Beauty Beyond Basic

Let’s think of wellness in three parts: food, movement, and mental wellbeing.

Yes, food is important. And yes, movement is necessary.

But it’s the combination of all three that can really move the needle when it comes to your overall well-being.

When we over-focus on one area at the detriment of the others, we fall out of balance.

Approaching a wellness routine grounded in self-compassion, then, allows you to forgive yourself when you miss a day or “fall off the wagon,” and will help you to build a sustainable practice that you can stick to over time.

Self-compassion is a way to disrupt self-criticism and be gentle with ourselves.

And, as it turns out, being gentle with ourselves doesn’t make us soft, it actually makes us more resilient.

Let’s reframe self-care as self-compassion.

As a way to let go of self-judgement and criticism and embrace your life with kindness and understanding, knowing that to suffer, fail and to be imperfect is completely, perfectly human.

A multi-step breakfast routine that involves 12 kinds of superfoods and a holistic nutrition degree. Or hours set aside each day to meditate, journal and work out.

Yes, these are options within the practice of self-care, but they don’t represent the only way to care and nourish yourself.

When you look around the interweb, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that self-care requires a long soak in a tub filled with flower petals and crystals.

Self-care. It’s one of those things we know we should be doing, but the idea of setting up a self-care routine can seem like just one more thing on the to-do list.