The Self-Care Practices I Live By Every Single Day

Here are five changes I made to my self-care routine that happened when I made this life-changing distinction.

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I’ve spent most of my life trying to “fix” things. Honestly, it’s why I got into the health space. I wanted to “fix” the world of health so that we could be free of our health problems.

Because I equated your health problems with your life problems. Arguably, most people believe this. That’s why you think that if you could get to a lower weight, you’d:

• Have more fun.

• Be happier.

• Experience more intimacy.

• Be more loved.

• (Fill in the blank — be honest, what does this look like for you?)

I get it, I believed this too. Which is why I wanted to save you… And by saving you, I thought I could save myself.

I’ve since learned that there are a number of problems with this approach.

1. Fixing health is often just a band-aid approach that masks it rather than fixes it. In the process, it often leads to other problems.

2. It’s a problem-focused approach, or what is considered a move-away strategy, which keeps the problem as the main character in your story.

3. Your health is really not up to me. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do or don’t believe you can do.

4. Health is often a secondary issue, not the main issue.

Truthfully, health is not the goal of life, even though most people live as if it were. But that misses the point entirely. Not to mention, it makes creating significantly harder. Not because it has to be hard, but because you’re attempting to wrap it up in something it isn’t.

Health is not the point of life.

Health is not the point of life. It’s just a tool to live your life and the purpose you were created for.

I think it’s important to put it in context. As I’ve learned the hard way, if you don’t, you’ll always be chasing something that doesn’t exist while overlooking the choice to live it out daily.

And yes, I said health is a choice, making it your responsibility.

By shifting your belief and story from fixing to choosing, you open up to so much more of life.

I recently wrote about the new era of self-care and how it’s changing. Here’s a clip from it:

The new era of self-care is really a return to the original version, or rather, meaning. It’s a motivation that honors the sacredness of life and the one who created it. In the process, it moves self-care from wishing, striving, and fixing to choosing, honoring, and owning.

That doesn’t mean you abandon action. Action is in the definition. Care is a verb. But it shifts the motivation from problem fixing to filling. From avoidance to expansion. It’s less about impressive gestures or big performance and more about quiet integration, participation, and alignment with what fills you and fuels you.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

The current state of self-care is fear-driven.

It’s why we buy books on preventing disease, search for longevity hacks, and ask, “How do I burn more, get leaner, or do more?” There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting health. But fear-driven self-care misses the sacredness of being human.

It misses the rhythms of life and the interconnectedness of all things that actually bring more life.

Self-care was never intended to be a checklist.

Making it a checklist reduces its benefit because anything done out of obligation triggers a stress response. It implies a sense of scarcity, whether by time (you have to make time for it) or perfection (if you don’t do it and do it perfectly, it doesn’t matter).

But I’ve learned true self-care is different.

When I stopped trying to fix myself, I started to see health in a new way, and that changed what I did.

Keep reading to get:

• The wake-up call that finally let things click.

• The major shift that changed how I approached health.

• The Biblical narrative that helped me see this.

• Five acts of self-care I do daily.