How To "Self-Care" Like A Boss And Not A Buttercup

Mar 19, 2018

You just watched Khloe Kardashian lament about her woes as a tiny pedicurist primped her laquered toes. You ponder to yourself, "Hmm, some glamourously good self-care. That's totally what I need."

The truth is that there is no glamour in real, honest-to-goodness "self-care". In fact, it's usually the least exciting- but totally necessary- things you have to do in your prosaic everyday life.

Figuring out a plan to solve your financial woes. Deciding to wake up an hour earlier to accomplish a tedious goal. Cooking a healthy dinner now and then. Powering through an hour of hell at the gym. Removing yourself from a noxious relationship. Investing your time in a side-hustle so you can actually have a savings account. Learning to love yourself for who you are, so that the social pressures don't consume your life. 

These are all things we do to be a relatively well-balanced functioning adult human being. After all, being an adult is like, hard. 

The need to take intentional breaks from living to do something as ordinary as take a salt bath is this relatively new concept of "self-care", and is as foreign to our grandmothers as the term "stress" ever was. While many of us may love to go hide in a salon, a pedicure ultimately won't resolve the troubles that stress us to the point of needing self-care in the first place. Actually caring for yourself might just mean that you put on your big girl pants and decide to stand up to the ugly root of your troubles head on. Like a boss. 

A culture in which the concept of self-care is such a hip discussion is a culture that needs to suck it up, buttercup. What if you made decisions to create a life around you that alleviates or removes stress and pressures? What if you could create a life that you don't need to habitually liberate yourself from?

It is after all, possible. This often means taking action on things that you don't want to deal with, while looking your least favorite self-attributes square in the eye and devising a new plan around them. It often means not instantly giving in to your own impulses. It's time to let things go and opt for a new perspective. You will disappoint some people, and you will give things up for others. You will live in a manner that others will not, because you know it's a better path. 

It's letting yourself be rather typical, even a little unremarkable. It's sometimes leaving the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and choosing a goal in life other than having size four buns of steel. Losing the false friendships and determining how much of your worries and fears come from sitting on the sidelines of your own life. And figuring out how much of what you do every day is harmful and frankly habitual, and needs to change. 

If you find that you are regularly engaging in lifestyle indulgences masquerading as "self-care", you might just need to plug into some actual habits for well-being.

True management of your own well-being as a well-rounded adult means less emotionally driven carelessness with your life. It means making choices for the long haul. Because buttercup, that's what grown-ups do. 

Time to stop using your frenzied life as a reason for self destruction, whatever form that may take for you. It means that you no longer glance over surface feelings with quick fix "self-care", and instead dig deep into that placid unattended heart and tend to the root of the problems that perpetuate your requirement for it. There is no more time to be a victim of your own decisions, you can learn to meet your own needs so you're less dependent on those around you. Self-care is the person who is aware of the fake self-care being sold to you, knowing that truly taking care of you is more than seaweed facials and delicious pie. It is transforming yourself into the person you are destined to be, the person that's a boss and not a buttercup.

What do you think? Are you a boss or a buttercup? Let your friends see where they fit in too!