In Elena Aguilar’s book Cultivating Emotional Resiliency in Educators, she identified the 12 Habits of Resilient Educators. At first glance of the list, I made the assumption that my weakest habit was around self-care and taking care of myself. She describes taking care of yourself as valuing and prioritizing ones physical self-care and knowing what to give our bodies what it needs to be healthy. Yup, nope. I don’t do this.
That night I came home and started following my nightly routine. It hit me. I’m actually really good at self-care. I just didn’t realize I was doing it. These routines are so intrinsic in my daily life, I had to stop and actually call them out for me to realize I do take care of myself. It’s funny because for months I’ve been hard on myself about not taking care of myself, just to realize I have been all along. It felt like an instant relief. It’s weird how much power our minds have.
Now that I’ve connected my routine to self-care, my attitude went from “Ugh, I never make time for myself… I need to” to “Heck Yah! I practice self-care every single day!” Here are my effortless Monday-Friday Teacher Self-care ideas!
1. Drink 8 oz of water while your coffee brews!
My teacher mode brain doesn’t always process I need water to survive. Talk about living in a constant state of borderline severe dehydration. Blue and I have a really fun morning routine where we run down the stairs, turn the coffee pot on, go to the bathroom, grab Nick’s coffee and a puppy treat, and sprint back up the stairs. Repeat for my coffee! I decided while Blue is outside doing his business, I needed to drink an entire class of water. When we are hydrated our body works better and there is less of a change we get sick. It’s all about taking care of our bodies!
2. Before you leave your house, play your favorite pump-up song!
If you haven’t already figured this out (if you know me in person, you already know) I’m really, really weird. A little glimpse into my weirdness is my love for remixing songs and making them about Blue. I sing these to him and Blue and I dance… almost every morning. On the hardest days of the week (Wednesday and Friday’s), I open up spotify and have a dance party before I leave for work. And yes, even my husband participates. You don’t have to have a dance party, but listening to music that you really enjoy, stimulates the positive connections in our brain. That way, no matter what is going on at work, we are building our joy and happiness neurons. This sets the stage for all the chaos to unfold and still stand.
3. 20 minutes of “you” time
I usually take my 20 minutes right before my nightly rinse-off, but every day after work I lock myself in my room. Sometimes I read books, other times I work on blogs, and often times I on-line shop. I find myself feeling like I take care of everyone around me and that is my expectation. That is an irrational thought of mine because I know it’s not the expectation, but that’s what I hold myself to. Before I started doing this, I would often feel guilty. To give me some control, I always block at least 20 minutes out for straight up alone time.
4. A nightly rinse off
I don’t even know what it’s like washing my face in the sink anymore. Every single night, I rinse off. This was a huge shift I made last year. One of my work bffs found an article about the amount of germs we take home from work. I didn’t even need to read the article because reading her face was enough for me. Before this, I would shower every couple of days. Now, I rinse off every night and shower every couple of days… aka wash my hair. I started realizing it helped center me after a long day. It’s almost like a restart in my night. I’ll come back downstairs feeling so refreshed and can enjoy some quality time with my family. Washing the germs and relaxing your soul? Rinse off’s for the WIN!
5. Nighttime skin replenishment
We’ve all seen those memes where teachers are actually 30 but look 60. I’m trying to avoid stress ruining my skin. My skin savior is anything from Kiehl’s. Every night before I go to bed, I use their midnight recovery botanical cleansing oil. In addition to working wonders on my skin, it has lavender oil that helps calm me before bed. I will literally spend 5 minutes relaxing and cleansing my face with this. After I’m finished, I complete the rest of my nighttime skin routine that includes toner, a skin-texturizer, under eye cream, and a moisturizer. My skin is replenished after my long day of teaching and I’m ready to take on the next.
Who knew I was already doing so many things to take care of myself throughout the work week. It’s funny how we can cause ourselves anxiety when we think we are failing at something… especially when we aren’t actually failing at all. What do you do for self-care throughout the work week?
