Self care is critical for our mental and physical health. We need new ways to think about self care so we can start to feel better without feeling guilty or selfish. Follow these steps to begin taking care of yourself while you continue caring for everyone else, too.

Creating your vision for health means getting specific about who you want to be and what you want to grow into in this one life. If you are looking for a first step you can take on your journey to a life of wellness, start here.

Rest isn’t only about sitting down and resting your physical body. It’s about resting in your body as well as resting in your thoughts. We often feel guilty or selfish when we are trying to relax because our thoughts are getting in the way. Here’s how to change that and begin to actually feel better when you rest.

Learning mindfulness practices allows you to find peace in your brain, even when your kids are wrestling or bickering, very loudly. Mindfulness allows you to become aware of the positive emotions we are all looking to have more of in our lives like gratitude, joy, love and connection.

All the small actions we take toward feeling better every day really do count in our body and the way our actual cells become healthier. It’s not about the big grand gestures like going to the gym once for 2 hours. It’s about getting back to the basic building blocks of health: movement, nourishing foods, rest, stress management, quality sleep, and social connections (give out all the hugs).

For me it can be really tough to feel what we’ve been told are “negative emotions.” It’s been an ongoing practice to learn to feel emotions like sadness and anger in my body and then let them go. But the healing during this process has allowed me to feel greater “positive emotions” like peace, certainty, joy, elation, and contentment. And it was because of my son that I learned how to do this in the first place.

Many of our thoughts are old and habitual, and many of these thoughts were placed into our brains long ago in childhood. But do they serve us and help us feel good in our brain and body? Learn about becoming aware of these energy-draining thoughts and how to let go of them.

The hospital environment often triggers our fight or flight nervous system, adding stress to our bodies. It’s imperative to balance the time spent in stressed states with time spent in calming states.

I wasn’t actually doing much with all the knowledge about health I’d gained. There were many days where I felt overwhelmed with the amount of information available. Information overload led to paralysis in actually taking action toward getting healthy. That’s where a Coaching program came in to help me get started.

Treats show up in the staff break room all the time. Make a decision before you go to work if you are going to have a treat today, or not. Deciding beforehand is key.

As a nurse, caregiver, or mom, you encounter many stressful events each day. Over the years this stress can build up in your body leading to painful health symptoms if left there to fester. Learn how to release this old, harmful stress.

I stopped working out over a decade after years of being a competitive swimmer at the Division I level. I finally found my way to Pure Barre Studios. After finishing 100 classes, here are some lessons learned on motivation, thoughts, and visions of strength as I age.

Feeling better and getting health doesn’t have to be this giant, time consuming project. You are a working momma with things to do. But we can start to feel better, one step at a time.