Focus on Self-Care 

to Enhance your Health 

Recently I have been contemplating why self-care is such a difficult task to embrace and am curious to hear what you think about this subject via my age-well-be-well.com blog. As I work with clients I'm discovering that often a combination of several factors hamper self-care.  These factors include expectations established by the current healthcare system, life balance issues and personal beliefs.  

Our healthcare system today is dominated by the diagnosis and treatment of illness and disease. This focus has resulted in our healthcare revolving largely around our primary care providers (medical doctor, nurse practitioner or physician assistant). The resulting expectation is that this provider will tell us what is wrong and prescribe a treatment or medication to cure or treat what ails us. While this medical care is essential it often overshadows the responsibility each of us has to our own self-care.

In addition, self-care requires that we increase awareness about our own health needs and take steps daily to meet them. At a basic level this requires making good choices about how we use and what we put into our body and mind. Self-care requires knowledge of what to do but also a willingness to invest in self. This "self-investment" is especially difficult when our work and family commitments demand so much of our time and energy. There often doesn't seem to be any time left over to care for self.

Taking the time to care for self not only requires an investment in our time and energy but also slowing down long enough to become aware of the needs of our body, mind and spirit. So often in the past when I found myself ill, I realized in retrospect that my body had given me messages or cues about it's needs but I just didn't listen. Sometimes I was aware of those hints and choose to ignore them. Sometimes I was going so fast that I didn't even hear them. How often has this happened to you?

Beliefs also influence our ability to commit to self-care. Perhaps early life experiences suggested serving others was valued or focusing on self was selfish. Such experiences often create underlying and unconscious beliefs that inhibit our ability to make a commitment to self-care.

Do you have any self-care goals that roll over repeatedly into your New Year's resolution? Goals like exercising more or eating better that you seriously want to do, know how to do but never actually get around to doing. If so, you are not alone but finding the capacity to actually accomplish these goals will likely require more than just more discipline. Instead consider looking deeper into what beliefs might be feeding your inaction. Explore a vision for your life based on deep values that will motivate how you want to be.  

I hope you enjoy this issue of The Age Well.  Make sure you check out the sidebar for the programs being offered this fall.  These programs provide opportunities to explore self-care on this deeper level. The health coaching offered during these small groups are also available in individual coaching sessions.  Whether you attend a group program or decide to explore individual health coaching, know that you are a taking an important first step toward self-care. Hope to see you on the journey!