5 Tips for When You're Too Tired for Self-Care
As a teacher, you may notice that it’s pretty easy to make school year self-care plans over summer break when you’re feeling fresh. You may also notice that once the school year gets busy and your energy is zapped, that original plan may start to seem impossible.
Does this sound familiar to you? If so, you’re not alone.
Many teachers in our Beat Burnout Facebook community agreed this week that tiredness is the top thing that prevents them from achieving their self-care goals during the school year.
But don’t you worry another second, because in this post I am sharing some of my top tips to keep self-care alive during the school year, even on those weeks when you feel too exhausted to go on.
As a reminder, when I talk about self-care in this post, I am referring to all types of self-care, including movement, nutrition, nurturing relationships, engaging in creative activities, mindfulness practices, rest, etc. Before moving on to the tips, I would recommend writing down what you typically think of when you hear “school year self-care”, since it is so specific from person to person.
Once you know what your ideal self-care plan is, read on to see how you can apply these tips to your personal plan.
Let’s get into it:
Tip 1: Reframe your definition of self-care.
Oftentimes, self-care on social media or in the wellness world is equated with a strict workout plan, diet regime, or morning routine.
While I have no problem AT ALL with nutrition, fitness, or lifestyle goals, it’s the rigidity of these plans that can make things sticky.
When self-care becomes this strict extra thing on your to-do list, it can become stressful, and the thought of doing it can even become daunting. From the perspective of an exhausted teacher, it’s no wonder a plan like that often gets tossed out the window - Who needs the extra stress?
But I want you to consider that maybe you are not the problem when you feel too tired for your self-care. Maybe instead it’s your definition of self-care that needs tweaking. After all, a self-care plan that stresses or tires you out isn’t really self-care anymore!
To create a rejuvenating, energizing self-care plan, I recommend reviewing my golden guidelines for self-care:
Self-care should make you feel good - Not drained, not hangry, not guilty.
The self-care activities that make you feel good will be unique to you. Your needs are different from mine, from your coworker’s, from that social media influencer’s, etc… and that’s okay.
What worked for self-care yesterday might be different today, and that’s also okay. We have organic bodies that change day to day, and sometimes moment to moment, so the self-care we need to feel balanced should change with that.
ACTION: If you find you are too tired for your ideal self-care routine during the school year, consider: What would make my body and my mind feel good in this moment?
Sometimes the answer will be a higher intensity workout, and sometimes it will be a walk. Sometimes it will be spending time with friends, and sometimes it will be alone time and heading to bed early. Sometimes it will be eating a nutrient-dense salad, and sometimes it will be mindfully savoring a piece of cake. All of these are equally acceptable forms of self-care.
Tip 2: Consider that your body might just need rest.
As I mentioned above, self-care is often limited to food and exercise, but rest is an equally important, yet sometimes undervalued, part of the wellness puzzle.
Rest gets a really bad rep in our culture. It’s often written off as laziness even though we know how important it is to our wellness.
And even when we do rest, we often underestimate just how much we need. As if there’s a limited amount of rest we can acceptably engage in each day. So here’s your reminder that rest is just as valuable a form of self-care for your body as exercise or being social or doing all the meal prep.
If we are meeting our bodies where they’re at with self-care, then the logic goes if you’re too tired for self-care, then the self-care you probably need most is rest.
The next time you skip a workout or social event or meal prep or journal prompt, consider that you didn’t fail at self-care. Consider instead that rest is the self-care you prioritized that day, because that is what your body needed most.
ACTION: The next time you are feeling unmotivated for your self-care routine, tune in to see if your body is asking for rest instead.
Okay, that being said, sometimes the workout or the art project or the family time really WOULD make you feel better, but you have trouble motivating yourself to get going. If that’s you, then the next two tips are for you.
Tip 3: Align your self-care activities with when you are most energized.
Are you a morning person or a night owl? Do you have a burst of energy in the afternoons after the final bell? Everyone is different!
Pay attention to your energy patterns and try to align your self-care routine to that time during the day when you have the most energy. If you are a morning person, see what it’s like to get the workout in early. Do some meal prep on Sunday morning. Journal in the A.M.
If you are a night owl, do the workout at night! Get your creative juices flowing in the evenings! There is no right or wrong timing when it comes to personalized self-care.
ACTION: Toss any advice you’ve gotten about the proper time to do X, Y or Z and think about what time would work best for YOUR energy levels to incorporate your self-care plan.
I acknowledge that sometimes you won’t be able to do your self-care at the perfect time because of school day responsibilities. Head to the next tip if that’s the case for you :)
Tip 4: Scale back the intensity of your self-care plan to something that DOES feel manageable.
If you are drained and your brain is screaming that you don’t want any part of your self-care goal, then scale back that goal until it does feel manageable to you.
If that means scaling back a 45-minute workout to 5 minutes, great! Something is better than nothing.
If that means meal prep turns into choosing a healthy restaurant to order from, great! If that means you turn sprints into a leisurely stroll, great! If that means writing a book turns into writing one sentence a day, great!
Sometimes starting is the most difficult part when you’re feeling drained. And sometimes, you’ll find that if you start, you can go on for longer. But even if you don’t go on for longer - something is better than nothing.
ACTION: How can you adjust your self-care expectations for days when you’re feeling particularly tired? Write those alternate options down!
Tip 5: Make your self-care as easy as possible to accomplish.
Let’s talk about removing friction between you and your goals. This basically means you remove as many steps between you and desired action as possible so it’s easier to accomplish. When there are fewer steps between you and your goals it’s also not as mentally tiring to accomplish, which is great after a long school day.
Let’s take the example of going on a walk right after school. You could:
Change into casual attire and tennis shoes after the final bell. Walk out the school building and start walking.
Leave the school building, drive home, head inside, put work items away, choose workout clothes, change and put on tennis shoes, head outside and start walking.
Both could definitely happen, but one of them sounds way less tiring than the other.
A few more examples: If you want to read more, have the book out and next to your favorite chair. If you want to eat more fruit for snacks, have it washed and towards the front of the fridge. You get the picture.
ACTION: How can you make your self-care plan easier to accomplish this school year?
And that’s it!
I hope you found the tips from this post helpful to reenergize your self-care routine. If you did like it, make sure to share this post with a teacher who could benefit from them as well!
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What do you think? Let us know which tip was most helpful for you in the comments below.
And if you found this post helpful, make sure to share with a teacher you care about :)