Self-care isn’t about a bubble bath in a pristine bathroom and using the right skin care products. Self-care isn’t even knowing your self-worth. Self-care is understanding you have self-worth. It’s the understanding that you are worthy of your own time and energy, even if that time and energy is in short supply. Especially if they are in short supply.

Realizing the importance of self-care is a hard climb for some because understanding self-worth is a foreign concept. Just as financial health can be generational, so can emotional health. A parent who has a sense of self possession, a sense worthiness will more likely raise children who have their own sense of self-worth. A parent whose own sense of value is measured by how well they can live paycheck to paycheck will probably raise a child devoid of self-worthiness. Other issues being too immediate.

And if life is a daily struggle, all the more harder it is to see the value in self-care. If life feels like a heavy lift, there is little extra energy to dedicate to anywhere else but to make it to the end of the day. If the quiet time at the end of the day is set to the tone of exhaustion, there is no space to hear the beating of one’s own heart.

And listening to one’s heart is the essence of self-care. To draw the focus down and in to feel what is needed, then wanted, are the first steps in building a self-determined ritual of renewal. The life rhythm of heartbeats and breathing are brought into synchronization through inward awareness. Finding a rhythm that will become the soundtrack to life.

The simplicity of a deep breath can open the door to deeper knowledge of the vitalness of self-care. A deep breath can dissipate the stifling air of frustration. It can soften the anger of wanting and not getting. It can move a troubled mind toward a quiet serenity. A slow head roll pushes the silence down and out as it begins to permeate through the moment.

Self-care starts in the mind and ends in the heart. It is only after the heart has been engaged can the truth of one’s own ritual be found. Maybe it is a bubble bath, but perhaps that’s in a less than pristine bathroom. Maybe it’s sitting in darkened silence, or outside with the vibrance of nature. It’s anything that the heart says it needs to find its natural rhythm. But most of all, it doesn’t have to cost a thing. And the only thing to be lost is stress.