May Self-Care Challenge: Check In #2

Every day during the month of May I am committing to self-care. In addition, I will be keeping track of what I do every day and sharing it right here on my blog. Self-care plays a vital role in managing stress and anxiety because it helps one to fill up their own cup.

Here are the rules:

1. Minimum 20 minutes of self-care each day.

2. Workouts don't count.

3. No cell phone allowed during self-care time.

Just about halfway through this challenge I must say that getting creating with my self-care is starting to become difficult. I am working on forgiving and being patient with myself by telling myself it is ok to have the same self-care multiple days in one week, as long as I am actually giving myself a break and taking care of myself, that's what really matters.

So, here is my latest check in and how the past 7 days looked:

May 8th - Pool & Read

The weather in So Cal has been unusually dull and uncharacteristically cold this time of year so I have been trying to take advantage of pool time whenever it's actually sunny outside!

May 9th - Yoga Flow

Been working to reincorporate more yoga flows into my daily routine. I've never particularly enjoyed stretching, but I always feel so much better after a good stretch.

May 10th - Bath & Face Mask

I am really starting to see the desired changes to my skin after a couple of weeks of re-focusing on my skincare routine and I must say, the soft skin is oh, so nice!

May 11th - Bubble Bath

My anxiety was starting to reach a peak again around Friday and Saturday so I took a bubble bath with candles and the lights off and felt truly relaxed for the first time in a while.

May 12th - Massage

Who knew I was so tense?! I'm always shocked at how tense I am when I get massages, like I know going in that I have knots but it's always a surprise to find my entire body is like one tense ball of pain...

May 13th - Bubble Bath

In hopes and with success, I wanted to recreate the effect that I got from Saturday's bath and it felt AMAZING! I've also recently learned that baths, if warm enough, can also burn calories!

May 14th - Face Mask

Consistency is key with so many things and especially with skincare. I try to space out my skincare so that it's not all focused on a couple of back to back days in the week. I notice I see the best results when I do it this way!