You want to look after yourself better, but don’t have the time for long soaks in the bath or making beauty products that take months to ferment or blend. You want daily rituals that you can do within minutes. It’s time for a routine that you can complete within 30 minutes or less, so you can get up and get out the door as soon as possible.
The good news there are quick rituals you can do for better self-care. These daily routines are all designed to help make the most of your time.
While you want quick routines, it is important to set time aside once a week for a more detailed and intricate ritual. You want a night where you can spend an hour on yourself to replenish both physically and mentally. However, when you have minutes in a morning, you’ll want these eight quick daily rituals for better self-care.
Not all these rituals are for physical self-care. They’ll support your mental or financial health, which will improve your physical health.
Start Your Day with Cold Water and Lemon
Add a couple of slices of lemon to your drinking water and have that first thing on a morning. Of course, make sure your drinking water is clean too! If you don’t have any lemons left or you don’t have time to slice one, you can use some drops of lemon juice but natural is far better for you.
Lemon water has shown health benefits, but physically and mentally. You get a range of vitamins through the lemon juice, especially vitamin C. This will help to boost your immune system, support the fight against free radicals and improve your digestive health. At the same time, you’re adding a glass of water to your diet first thing to flush out some of the left-over toxins from the night before and hydrating your body after a night of nothing.
The lemon also makes water more alkaline, which can help to settle stomach acid levels and reduce heartburn. You also reduce the amount of acid in the digestive system, while also filling the stomach to reduce the amount you want to eat.
You’ll find it easier to wake up on a morning. The lemon water is refreshing and exhilarating. Your whole-body benefits from just one glass in a morning.
You can also fill a pitch of lemon or limes (lime water can offer many of the same benefits) sliced in water. This pitcher can be used throughout the day to replace your juice, soda or even normal drinking water. It’ll take just two minutes a day to add his ritual to start your day for better self-care.
Start Writing in a Food Journal
What are you eating daily? Just how many calories do you consume? What snacks do you eat? Knowing your food intake is important for better self-care, but many of us overlooked it. We believe that it takes too long to track our food. The truth is that it can take just 5-10 minutes a day, depending on when and how you do it. If you track after each meal, it’ll take just a couple of minutes to make a note of all your food.
When losing weight, you’ll want a food journal. You’ll need to track the amount of food you consume to help you see where you’re slipping up daily. It’s important to make sure you’re consuming fewer calories than you’re eating to ensure you burn extra and help lose more weight.
However, even when not actively trying to lose weight, maintaining a food journal is good for self-care. You ensure you’re getting a varied diet. It’s possible to see what your daily habits are like and when you’re more likely to snack. You’ll find it much easier to stick to any health goals you’ve set and improved your physical appearance.
Food journals are also good if you believe there may be a sensitivity or allergy. It’s possible to track the exact food you eat and note any symptoms you have. There will be patterns and signs that you can spot.
Track on paper or through your phone. There are now apps that you can download for free to easily track calories to make sure you maintain a healthy weight. On an app, it can take just two minutes per meal to track.
Pack Your Lunch Daily
Stop eating out for lunch. One of the best things you can do for self-care is to pack your own lunch. Not only will you protect your physical health, but you’ll also improve your financial health. It’s also worth taking your own coffee on the go to save money in the long term. Think about it; a tub of coffee costs $5-$11, depending on if you get it in a sale and the brand, and you’ll get a cup of coffee for a month from the tub. One cup of coffee from a store will cost $3-$4! You’re only getting 2-4 coffees for the same price as a big tub!
It’ll take about 10 minutes to do everything. You can prepare the food while you wait for the coffee machine! And you can always add other creamers or flavors to try something different when it comes to coffees.
When packing your lunch, you have more control over the sauces and ingredients used. You can stick to a diet or lifestyle choice. It’s easier to manage your vegan lifestyle or remain paleo or fat-free. There’s no need to discuss your food choices with others in the office, which can affect your mental health if they are constantly putting your meal choices down.
Managing your own meals can also help with the tracking in your food journal. It’s much easier to plan, helping you keep that part of the ritual to a minimum time-wise.
Eat Mints or Chew Gum During the Day
There’s a common misconception that gum and mints can damage your health, but this doesn’t have to be the case. If you get sugar free options, you can improve your overall health. In fact, you want to make it part of your daily routine to have one minty thing at least a day, even if it means using mint toothpaste on a morning! You’re either not going to add any time to your routine at all or just a few seconds as you grab the mint or pop the gum.
Mint flavors are strong and will help to clear the nostrils. You also freshen the breath and will help to boost your mental clarity. Your whole body wakes up from the scent of mint. If you don’t like to eat mint, you can use peppermint essential oil under your nose to improve your breathing.
Studies show that mint is a natural stimulant. You become more productive in the office and you can improve your mental alertness. It’s also possible to improve other cognitive functions, including your memory. Mint has also shown some benefits to the digestive system, speeding up the metabolism and aiding with weight loss. You can add a few mint leaves to your water for a new taste throughout the day.
Boost Your Physical Activity
It’s time to start wearing a pedometer. This is a device that tracks the number of steps that you take throughout the day. Make it a habit to put it on as soon as you get dressed. You can also get those that you put on the wrist, so it’s the first thing you put on after sleeping. There are others that you are wearing during your sleep, so it tracks your sleeping patterns as well as steps.
It’ll take seconds to put the device on or turn it from sleep mode to step mode. Then it takes a few extra minutes a day to track the number of steps you do and make sure you’re on track to meeting your goals. What is your goal? This will depend on your current state of physical activity, but the experts recommend getting 10,000 steps a day for a healthy lifestyle. This can be a 30-45-minute walk but can be broken down throughout the day and include the normal steps you take throughout the day.
Make improving your physical activity part of your goal. A good ritual to get into is doing a 7-minute exercise. This literally takes you 7 minutes to do the exercise and a couple of minutes either side to get set up, so you’re talking about 10 minutes in your day.
Download a 7-minute Workout app, which will run you through a range of exercises to complete. You’ll be able to work on specific parts of your body, including your core, arms, and legs. You can do strength workouts, cardio or a mixture of both. Alternating between them daily is a good way to get an overall workout throughout the week. You can also stack the workouts, so you can do two or three sessions a day if you want.
Don’t worry about doing all the exercise in one sitting. Make it easier for your fast-paced lifestyle by starting your day with a 7-minute working and then doing one at lunchtime and another one at the end of the day. You’re well on your way to the 30-minute recommendations set by the health experts.
Let the Daylight into the Room
After you’ve put your step tracker on, it’s time to do something that will literally take a minute. Open the blinds to let the natural light into the room. This isn’t just going to help wake you up, but it instantly improves your mood.
The body craves natural light. Daylight helps to boost the mental health, improving the number of happy hormones that are released around the body.
People who are depressed tend to live in darker rooms. Their mind tells them that they want the darkness to heal, but the darkness does more harm. There’s a reason why people suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and that it occurs during the winter. The winter is when the nights are longer. It can sometimes seem like there is no daylight, especially if you work full-time.
Natural light improves the perception of the day instantly. It’s also possible to improve your productivity and your ability to perform tasks. You’ll find it easier to improve your concentration levels.
The sun doesn’t even need to be shining to get all these benefits, although it does help. Just the process of daylight coming into the room will help. You get rid of artificial light and get a sense of brightness.
Create a Schedule for the Day
Many of us start a day with little planned. We know we need to go to work and there may be specific tasks at hand, but other than that there’s no strict schedule. It’s time to create one.
Knowing what you’re doing and when will help to ease the mind. Your brain doesn’t have to remember meetings or make priorities for you. It’s not a case of having to think about the next task, as it’s already written down.
It’ll only take five minutes to create your schedule. You’ll feel like you accomplish more by the end of the day, become more productive and be happier within yourself. Even if you don’t create a time schedule, just writing down all the tasks you want to complete by the end of the day will help.
When you have a large project, breaking it down into manageable tasks is also a powerful self-care routine. The smaller tasks are easier to handle. You don’t get that sense of overwhelming, which will keep anxiety to a minimum. You’ll also find that you’re more productive on the smaller tasks, so you get more done throughout the day.
Not sure what you want to achieve by the end of the day? Part of creating a schedule is looking at your goals. What would you like to improve on? What tasks need to be completed? What would you like to achieve in life? Assessing your goals will help to improve your life physically, mentally and emotionally one day at a time.
Manage Your Personal Budget and Expenses
Take 3-5 minutes to assess your personal budget. This will help you stick to a financial plan to keep your bank account in the nice, healthy black. You’ll know how much money you have available, be able to save for the future and make sure you know where your money is going.
Once a day, check that your budget is on-point for the day. Assess the amount of money you have available, where the money is going and what you’re doing. Then once a week, you can look at the weekly budget. Once a month, you want to assess the full monthly budget. The weekly and monthly budgets will take longer, so should be part of the bigger self-care, but your daily budgets will take no time at all.
You’ll also want to track your expenses. Do this daily for the day before. Grab your receipts and look at your online statements. Make a note of every single expenditure. You’ll get a better idea of where your money is going. It’s easy to overlook some of the smaller amounts, but before you know it you’ve spent $100 without even thinking! You’ll know where you can cut back on your budget when money is tight.
This will take you about 5 minutes to do. You can also choose to do it at the very end of the day when you know you won’t spend any more money. All you’ll need is a notebook or an Excel sheet. The Excel sheet will allow you to input numbers and will do all the calculations for you, speeding up the process considerably.
It’s Time to Practice Daily Self Care
Your self-care routine doesn’t have to be full of long tasks and involve making hundreds of products that you may never end up using. It’s all about small, 5-minute tasks that will help to improve your physical, mental and financial health. Using the eight tips above you’ll find your money stretches further, you have more purpose in life and your mental health receives a boost.
