While self-care has been thrown around as a buzzword for a while – just ask busy moms and stressed-out workers – the strain of our world in the past two years since COVID has piqued its interest in the mainstream.

Many of us have had our lives turned upside down with changes – working from home, homeschooling children, quarantine, and the uncertainty of how sick we could get. We’ve seen friends and neighbors get ill – some not make it – and we’ve held out hope that this would all pass soon. As days turned into months and then years, we’ve found a new way of existence. As we continue with mixed messages on the next variant or how the world is coping, self-care can play a massive role in our wellness plans.

The subject is top of mind because we can feel the increase in the mental and emotional fragility all around us in some form or fashion, increasing to unimaginable levels since COVID entered our lexicon. It doesn’t appear to be diminishing. “We have an epidemic of anxiety and depression,” according to Paula Gill Lopez, Ph.D., quoted in a May 2021 article by Moira Lawler. Click the title, EVERYDAY HEALTH, to learn more.

What’s more, this issue of anxiety and depression does not begin at the leadership level. It begins a concerning number of years before beginning the climb up the executive ladder. It can begin as early as when children are at school in less-than-ideal situations. While necessary for the public’s safety, the reactions of schools and government to the Covid-19 pandemic have undoubtedly taken its toll on our youth. This may affect these children down the road. Click the title, The Effect of COVID-19 on Education, to learn more.

Dealing with COVID-19 is just one example of how anxiety and depression impacts one’s ability to function effectively. This makes restorative self-care that much more of an essential practice now.

Many coaching experts have sprung out of the woodwork, and wellness offerings are found throughout the market. In our interactions with others, topical conversations inevitably morph into those asking how we are doing.

When we stop to think about the answer and are honest with ourselves, the response may not be “fine.” Sooner or later, we question how we’ve weathered the storm and realize that maybe a bit of self-care might just be the solution.

The difference in the components of self-care is as unique as the spectrum of color given off when light hits the facets of a diamond. As you might imagine, to define all that self-care represents is an exhausting effort, impossible to accomplish in a lifetime. You could comfortably equate self-care with your life’s journey that continues to unfold and reveal itself with each breath. The breath being the ultimate fundamental and innate ability of humans to survive.

The importance of self-care for leaders lies in what each individual values, commits to, and how we live our daily lives in service to the overall well-being of the mind, body, and spirit. Our families, communities, and organizations depend on us as individuals and whole human beings. The whole of you requires your attention to live your intention to contribute.

One aspect of the whole lacking attention means the lack of the whole. Then we struggle to be all that we are capable of to function, play, work, create, and prosper as followers and leaders who get things done well.

Self-care isn’t just a spa day or vacation. It’s about how you treat yourself when achieving a milestone, consciously celebrating wins and successes, or just making it through an ordinary day. It’s about pedicures and manicures, not just to look your best, but because you love how it makes you feel.

One of the things that COVID robbed us of was experiencing the healing properties of hands on our bodies. “Of all the senses we depend on dearly to navigate the world, the sense of touch is the one that man [woman] cannot live without,” says Ron Horn MD, who is steeped in eastern philosophy and medicine in addition to his western medical training. Scheduling a massage is a great way to restore your self-care.

Everyday decisions on what you eat, where you source it, and how you prepare it are all examples of self-care. It’s the blanket you acquire because the weight of it soothes your stress while you rest. Daily walks, exercise, and stress-relieving activities are done regularly to keep yourself in tip-top shape. 

Self-care in the form of tension and stress relief prompts us to turn to meditation, yoga, Pilates, gym workouts, health club memberships, juicing, cleanses, a host of diets, breathing practices, adoption of wisdom traditions, and daily practices that minimize what harms us and maximize what heals us.

Psychologist Randi Kaufman had this to say about an often-misunderstood term related to self-care: selfish. “The act of being selfish is not the bad thing many associates with the word. Selfish means to be concerned with self.” When giving her comment more thought, it makes sense that one needs to be concerned with self for the sake of self-preservation. Our ability to be effective with concerns of the self is a training ground for effectively caring for others.

It grew in popularity and consciousness as a marketing tagline for safety first, “Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.” I’d want my savior to have the presence of mind to preserve themselves first in the event I stood any chance of making it out of a plane crash alive. They might at least breathe well enough to stay alive to save me!

Regular and well-orchestrated self-care regimes can make bouncing back from illness faster while keeping the most acute symptoms at bay or, to a greater degree, from occurring at all!

When COVID took the world by surprise and literally stopped us from living the life we took for granted, and where everything seems wonderful, I turned to meditation to provide emotional and mental balance in my new life of isolation and razer focus on creating ByronDarden.com.

Having lost my entire income stream in the matter of a weekend in early March 2020, I needed to pivot professionally in a new direction that could lead me out of the dark valley of unemployment, disease, death, and fear that permeated every corner of my life and move into the possibility of a new and bright future. As of the writing of this article, I’ve survived the tension of the civil rights movement, the AIDS epidemic, the catastrophic impact of cancers in our society, and the ravages of the Coronavirus and its increasing number of variants.

For sixteen years, I’d been an occasional meditator. That all changed in the last sixteen months, and meditation is now a daily practice I’ve come to rely on. It’s as though I found the holy grail of hope blossoming from my developed focus on the present moment. It never occurred to me that I would become so enamored, dependent, and grateful for each breath I take in each passing moment of each passing hour. Now something that seemed as insignificant as a single breath is so richly significant in and of itself to such a degree that I am humbled by simply waking each morning and thankful to experience sunset each evening.