Self Care

You Can't Do Your Best If You're Not At Your Best

An important thing to remember that the healthier you are, the better and more successful you will be in your placement, at your job, in relationships, etc. When you're in new surroundings, doing new things, it is easy to lose sight of some of the basics such as eating right, sleeping, getting exercise, and having social connections.  

When you first get to your placement and find out your schedule and how things work, make sure you are thinking about when you will have time to connect to yourself and others.  Plan meals, plan times when you will contact family and friends, do things for yourself that you love, be active, etc.  Make this just as much a priority as studying or getting tasks completed.  Get sleep and eat as healthy as you can.  If you can't figure out all the other things, those two things will help you but try to get some of the others in as well.  

Balance Is The Key

You will not achieve equal percentages of performing each piece of self care.  There will be times it is just not possible to get in a good workout or even a decent walk.  There will be times where your sleep just isn't happening as well as you would like.  The idea here is not to be in perfect, equal balance, but to be able to be aware enough to know when something or somethings are very much lacking in your life and find ways to get them in as often as you can.  The more balance you can achieve, the more grounded you will be and the more able you will be to perform at your placement. 

For ideas about different ideas of how to stay balanced check out some of these pages: Health/Getting Active, Mindfulness/Meditation, Sleep, Stress Management, Audio Files.