Guest post for Gold Coast Mum

By Eva Van Strijp

You’ve probably heard the saying: “You can’t fill another’s cup if yours is empty.” Well, it’s absolutely true. Parenting can be at the same time incredibly fulfilling and exhausting. It can be both rewarding, yet totally depleting.

This is why regular and consistent self care is vital for busy mothers. It helps to maintain focus and mindfulness. It helps to keep perspective and to practice gratitude. It’s not enough to just do something for yourself every now and again.

You really need to carve out time each day to fill your cup.

So let’s take a look at the 3 keys for creating a simple, practical and effective self care strategy.

1. Support

Communicate your needs to your family and friends and enlist their support.
Let them know that you want to improve your self care strategy (or create one!) and tell them why. Ask them to help you achieve a more balanced and positive lifestyle.

After a few days of seeing you implement some regular self care, they’ll notice you’re a happier, calmer, more energetic mother and they’ll be more than happy to help you maintain the new, more peaceful you!

2. Plan

Planning is the second key to your successful self care strategy. Perhaps you could create set days on which you do specific self care tasks.
For example, you could implement Pamper Friday. When Friday rolls around and the kids are happy playing, you might take yourself off to do some pampering style self care: painting nails, waxing legs, facial mask, foot soak, bath.
The reality is that visiting the salon for these things isn’t always practical, affordable or necessary, so we have to create the space and time for them without having to make it a logistical nightmare.

(Note that I have children old enough to hold the fort while I disappear for half an hour. If yours are still little, maybe hold your pamper sessions for when the kids are sleeping or you have someone to care for them.)

Another idea could be Book Tuesday, when you head outside with the kids and let them know that this is your special reading time now. They can play while you read. You’re all together, you’re all outside, but the kids will start to understand that this is a time for their own play. Mummy will come to play when she’s finished reading.

TIP: Have a go-to list that you can grab an idea from in a hurry. You don’t want to spend your free five minutes wondering what on earth to do with it.

3. Implement

You know… it can be a bit like all that New Year planning. We buy the gorgeous wall calendar and the desk planner, the pretty post-it notes and the lovely pens, but we don’t actually implement. We fail to follow through on the most crucial piece of the strategy.

Getting the support and creating the plan will mean nothing if you don’t take action.

So: implement, implement, implement. Regularly and consistently.

Don’t just do it for a few days and then stop. Do it every day for a set amount of time and stick to it.

It will be hard. Kids get sick, we get tired, dinner has to be cooked, the washing needs to be folded, someone has to buy the groceries, take the bin out, oversee homework… and every other minute detail of parenthood.

But this is crucial. Self care is really, really important. Remember: you can’t fill another’s cup if yours is empty.

If you think you need to work on your self care strategy, why not sign up for my free Self Care Adventure? – you only need to commit 7 minutes for 7 days. You’ll be surprised at how fun, simple and rejuvenating it can be to commit to regular self care!

Eva Van Strijp

Eva Van Strijp is a mother of five, business owner and creator of Simple Life, Peaceful Home – the 8 week strategy guiding busy mothers through the process of creating and maintaining a simple, peaceful family home.

When Eva isn’t hanging out with her family or running a business, she’s eating chocolate, listening to podcasts or tending her veggie patch.