What ‘Self-Care’ REALLY Means, Because It’s Not All Salt Baths and Chocolate Cake

What’s the real meaning of self-care? It’s not always a beautiful thing, involving organizing our debts, cooking ourselves healthy meals, and enforcing a morning routine, instead of just ignoring our problems.

Most of the time, self-care means doing the most unpleasant things we have to do, such as telling a fake friend we no longer want to hang out with them, or sweating through another workout, or starting a second job to save some money, or finding a way to accept ourselves and no longer trying to achieve everything.

It’s taking mandated, deliberate breaks from your life to do simple things like enjoying a hot bath or reading your favorite magazine, and make your phone not reachable for a whole day.

In fact, self-care shouldn’t be something you remember only when you’re totally exhausted and desperately need a break from your constant internal pressure. A world where this is a trendy topic is a sick world.

The real self-care is not chocolate cake and salt baths. It’s deciding to build a life you won’t like to escape from every other day. This, in turn, includes doing things you least want to do.

Often, it means confronting your disappointments and failures and re-strategizing them. Instead of fulfilling your momentary wishes, you should learn how to let go and choose something new.

It involves making sacrifices for some people, as well as disappointing others. Simply, it’s living a life you want, even if those around you won’t understand it.

Self-care is acting regular, normal, and unexceptional. This could mean having a dirty kitchen or choosing not to focus on getting those abs or keeping up with some toxic friend.

It’s realizing how much of your anxiety and bad mood come from your existing but not developed potential. Also, how long you didn’t even know what’s happening.

The act of self-care has become yet another thing women are expected to be good at. Did you use the right filter for that ‘gram of your impeccably prepared acai bowl? Are the candles you just lit in your Snap story made from organic hand-poured soy or are they that mass-produced factory shit? And how can we stem the inevitable capitalist tide from turning something as simple as self-care into yet another thing to be bought and sold? These are all things I wrestle with as I order Dominos in sweatpants under the guise of ‘being good to myself. – a quote by Amil Niazi.

You may be disconnected from actual self-care while indulging in consumer self-care. Plus, self-care doesn’t revolve only around treating yourself. Instead, it’s realizing what’s good for your long-term wellness.

So, you should no longer use your unreasonable and hectic life to justify your self-sabotage through procrastination and liquor. Instead, it’s realizing you should take care of yourself and not trying to fix yourself all the time.

Who knows, maybe you’ll manage to fix a lot of your problems by truly taking care of yourself.

In other words, you shouldn’t be the victim of your life, but the hero! It means changing everything that makes you want therapy to recover from your life. Choose a life that feels good and not one that looks good.

It’s quitting some goals just to focus more on others. This includes being honest even if that means losing other people’s affection. In simple terms, it’s meeting your true needs to prevent you from becoming anxious and dependent on others.

Self-care is growing into the person you want to be. A person who knows that chocolate cakes and salt baths are not ways to escape life, but to actually ENJOY it!