As moms, it is our job to take care of and provide for our kids. We often put our kids’ needs first and our own well-being gets neglected. Let’s take the time to think of how we can take better care of ourselves so we are in a position to take better care of our families. Here are 10 self-care tips for moms to improve physically, emotionally and financially.
Self-care tips to improve your PHYSICAL well being:
1. Getting optimal sleep: This is one of the most important self-care tips. To be able to perform optimally, think rationally and to feel good, we need to get optimal sleep. The Power of Sleep article gives 3 important reasons why we need optimal sleep and 7 strategies on how to do it.
2. Exercise: Heart and Stroke recommends “adults should accumulate at least 150 minutes of moderate- to vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity per week, in bouts of 10 minutes or more.” As a busy parent, that seems almost impossible. Try to break it up into achievable minutes. Go for a brisk walk, run a few days of the week, go to the gym, use your breaks at work to go for walk/run etc. Even if you don’t reach 150 minutes/week, whatever you can do above your baseline will help! Getting a watch that counts steps can be a huge and easy motivator to get you moving. The following are the benefits of exercise:
- Gives you more energy
- It helps to prevent unwanted weight gain and maintain a healthy weight
- It gives you a break from your kids. You will most likely be doing an exercise that doesn’t involve your kids. It’s a good time to clear your mind and to take a break from them
- Exercise helps to prevent other health issues (cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, and obesity)
- Stress relief!
3. Facial care: As we age, the wrinkles on our faces are inevitable! Protecting our skin, keeping it fresh and young will make us feel good. Invest in a good skin care regimen. Use sunscreen when going outdoors! Protect your skin from the harmful UV rays to prevent skin cancer. You may think “How does having nice skin help my kids?” If we feel good about the way we look, then it helps us to feel confident and ultimately be better for our kids.
4. And of course drink more water and eat healthily! Have you ever heard: “You are what you eat”? If you eat a healthy diet you will feel healthy. If your diet consists of fast foods and sugary carbs – this will impose on what your body will look like. Furthermore, encouraging good healthy eating habits for the whole family will help your kids learn about healthy foods from a young age
Self care tips to improve your MENTAL well being:
5. We need to take a “recess break” from our kids during the day. Take a short break (10-15 minutes) to meditate, do yoga, have a power nap, or read to recharge. The kids’ nap time is a great time to do this!
6. Learn and educate yourself on new things. Find a new hobby, continue to learn at work, or keep up with an old hobby. A great way to absorb information is to listen to a podcast or an audiobook! Listen to it when you need to drive your kids places or during your daily commute to work. It’s amazing the topics you can find online!
7. Take time every day to connect with your partner. There are only 24 hours in a day and it can all be easily spent doing things for your kids and home. Take some time every day to spend it with your partner – nurture your relationship. Communicate, spend time together and aim for a date night once in a while. The parents are the foundation of a family!
Self care tips to improve FINANCIALLY
If the parents are the foundation of a family, then the money is the stuff that binds it all together. Here are a few more self-care tips to make sure that you are making smart financial decisions for yourself and for your family.
8. Ensure that you have built up an emergency fund. Work out a budget to include saving up for an emergency fund. The emergency fund is important for those unplanned expenses – such a losing a job, medical incidences, car accident, or having to replace/repair a home appliance. Having an emergency fund will give you peace of mind and less stress to know that you can weather these unseen circumstances.
9. Work on to reduce and eliminate debt. Whatever debt you may have – student loans, credit card debt, car loan or mortgage, come up with a money plan (i.e. budget!) on how you will eliminate the debt. Getting rid of that debt will swing you and your family into financial freedom. There will be more opportunities to take your family on vacations, save up for the kids’ education, and to be able to strike those items off of your bucket list!
10. As a parent with small kids retirement seems like a lifetime away. We ultimately want to be financially ready when the time comes to retire. I’m sure many of us don’t want to be “needing” to work when we are 65 years or more because we didn’t plan and save for retirement when we were younger. Would it be smart that we aim to retire much earlier? 60? 55? 50? The other thought is that we don’t want to be relying on our kids financially when we are older. I don’t want my kids to financially be supporting me later in life. Let’s provide for our kids by being financially smart role models now. Show them and teach them how to be smart with money. In order to do that, we must focus on taking care of ourselves financially first.
You may also like:
How organizing your money will make you a budget pro
5 Tips to prevent late credit card payments
I hope to have inspired you to take better care of yourselves. Start with one of these 10 self-care tips that you want to improve on and work from there. Take care of yourself so you can take better care of your family.
You got this mama! Now, which self-care tip are you going to work on?
[…] Morning Routine for Working Moms 10 Self care tips for moms Setting Goals to Live the Life You Deserve 0 0 votes Article […]
These were excellent tips. I especially like the recess from kids. Too often we feel guilty about being away from our children.
These are some amazing tips. I’m not yet a mother but some if these are still applicable and helpful
Great post! It’s so true that as mom’s we need to take care of ourselves in order to be the best moms, wives, etc.
Thanks for sharing such a great tips.
Thank you for the wonderful tips….I feel like we all need Some self care from time to time!!
Thanks for reading Nadine! Yes we all need some self care 🙂
I’m not a mum, but I love this 🙂
Great tips! As mums, we definitely need to look after ourselves too.
Thank you! Yes, most definitely we need to look after ourselves!