A Daily Self-care Routine to Follow During Quarantine
You’ve probably heard how important a daily self-care routine is for your physical and emotional health. Spending a little time taking care of yourself helps you perform and feel better in all aspects of your life. However, fitting time for yourself into a busy schedule can be challenging, even during normal times.
These are not normal times.
Add all the stress from the coronavirus pandemic into the mix—and self-care during quarantine becomes both more important than ever—and also trickier to manage. This daily quarantine self-care routine gives you a simple guide for taking care of your physical and emotional health during this difficult time.
Why We Need Self-care
When you’re busy caring for family, pets, your home and doing your job—and have added new tasks like cooking most meals at home and helping your kids learn online—it feels like finding time for self-care is impossible. Yes, it’s counter-intuitive, but adding self-care is not only possible, it might just make everything else easier.
For your own sake—and the sake of those around you—please don’t let your self-care routine slip. Taking care of your personal needs—including mental, physical, and emotional ones—ensures you have the energy to attend to work, family and more. In contrast, when you’re running on empty, you simply don’t have enough reserves to fuel other aspects of your life.
Practicing self-care makes you feel more grounded; it makes you a better caregiver, a better friend and a better partner. Practicing self-care also helps you manage stress, which makes you more productive and simply happier. Being stuck at home is hard enough, so self-care during quarantine is more important than ever.
Barriers to Self-care
There are many barriers to effective self-care. Once you identify which ones are affecting you, you can practice self-care in a way that works for you. Common obstacles to self-care include:
Lack of Time
With so many activities to fit in your day, it’s easy to make yourself the last priority. Consider stepping back and evaluating your priorities. What’s important to you? Why? Taking a little time to create a vision board and determine what you want out of life and what your priorities are can help identify small changes that allow time for self-care.
No Schedule.
When you have a few minutes of downtime, do you find yourself scrolling social media or rummaging for a sugary snack? Times like this could be great opportunities for self-care, but if we aren’t thinking about it, we slip into less helpful activities. Fight against this by scheduling time for self-care. Reserve time on your calendar or set a reminder.
Not Sure What To Do
Maybe you have found the time to schedule some self-care, but you aren’t sure how to spend it. This is where it helps to plan ahead with a daily self-care routine.
10 Ways to Practice a Self-care Routine During Quarantine
Quarantine self-care is important—and the best way to fit in time for yourself is to have a plan. For a well-rounded self-care routine that looks after your physical, emotional, and mental health, try these tips.
Get Dressed Up
Even if you’re staying home, put on your makeup and clothes that make you feel confident. Style your hair and wear your jewelry. You’ll feel better about yourself, look great on Zoom calls and regain some semblance of your pre-quarantine life.
Plan Your Day
Either the night before or morning of, pick the three most important tasks or goals you want to get done that day. And yes, self-care can be one of those things. Having a plan ready can help you keep your day organized and make you feel accomplished and productive without getting overwhelmed.
Drink Water
Start your day with a glass of water, maybe with a little fresh lemon juice and keep drinking water throughout the day. Staying hydrated keeps you in a good mood, staves off headaches and sugar cravings and helps your body stay healthy.
Meditate
Take a few minutes each day to connect with yourself as part of your daily self-care routine. Meditation can help manage your blood pressure as well as fight anxiety and depression. You can find guided meditations on apps, podcasts and YouTube.
Exercise
The gym may be closed, but you can still make fitness a part of your routine. Invest in a set of dumbbells or running shoes or try a Zumba® or kickboxing video. Or simply take a half-hour walk. Exercise not only helps you stay healthy and get in shape, but is one of the best ways to boost your mental health.
Take Care of Your Eyes
Being at home more often means more time spent looking at screens, whether for work meetings, helping your child with online school, using e-readers, or binging your favorite TV show. All these screens can do a number on your eye health—and it doesn’t help that your optometrist’s office closed at the peak of the pandemic. So be careful and deliberate about your screen time. Get into the habit of following the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, spend about 20 seconds refocusing your eyes on an object that’s about 20 feet away. And most important: be sure to have a yearly eye exam!
Keep a Gratitude Journal
At the end of each day, write down three things you are thankful for. These can be big-picture blessings, like your family and a place to live—or simple things that happened during the day. Training your mind to look for things to appreciate helps you find more happiness in your daily life, which helps put problems into perspective.
Take a Bath
Slow down for a few minutes and take a bath. It’s not something you need to do every day, but a luxurious bath is a great way relax and take care of yourself. Try a bath bomb or a bubble bath and turn on your favorite music—or read that book that’s been sitting on your nightstand for ages.
Clean Something
A messy home can make you feel stressed, especially if you are stuck there most of the day. Pick at least one thing to clean each day. Getting your physical environment in order, even just a small part of it, feels great and makes your home look better.
Disconnect from Social Media
Social media scrolling leads to unhealthy comparisons and it can drain time and energy you’d be better off spending on other things. Strive to limit the use of social media: try only logging in after work and avoid media before bedtime. When you are online, focus on making uplifting comments on friends’ posts and sharing things that make you happy. And if you really want to get updates on your friends’ lives, replace scrolling with a good, old fashioned phone call.
Self-care in the Time of COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has uprooted daily life as we know it—and it may be some time before things go back to normal. During challenging times, it can be hard to find the time to take care of our physical and emotional health, but taking care of ourselves is more important than ever.
Your eyes are key to helping you enjoy the world around you&mdah;so don’t put your vision health on the back burner. Visionworks offices have reopened across the country, following necessary protocols to ensure safety and cleanliness. If your local office isn’t open yet or if you aren’t ready to venture out, you can still consult with a Visionworks doctor online. If you’re ready for an in-person appointment, find an eye doctor near you. Visionworks is taking all the necessary safety precautions to provide a safe, sanitary and comfortable experience!
Information received through Visionworks® content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, medical recommendations, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your eye doctor, physician, or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
Claims regarding blue light efficiency are supported by manufacturer-provided test results.
