I know it’s nothing new to say that the “Only Good Vibes” wellness model is broken, but I wanted to say it again for the people in the back. 

As we begin a fall unlike any in most of our lifetimes, more and more emphasis is placed on self-care as the best defense against the significant emotional, physical, and psychological toll of adapting to new realities. 

Filling our emotional bucket is a deeply important part of making sure we have the emotional bandwidth to care for the people around us in a healthy and sustainable way.  How does that connect to the pop culture vision of self-care?  What is Self-Care anyways?

Through the lens of the wellness industry, self-care can be anything that makes you feel good. It is used to identify everything from meeting personal needs to avoiding discomfort. I believe that in order for self-care to be effective, we have to define our meaning.  

The best definition of Self is the version Dr. Daniel Siegel gives for Mind, which is an “emergent, self-organizing, embodied, and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information.” So if we think of Self as both a dynamic and relational process, then real self-care must go beyond the protecting, nurturing, empowering, and supporting of our own concept of who we are. It must extend to the protecting, nurturing, empowering, and supporting of our physical/social environments and each other. 

The vision of self-care as an indulgence is particularly unhelpful. Through the “self-care as luxury” lens, there are very few distinctions drawn between a superficial time-out (a glass of wine in front of the TV) and something that meaningfully nourishes our self-concept. While I’m not knocking the time-out, I also don’t think of it is particularly productive.  Productivity requires an activity to be both rejuvenating and purposeful. 

Have you ever come home from a long, difficult day and plopped down in front of the TV for hours? How do you feel afterward? Best case-scenario: relaxed and happy. Does it carry over to the next day? We often wake up with a little more energy from the time-out, but not much drive. I, personally, don’t wake up the next day feeling better about myself because of a time-out. I don’t necessarily feel bad—sometimes I feel more rested—but the experience hasn’t generated anything meaningful. 

Now think about a time when you’ve done something for someone else, worked in a garden, read a book you’ve been meaning to get to for ages…it’s different, right? We know this intuitively, but somewhere along the way self-care and self-indulgence merged—maybe because indulgence is so much easier to market than meaning.

Truly caring for the self is not just restorative—it’s additive. For it to have the biggest and most meaningful impact on our physical, psychological, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing, it must also have some sort of an outward focus. In a 2016 article , Dr. Katherine Nelson and her team found that “as people do nice things for others, they may feel greater joy, contentment, and love, which in turn promote greater overall well-being and improve social relationships and so on.” True self-care is self-sustaining: it improves our attitude towards ourselves as we engage in it. An action that produces something positive in the world is an antidote to rumination, anxiety, depression, and grief. It’s not a cure so much as the shift in perspective that allows some more light to come in.

I’m not knocking treating ourselves or taking a time out: sometimes it’s exactly what we need. And sure—self-care includes things like working out, meditation, and relaxation. But in order for it to be more than just palliative (relieving the symptoms without addressing the cause) it has to also be productive, additive, and—as often as possible—prosocial. 

Effective self-care is deep and extremely personal. What it is depends on your concept of who you are and what you believe it means to live with purpose. If you—like me—aren’t quite sure of where to start, consider the strategies below to help you clarify what meaningful self-care might look like for you:

• Make a list of your own 5 Core Values. Each day, make a list of the ways you lived in alignment with those values. 

• Identify an area of life, a cause, or a community where you would like to have an impact. Set an achievable daily goal that makes an impact, no matter how small. Keep a record.

• Describe what a meaningful day looks like to you. This can be general or a specific day. What were some of the key characteristics that made it stand out as especially meaningful? How might you turn those characteristics into daily practices to infuse each day with a greater sense of purpose?

• Think about a person in your life who lives with purpose. What about them makes them seem so purposeful? Interview them about their journey and decisions. Ask them what they do on the hard days.

The big take-away here is that the sort of self-care that sticks isn’t just a kind of spiritual oil change. Self-care that sticks—that is additive, creative, productive, and inspiring—is comprised of actions that ground us in our bodies and relationships.

This is my self-care:

It’s 7:00 PM. My daughter is under her covers, my wife is curled up on the floor snuggling a giant pink stuffed unicorn, and I’m sitting in a chair beside the bed. A book is open on my lap. It’s most likely one of the Harry Potter books. We’ve just met a new character in the book and I’m experimenting with voices, trying to find the one that fits. I try pitching it high and low; speaking loud and soft; pacing it slow and quick. My daughter starts to giggle. My wife rolls her eyes and smiles at me from behind the unicorn at the foot of the bed.

“That one!” My daughter shouts.

I go back up to the top of the page and begin it again, this time slipping into the new voice. My daughter grins triumphantly and settles back down to listen.

And I read and read and read.

I’m in the most meaningful place I could be, doing the most meaningful thing I could possibly be doing, with the most meaningful people I could possibly be with. It takes my whole attention. My phone is silenced and my focus is two sentences ahead (I have a responsibility to know which character will be speaking next, after all.)

This is how I care for my self. Totally unremarkable. Entirely unique. Meaning and purpose and presence.

A little girl and a book.