Self-care connoisseur and beauty entrepreneur Dixie Lincoln-Nichols is adept at coaching clients in how to find their most fulfilling lives. Here's her input on using the turning of a new year towards the tending of a healthier, happier you.
Reconsider Resolutions
Does the tradition of starting a new year with self-improving resolutions ever feel like a recipe for punishing disappointment? “I don't subscribe to resolutions at all for that reason,” Lincoln-Nichols says. “They're trendy as opposed to long-term and intentional, and they fall by the wayside within two or three months.”
Instead of biting off the whole year to come, she advises setting intentions on a manageable scale: daily, weekly and maybe monthly. Small increments and a repeated return to intention help stave off the intimidation of big-picture goals, which can feel like all or, very quickly, nothing.
“Decide you'll stick to something for a week, then add another, and another. Those small steps add up.”
Lincoln-Nichols is also a fan of the accountability inherent in shared challenges. Social media is replete with seven- to 30-day challenges, which can help you build the habits you're aspiring toward.
Pillars of Self-Care
Lincoln-Nichols uses a system of six pillars of self-care with clients to identify the areas of life in most need of attention.
These are sustenance, relationship, finances, recreation, purpose and restorative practices. You may be eating well, keeping fit and happy in your relationships and work, but are you carving out enough time for fun?
“We need to start with being honest with ourselves about what we need,” she says. We often know this all too well. Whether we're willing to tend to it is another matter. “Self-care is anything you do to optimize mind, body or spirit, and no self-care act is better than the other.”
The Lens of Self-Care
“I used to have anxiety around finances,” Lincoln-Nichols says. “I learned that I was looking at finances through a lens of scarcity, where fear about not having enough to get by was causing anxiety.”
Whether it's getting in shape, budgeting or finally starting therapy, fear and shame about where we're starting from makes it harder to proceed. “When you think of it as self-care,” she says, “it makes a difference.” Anxiety about money disrupts our hormonal flow and increases cortisol, just like all stress, and learning to manage it allows us to feel better and ease tension. Starting a budget could have the same kind intention behind it as running a bubble bath!
See if this perspective makes it easier to look honestly at what you want to explore.
Follow the Season
As the world around us has shed its foliage and gone into a dormant stage, we can take some tips on our own energy. “Our bodies are more in tune with the season than we know,” Lincoln-Nichols says. “We try to fight nature, while what our bodies want to do in winter is to sink, root and ground. It's a time of winding down, finishing the year well, but not adding stress, not beating ourselves up,” Lincoln-Nichols says. “Reflect on what you've accomplished and not accomplished, celebrate the wins, know that you get to try again.”
Slowing down and resting doesn't always come easily in our culture, but it's a valuable practice to cultivate energy for spring and begin to sow the seeds of our next endeavors.
Good-Time Goals
“Joy is something that we all deserve,” Lincoln-Nichols asserts. And we don't have to earn it. It's great for our health and wellness to laugh, smile and explore. “We need to revisit the way we were as children, excited on a cellular level.”
So, consider intentions to take a trip, a staycation, a new hobby. “I decided to learn to ride a motorbike,” Lincoln-Nichols says. “It brought up a lot of fear, but it was so much fun. Something I'm going to learn to do this year is jump rope.”
Find things you've always wanted to do, or want to do more of, and treat them like the integral part of life that they are!
Rituals
Be it a morning habit of journaling with tea, a family trip every year to the Outer Banks, a weekly qigong class or a monthly dinner date with friends, designing these activities with intention and calling them rituals turns what might simply be a schedule into self-care.
“It's good to have those things that you look forward to every day, week, every year,” Lincoln-Nichols says. “I am constantly looking forward to something!”
Reminding ourselves that we choose these practices and events for our well-being makes it natural to see them as something to savor, enjoy and luxuriate in with mindful attention. Try this mindset on for size in the new year and see if it brings greater ease and fulfillment.
