When we consciously act to promote our own overall health, it's called self-care. Health is an all-encompassing term that includes multiple facets, such as physical health, mental health, social health, and emotional health.

Physical Self-Care

These are activities that help you sustain physical health and can result in physical health issues if ignored. This includes maintaining a balanced diet, getting regular and adequate balanced exercise, staying away from habits that can cause harm and getting at least two complete sleep cycles a day. Of course, this also involves getting adequate treatments, getting tests done and getting vaccinations to stay healthy. 

Mental Self-Care

Mental self-care involves activities that keep your mind sharp, like puzzles, learning about a subject that fascinates you or learning a new language or playing a tough game. All these activities keep your mental process strong and running well as you age. Mental self-care also involves doing things that help you stay mentally healthy like stepping outdoors and getting sunlight, staying away from disturbing media content etc. 

Emotional Self-Care

Life is full of uncertainties and they eventually come face to face with us in our journey. It is important to learn and practice coping skills and consciously guide your emotions to stay in a healthy space.

Social Self-Care

We evolved as social beings and a lot of neurotransmitter chemicals in our brain that help in living a healthy life in all other aspects are intrinsically linked to social stimuli. However, society can work both ways. Finding balance and building close trusting connections is important to the sense of well-being. Everyone has slightly different social needs. The key is to figure out what your social needs are and to build enough time in your schedule to create an optimal social life.

Spiritual Self-Care

It is easy to confuse spiritual self-care with religion. However, spirituality in the health context simply refers to anything that helps you develop a sense of meaning and fulfilment. A sense of meaning may be found in different things, including family goals, a career choice or a sense of serving humanity. But, it is important to find meaning and promote it by practising skills like meditation. 

Conclusion:

Self-Care is complete only when we look into every aspect of our health. All 5 dimensions mentioned above interact with one another and when one fails, the others start failing like a domino effect. It is important to take steps to address all aspects of your health to be truly ‘healthy’.