The Self-Care Lie Pt 4: Acting with Care for Self

If you missed them, make sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series.

Have you ever taken a bath? I mean as an adult, of course you did as a kid. I sure did. My mom would yell up the stairs to make sure I washed instead of just playing with my action figures. I needed her to understand that my G.I. JOES were undertaking an amphibious assault and rescue operation. But she was more concerned about me not being the stinky kid in class — a kind of care I appreciate as an adult.

What I mean is, have you run warm water into a tub and sat your cozy ass down into it, more focused on relaxation than hygiene? It’s an interesting form of slowing down that most adults don’t often do. We turn on the water to a desired temperature and let the shower head do its thing as we lather and scrub. Maybe we stand there for a few extra minutes to feel the warm water on our skin. But a full-fledged bath with our breeding parts submerged for a good soak? That’s a rare day.

It’s a nice visual, though, isn’t it? Hell, I bet you can feel the warm water on your legs. I bet you can feel it rise up your torso as you sink deeper into the water. I bet it feels really nice and like you’re taking care of yourself. There is a time when there is no better way to care for yourself than shutting the bathroom door and allowing warm water to put you into a comfortable trance. And there is a way for us to know when that’s the right decision.

It bugs me a lot that you’ve been lied to about self-care. That’s why it’s taken me four articles to dissect the bullshit and tell you the truth. As it goes with most things in human life, self-care is a complex problem solved with simple, consistent action. I’m indubitably sermonizing to the singers when I say action is necessary to solve the problem.

That said, action is often the toughest part. I laid the foundation for action during the first three articles in this series. I’ll spend this article showing you how to use that foundation for clear thinking that drives clear action so that you may consistently practice appropriate self-care. You’ll know when it’s time to sink into a warm bath and when it’s time to set aside your feelings and do the hard thing you don’t want to do.

The Very Definition of Self-Care

You’ll remember that we defined self-care as the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone’s essential being.

And we sorted out that defining our purpose and crafting our values are the two necessary steps for true self-care because true self-care requires aligning your insides with your outside. Alignment is the truest and deepest form of self-care because in each moment, and with each decision, you have the foundation to choose behaviors and environments that best serve your essential being.

Purpose, passion, reason for living gives you a north star to follow. You locate it by asking and answering, what consistently over time has provided me with the deepest sense of meaning? In the memories that question conjures, you’ll find the answer.

Values begin with self-value, which is a result of self-honesty. They are our filter for living, guiding our everyday actions toward our purpose. Our values must be lived; they must guide our decision making. Otherwise, they’re just a list of nice characteristics.

Getting to a place of self-honesty, self-value, and truly deeply loving who you are allows you to make better choices for yourself consistently and over time. That’s not soft. That’s the truth. Self-regard, however, is not something you gain by hearing nice things about yourself, or simply saying them into the mirror every morning. Like it or not, it seems that we earn our self-regard by showing ourselves that we are the person that does the thing.

I wish there was a simple upstream to downstream flow for all of this, but there isn’t. It’s a bit circular, and it feeds back and forth. The consistent action, and the consistent self-honesty are what matter and are what will take you where you want to go with the deepest care for yourself. It requires attentive living. But as you live and you pay attention and tell yourself the truth, purpose and values emerge. Then, self-care is your life and not some abstraction based solely on comfort.

However, we all need guides to help us act in the moment and to ensure that our purpose and our values aren’t just words lost in a notebook. I’ve found questions to be the best guides.

Powerful Self-Questions

We learn that self-care is about asking ourselves good and fair questions, then honestly answering them. That’s what allows us to take a bubble bath when we need it or a walk instead of doing a heavy squat workout. And it’s what gets our ass under the bar when we just don’t feel like doing it. Questions, asked daily and as needed, allow us to address our practical concerns in the moment. Should you train hard? Should you rest? Should you eat out? Should you make food at home?

Here’s the big question that lays the foundation for all the smaller, practical, and in the moment questions: Does this decision limit my ability or my options for living out my purpose now and in the future?

Asked more simply: Is this what I need right now? The word need implies alignment with values, because if you don’t value anything, you don’t need to do anything. Let’s walk through a practical example.

We’ll say you’re run ragged. Work, life, and training have beat you down. The training plan calls for an intense conditioning day. You’re searching for the energy to do it well, but you just can’t find it. However, you want to train. You look at the workout on paper, and you want to force yourself to do it. A little self-judgment creeps in. You tell yourself you’re weak for feeling how you do. Then, you decide you’ll do the workout as is. But as you begin warming up, you ask yourself, does this decision limit my ability or my options for living out my purpose now and in the future? You know if you train hard today that it’ll set you even further back, and that you wouldn’t even get what you needed out of the workout. You know that it will limit your ability and your options for living out your purpose now and in the future. So, you decide to warm up then do an easy recovery workout instead. Let’s consider this scenario from the opposite side.

Same spicy workout, and you have all of the physical resources necessary to drop the hammer on it. But you just don’t feel like doing it. Maybe you’re out of your routine or it just got late in the day, and you’d rather go home, watch The Golden Girls, and eat macaroni and cheese with hot dogs. You point your car towards home, then you pause to ask yourself the question, does this decision limit my ability or my options for living out my purpose now and in the future? You know damn well it does. So, you re-route to the gym and do what’s required.

Defining your purpose and crafting your values laid the foundation that allowed you to ask yourself that question in each of the scenarios. And each is what allowed you to appropriately answer to care for yourself the right way at the time. There are also practical forms of self-knowledge that we can use in our purpose and values-driven self-care decision making.

Use Biofeedback

I don’t always like wearing a heart rate monitor when I train, but I do love it. We can learn so much from having it on — especially when to push and when to hold back.

If you frequently wear a heart rate monitor to train, for strength sessions and conditioning sessions, you learn how your heart rate responds to different types of training depending on your recovery. For example, if you wear it while lifting, you’ll learn how quickly your heart rate typically recovers between sets when you’re recovered and have a lot of physical resources. Then you’re able to contrast that with days when it doesn’t recover at the normal rate.

Now, layer our decision-making question on top of the heart rate information. If you want to kick a workout right in the teeth, but your heart rate is telling you that’s a bad idea, you can make a smart decision for yourself. Conversely, if you don’t feel like doing shit, but your heart rate is telling you that you’re fine, you know what to do.

Using biofeedback gets you out of your head and allows for objectivity. This works well on its own. But it works even better when you’ve defined your purpose and values. The biofeedback gives you information. Your purpose and values tell you what to do with it.

It also helps to make habits out of small acts of self-care.

Make Caring for Self The First Thing You Do

Maslow was onto something with his Hierarchy of Needs. It’s tough to deal with higher order things without taking care of your basic physiological needs. We know this is true, for instance, because 1% dehydration limits cognitive abilities. Sorting out your purpose and your values and living by each is tough when your body isn’t getting what it needs. It’s also true that our thoughts and behaviors are unconsciously triggered by our environments. So, it’s important for us to act consciously to construct environments that we’re happy to have influencing us. Then acts of physiological self-care based on need just happens. And it’s as simple as drinking water as soon as you get up.

I’ve found it useful to focus on three things as soon as I wake up, hydration, movement, and mind. Maybe my simple process will help you. Here it is:

As soon as I get out of bed, I drink 16-or-so ounces of water. Then, I do some Wim Hof breathing followed by meditating on things I’m grateful for, sending out small prayers for other people, and envisioning the future I’m working to create. After that, I do a mobility routine that literally takes 90 seconds as the water for my coffee boils. I finish up by writing down three things I’m grateful that happened over the course of the past few days. I’ve found that the extra gratitude isn’t redundant and that it makes a big difference.

You don’t have to do all of this. Hell, you don’t have to do any of it if you don’t want to. But, I do know that drinking some water and doing a little movement to start your day will not only make you feel good and take care of your physiological needs, it also starts the habit and the pattern of self-care. As much as we are autonomous, we are also a critter that responds to environments based on the habits we create in them. It helps a ton to create self-care habits in the environment from which we draw our first conscious breaths every day.

It is a very big thing.

Go Care for Yourself

We’ve covered a lot of ground in this article series. I hope you’ve found it helpful. More than that, I hope it’s driven you to act. Because nice ideas and nice words are nothing without supporting action. Further, I hope that you’ve defined your purpose and crafted your values. I hope that you use powerful self-questioning to keep yourself acting in alignment. Hope, however, is not a strategy. Plan to make caring for yourself the first thing you do, and plan the time to define your purpose and craft your values. Then do the work. You’ll find that you value yourself and begin to enjoy life even more. I can’t think of a better thing in the world; it’s why we’re doing all this exercise and nutrition, isn’t it? — to get more out of life and ourselves? I’m sure you agree.

Now, go care for yourself. (And maybe take a bath.)