The behavior that I wanted to change/improve was doing more self-care activities, which can be a wide range of things, but essentially things that make me happy and help me de-stress, such as reading, journaling, sleeping, and doing yoga. From Friday to Monday, I logged my behavior and activities, making special note of when I did do something for my self-care. Below is my connection circle that I drew based on my observations:
Doing this allowed me to better understand what helps to increase these self-care activities, as well as what can be more detrimental to them. Something I found interesting is how social plans (hanging out with friends, calling friends and family, etc.) both increases and decreases self-care. While I love spending time with my friends and we often do fun things together, it can also cut down on my alone time and my sleep/rest, as well as leave less time for me to finish my school work, creating more stress. As a result, I think something I want to work on is developing more of a balance between my social life and my alone time (e.g., saying no to plans if I’m tired or mentally drained). I also noticed that increased social media use led to a decrease in a lot of self-care activities, especially because sometimes it’s difficult to monitor or keep track of how much time you’re actually spending on social media (for example, an hour on TikTok feels like five minutes). Limiting my screen time on social media can be very helpful, and it made me realize that my phone can still be used for self-care activities, such as reading a book, or even playing a silly game like Candy Crush.
I also made a fishbone diagram, shown below.
It was really insightful and interesting to see all of the different factors that go into creating a habit of doing more self-care. It shows that it honestly is difficult to do because sometimes the conditions really have to be right—what if I didn’t live by myself in a quiet, peaceful apartment? What if Stanford wasn’t an easily walkable campus? What if I didn’t have access to the resources/materials I need to do self-care? It made me feel grateful for what I have. While making the diagram, I also realized that the hardest, or most complicated, of the causes for me was definitely method. I think a lot of self-care stems from your mentality. When I see things like reading or journaling as a chore, it becomes less self-care, and it can even contribute to more stress. It’s important to approach wanting to do self-care with the mindset of wanting to do things for yourself and to make yourself happy rather than a list of chores or things that you have to do, but this perspective is not always easy to channel.
If I were to do this again, something I’d do differently is actually track my mood along with my behavior. It’d be useful to see how my actual mood and emotions fluctuate with the different activities that I do, and this could help me better identify what can really be considered self-care for me. In retrospect, it feels like things like getting food with friends and catching up on sleep had a large impact on my mood for the rest of the day, so it would be even more insightful to see if there are any correlations between certain activities and moods.
