comfortable version and keep moving accordingly, to enjoy a healthy life.

How to Do Self Care – Process of Creating an Effective Checklist

As there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all, how you are going to know what works for you? And how to do self care when there are so many misleading concepts. We have created a pattern that you can use to create a solid self care checklist – reflecting your specific habits, time considerations, and needs. You might need to put a little effort into developing its personal version but in the long run, this investment is entirely going to be worth it.

Wellness is Unique for Everyone — It Is Not One-Size-Fits-All

You cannot follow other people’s wellness and self-care journey. This is because everyone has distinct features according to their genes, region, living state, age, sex, and much more. And when we try to fit our feet in someone else’s feet we often fail. that’s why try to create your own pathway. You can get help from this article for better understanding.

Ask yourself a Few Questions to Understand Self Care Basics 

Incorporate a proper checklist as per your routine and needs to build a self care lifestyle. Before establishing the answer to how to do self care, first, ask a few questions yourself:

Are You Financially Stable and Feel Comfortable?

One of the critical components of taking care of yourself is managing and budgeting your household. If you are stressing about bills and house payments, your mental health is likely going to suffer. If this is the case, your first step should be to stabilize your finances to address the psychological aspect of self care.

How You are Supporting Your Physical Health?

This aspect could include:

• Practicing yoga
• Joining a workout class
• Walking around your neighborhood.

CDC recommends that a person should incorporate exercise of at least 150 minutes a week. However, what is the best form of exercise for you depends on your comfort level and interests.  

Are You perfectly Tuned with Your Emotions?

Getting a positive statement for this question is crucial to draw accurate answers to how to do self care. Sometimes we confuse ourselves with what we want and what we need. For instance, you might want to go on a vacation, but in actuality, you need some alone time for yourself. Similarly, you might want to quit your current job, but you need to maintain a boundary with your manager.

How’s It Going with Your Interpersonal Relationship?

Are you always feeling lonely or isolated? If your answer is yes, you need to reestablish your relationships with loved ones and society. There are numerous ways to work on this question like you can join a community group. You can try spending more time with your friends and loved ones. If you feel frustrated while sitting with your partner – set aside and discuss the ways you can improve this relationship.

What Makes You Feel Better in Daily Life?

This could be a very simple and casual thing. For instance, you may need to give yourself a 30-minute break from responsibilities. You might need an hour every week, away from the workplace and household chores. Or you may need a nutritious breakfast tomorrow to boost your energy levels.

What are Your Medical Conditions and Needs?

Your medical needs help a lot in establishing the answer of how to do self care. Without getting preventive measures against the diseases that your body has or which your body can get, you cannot fully enjoy self-care status. It could include numerous elements like:

• Medical screening
• Getting regular dental care
• Following a specific therapy
• Managing your medications

Consider your Physical, Emotional, and Psychological Needs

What worked for your friend won’t necessarily work for you, but selfcare is a need of everyone. For instance, if you do not have shelter and food then you cannot achieve personal fulfillment or 100% self-esteem. You need to understand and address your needs to be at your best self. Let’s have a look at the five levels of needs to make an answer of how to do self care.

Psychological Needs

Your psychological needs include everything from sleep and food to clothing and shelter. If any of them gets disturbed you cannot establish mental wellness. Some of these insecurities include:

• Insecurity of goods and enough food availability
• Shortage of food
• Issues in paying house rents
• Living with the fear of homelessness
• Standing at the edge of the financial crisis.

These needs can easily take precedence over all other aspects of living a good life.

Safety Needs

The next step is your safety. Your employment, housing state, health, and education all together make your safety level. Suppose your house does not have quality regulations or you are working in an unsafe situation – you cannot feel safe in both physical and emotional ways.

Self Esteem Needs

Your recognition and respect can directly impact your esteem level. You can reestablish it through various ways like advocating for work promotion or setting boundaries at your home.

Sense of Belonging and Love Needs

This is another important need of a person which contributes to shaping his personality. This includes:

• Intimacy and your relationships with your partner
• How strong your friendships are
• Relationships with your family members
• How strong your social connections are
• Are your partnerships going fine

The connections you have can play a vital role in setting your sense of love and belonging.

Self-Actualization Needs

The final and most important need of a person is self-actualization. When you are meeting your basic needs while practicing selfcare, you are actually equipped with every tool required to reach your full potential.

When you fulfill all these needs you actually step towards personal growth. It gets you closer to the highest level of potential. Safety and shelter security allow you to develop friendships and engage in community groups. As a result, you become able to reach your personal goals. You also get the capacity to explore your capabilities, talents, and potential. This is what you call actual self care.

By addressing your personal requirements and needs, you can get ready to implement the next step to complete the answer of how to do self care. And if you get to know that you are about to interact with a stressful schedule, you can implement this self care checklist. Which ensures you are not abandoning your health and wellness process.

Personalize An Ultimate Checklist to Improve Your Wellness

Always make sure to keep your self care checklist personal. Take your routine and schedule into consideration alongside your capabilities and preferences. Take these questions into consideration before proceeding:

• How you are keeping your self-care routine currently?
• Do you need to make adjustments to your checklist or they are working fine?
• What effective steps are missing in your checklist of self-care? Perhaps you go for a walk daily but never get the time to sleep more than 5 hours. Always keep considering the areas of improvement.
• How you are going to implement modifications into your current busy schedule? Are you able to do these things on a daily basis or will be incorporating them weekly/monthly?
• How you are and will give yourself grace while holding it accountable? Make sure to schedule check-ins and check-outs with yourself.
• How realistic your practice is? Is it going to frustrate you soon or have small modifications for the longer run?

No one knows you better than you, so it’s all up to you to create a perfect and beneficial version of the checklist. While starting this process, must pay attention to your energy and mood. If you are not feeling energetic or are exhausted, you might need to improve your sleeping pattern. Or draw attention towards other important aspects like are you taking enough nutrition?

Categories and Examples of Self Care Checklists

Keep your list attainable while creating it for your self-care. The goal shouldn’t be unreasonable and extra struggling. It should simply be about the acts to protect and preserve your health and wellness. If you find your list difficult to follow this month, make a few changes to keep it realistic.

Many of us start following a healthy lifestyle overwhelmingly and then get exhausted quickly. that’s why it’s necessary to incorporate small and effective changes to follow the gradual change. Self-care is a personal thing, so make sure to personalize your lists as per your current needs and availability.

Self-Care checklist as per Category

Physical Checklist

• Walk for some time with your friend/partner
• Have a glass of water after getting out of your bed  
• Turn on your favorite music for a few minutes and dance
• When you feel overtired take a few-minute nap
• Schedule an appointment with your physician
• Sign up for a virtual pilates or yoga class

Emotional Checklist

• Make your list of gratitude
• Learn to say no to things you don’t like working on
• Spend some quality time with your loved ones or partner
• Take a small break to meditate during the workday
• Try to avoid social media for some hours

Intellectual Checklist

• Set up a phone date with your friend every month
• Take a cooking or art class
• Ask your manager to give constructive feedback
• Read the opinion page of the newspaper
• Visit your neighborhood to interact with new people

Psychological Checklist

• Turn off your mobile and laptop one hour before bed
• Take assistance from your financial advisor by setting a meeting with him
• Make an automatic setting for your bills
• Set an appointment to take a therapy session
• Add more fruits and vegetables to your diet

Everyone’s self care checklist is different because not everything works for everyone. Here are some examples which you can use to make your checklist of self-care.

Self Care Checklist on a Daily Basis

• Practice meditation for a few minutes
• Make sure you are drinking eight glasses (at least) of water every day
• Add something to your journal before bed
• Make a positive conversation with someone close
• Choose a single goal to focus on
• Reduce processed foods from your diet
• Take fruits and vegetables more to balance a healthy diet
• Go outside for a walk
• Take a break of at least 30 minutes from technology

Self Care Checklist on a Monthly Basis

• Practice a game or hobby on weekends or once a month
• Try a different form of exercise
• Take a nap when it’s too tiring
• Review your monthly budget to make effective changes
• Try a new recipe if you are into cooking
• Make sure to renew your medication
• Make a habit of spending quality time with those you like sitting with  
• Read your favorite book
• Write down your goals for the coming month

Frequently Asked Questions