10 Emotional Self-Care Ideas To Practice Daily

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Taking care of yourself is the most important factor you need to incorporate into your life if you want to live a healthy, happy and fulfilling life. And emotional self-care is no different. Today I’ll share some emotional self-care ideas that you can start practicing each day.

Emotional self-care is the process of deliberately identifying your needs and ensuring that you attend to them. It doesn’t mean that you are selfish, it only means that you care about yourself.

Although there are various ways you can practice self-care, one important way that most people neglect is emotional self-care. This is very important in being mentally healthy. It helps you to get things done more easily and manage your anxieties and depression well.

Emotional self-care ideas

Practicing emotional self-care will help you to manage your emotions, welcome positive energy into your life and let go of negative energy.

Although most of our emotions are as a result of situations, memories and experiences from the past, projecting into the future, we need to take note of them. Instead of avoiding them or transferring the aggression on others.

Without any further ado, below are 10 emotional self-care ideas you need to practice daily in order to live a happy and healthy life!

1. Be honest with yourself

One important emotional self-care practice is to be honest with yourself in all you do. Be truthful to yourself about how you really feel and don’t make excuses. Ask yourself if there are some things in the past that are holding you back and you need to let go off. You may be focusing on the negative things in your life instead of being positive and this is sure to affect your emotional well-being.

Hiding your feelings will only mean that you keep living out the same unhealthy patterns over and over again.

2. Practice forgiveness

Forgiveness is a very important practice that everyone should emulate.

The importance of forgiving yourself for your past mistakes and forgiving others for any mistake they may have made against you cannot be overemphasized.

We have all made mistakes at one point of our lives or the other. You may have done things you are not proud of in the past and feel guilty about it. But you need to learn to forgive yourself for these mistakes and move on with your life.

Also, someone must have offended you at one point or the other, but you must learn to let go of these grudges, forgive them and forget.

There is no way you can move forward if you don’t forgive yourself and others for the mistakes made in the past. Dwelling on them would only make you keep hurting yourself and this is very bad for your emotional well-being.

3. Eliminate any form of negativity from your life

Another emotional self-care idea that everyone should practice daily is eliminating any form of negativity from your life. Negativity could come in the form of your thoughts, the content you read or hear, the people you associate with, the words you say or how you view yourself.

Being negative or having any form of Negativity around you, drains you of your energy, which is why you need to stay away from it totally.

Think of yourself in a positive light, say good things to yourself. When people compliment you, accept it and don’t try to beat yourself down. Associate with people who motivate and inspire you to be better. If you have negative people around you, stay away from them as much as you can.

Learn to consume content that is positivity inclined. This could mean listening to motivational and personal development podcasts and audiobooks or reading books in these aspects.

If you don’t have positive people in your life to spend time with, it is very important that you consume positive content.

Don’t stay on social media all day trying to compare yourself to those you see online and dwelling on how imperfect your life is. Instead, use that time to do something that would take you a step further into the direction of your goals and dreams.

Try to be positive always and let this also rub off on people around you.

4. Stay healthy

Staying healthy is a very important part of your emotional self-care practice. There is no way you can be emotionally fit if you are not physically fit or if your body is not healthy. This is why you must always ensure to take your health seriously.

Create a healthy diet for yourself and stick to it. Eat healthy food and cut down on your intake of carbohydrates and sugar. Stay away from junk food as much as you can, cut down on your intake of carbonated drinks and take water instead. Eat fruits and vegetables as well!

Think about those unhealthy foods you have been taking for a long time now and make a conscious effort to cut down on them or cut them out completely.

If you smoke or take excessive alcohol, push yourself hard to cut back on it or stop it completely. It’s great to be hardworking (kudos!), but you need to know when to get some rest. Give your body enough rest and sleep well.

These small changes are sure to make a huge impact on your overall emotional wellbeing and mental health.

5. Prioritize yourself

Contrary to popular belief, putting yourself first is not a selfish act.

In fact, before you can love or care about anyone else, you need to love and take care of yourself first.

Don’t feel guilty about putting yourself first. It is a very important emotional self-care idea that you should practice religiously. Learn to say “no” when need be, because failure to do so would only cause more pressure on you which is bad for your emotional health.

You should also abstain from trying to over-explain yourself to people because you have the right to be who you are without explanations.

Not everyone would understand who you are or what you do and that is fine. In fact, people will always try to question you and know why you do what you do. But you must always take a firm stand and tell yourself that you do not owe anyone an explanation for being who you are or having what you truly want.

Stop being a people pleaser

The truth is that you can’t please everyone on earth and you shouldn’t try to (even ice-cream sellers don’t please everyone, shocking!). Just do your best and leave the rest. Do not pressurize yourself into saying “yes” to something you don’t want. Learn to protect yourself from emotional blackmail because it the best thing to do for yourself.

Learn to protect energy for yourself and don’t get engaged in unnecessary events. Your energy is an important part of you and you’ll need it when you are going through a breakdown. So you must ensure to protect it from others and for yourself.

It is only when you prioritize yourself and protect your energy that you will be able to make decisions that are beneficial to your life.

Always remember that “you come first”.

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6. Create healthy boundaries

You need to pay attention to how other people treat you and set healthy boundaries in all your relationships with people.

Every person should have a private space and a social space. You should choose those who will be allowed into your personal space and those who won’t. Setting boundaries basically has to do with creating limits in your relationship with people. It means that you are mindful of those whom you are letting into your life and making sure that they are right for you.

When you let everyone and everything into your life or you allow them get to you, then you begin to overcrowd your life and your space. Which is why it is very important that you carefully handpick the people and things that are right for you and do away with the others.

7. Practice gratitude

It is very easy to complain about the things that are not going well in your life when you are not grateful for the things that you have. This is why you need to constantly practice gratitude.

Take note of those little joys in your life as you go about your day and be grateful for them.

Write down at least three things you are grateful for daily and dwell on it, instead of always complaining about the negative things in your life. Be grateful for life, the ability to breathe, being able to use your body organs, having access to food (and the internet).

Quit dwelling on the things that are not going well in your life. Instead, focus on how to make things better for yourself.

8. Feel free to express how you feel

When you are not okay with how certain things are going in your life, feel free to express how you feel without feeling guilty or embarrassed about it. Always ensure that you don’t bottle up how you feel inside you. Be clear and transparent with your feelings because it is very important for your emotional well-being.

You may get overwhelmed with things at one point or the other, don’t be afraid or shy to let out how you feel. Talk to a trusted friend or loved one about it, or you may prefer the help of a psychologist, therapist, coach, or other mental health professional if you have to. You can even cry your eyes out if that will help to reduce the burden you are carrying.

Sometimes you may unconsciously give yourself a negative self-talk, but talking it out and speaking to someone about how you’re feeling can help your emotional well-being.

It will help to give you an insight into what’s going on in your mind and help you to heal faster from any negative emotions. Talking about how you feel is very therapeutic. Am I right, or am I right?

9. Exercise

When you are physically fit, you have more energy, feel more optimistic, feel better overall and it shows in your emotional well-being.

Setting your body in motion works magic as an emotional self-care practice. It helps your body create endorphins which helps you to sleep and naturally reduces your stress level. And it could be anything, such as dancing, walking, jumping or yoga.

It also sends a positive feeling throughout. You can decide to register at a gym or do an effective at-home workout.

10. Do the things that you enjoy

Doing things that you enjoy is one of the emotional self-care ideas that you should practice daily. A very important part of emotional self-care is finding the activities that bring you joy and incorporating them into your life.

It could be dancing, writing, reading or just going out. It is always a good idea to have fun and enjoy yourself.

It’s so easy to get stuck with working and getting things done that you never take time to enjoy your life and have fun. There is a saying that goes, “all work and no play makes jack a dull boy”. You should always take out time to have some fun and do what you love.

Final thoughts

On a final note, emotional self-care ideas are limitless but you should start out with practicing the ones mentioned above daily.

Set goals for yourself and work on achieving them. Try new things and enjoy yourself while doing them. Don’t be scared to make mistakes, learn from your mistakes and move on to something better. Laugh often and do the things you love.

Learn to spend time with yourself and be happy about it. See, don’t let your happiness be based on external factors or having people around you, find happiness within yourself and with yourself.

Your journey to daily practice of emotional self-care is very important, which is why you must take it seriously. It may not be easy at first but with a conscious and consistent effort, you will achieve it. And in the end, it will definitely pay off.

Don’t forget to pin & share these emotional self-care ideas!

Hey, if you enjoyed reading about these emotional self-care ideas, please take a moment to pin it to your self-care board on Pinterest. I would appreciate it so so much!