Have you ever thought that you need to spend time looking after yourself? Do you feel like you’ve spend most of your adult life worrying about other people? Well now it’s time to start taking care of yourself. A self-care night can be a great start but by using these self care planner ideas you can build some daily habits and routines that will give long-term benefits to your physical health and your mental health.
A self-care planner full of checklists, trackers, templates and journal pages that are right for you is a great way to build good habits and put you in the right frame of mind for a life-time of self care. These 16 self care planner ideas will help you put together a tailored planner (or you could choose an off-the-shelf planner) that will prioritize you and your needs.
Whether you prefer a physical planner, a printable self care planner or a digital planner, the following ideas and simple tips should help you choose the pages you’ll need for your own personal self-care planner. The pages you choose should reflect your own needs and it will be handy if you can add other pages whenever you need to. The best self-care planners are the ones that suit you, with page templates you can tailor to fit your personal use.
Self Care Planner Ideas : Pages To Consider
Habit Trackers
Whether you want to build good habits such as increasing your water intake or develop new habits such as developing a consistent exercise routine, a habit tracker lets you record your actions and can keep you on the right path. Having to tick a box each day to say you’ve done something can be very motivating as you won’t want to leave a box unchecked! Habits you might want to track include:
Exercise
Exercise is a must-have self-care activity. It’s well known that a brisk walk in the fresh air can really boost your mood and can help clear your mind. A tracker that allows you to track your daily exercise habits is a great addition to your planner. You can track whatever exercise you fancy doing on your habit tracker … walking, running, going to the gym, yoga or even just going up and down the stairs 10 times a day. The idea is that your tracker will help prompt you to do it regularly as part of your self-care routine.
Healthy Eating
If you’re like me I struggle to eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables per day. A good habit tracker for me would be to plan meals that include fruit & veg and have a 5 a day tracker to keep me motivated.
JOURNALS
Writing journal pages can help you understand what’s going on in different aspects of your life. By making notes each day about areas of your life you’re struggling with you may start to see patterns and understand what’s going wrong and how you can put them right.
Sleep Journal
If you’re not sleeping well then it could be worth recording your sleep patterns. A good night’s sleep can put us in a much better mood to tackle the day ahead. Do you regularly sleep badly or do you have a really restful 8 hours of sleep? A sleep journal could include what your bedtime routine was each night and then record how you slept. Keeping a sleep journal can help you spot things you’re doing that affect your sleep (like scrolling through your social media!). You can then start to build a bedtime routine that you know will help you sleep well.
Mood Journal
A mood journal could also be useful to include in your daily self care planner. A one page checklist of how you’re feeling at different times of the day, combined with a short space to record what you were doing at that time, could be really beneficial in tracking the different areas of your life that are making you feel sad, stressed or happy. It will help you understand what needs to change in your daily self care routine or what day-to-day activities you need to do more often.
Gratitude Journal
When you’re feeling down it’s easy to forget all the little things you should be grateful for. Having a gratitude journal will help you focus on the good things that you have in your life. Your gratitude journal could be a daily thing or you may want to do it weekly or monthly depending on your mood.
Reflection Journal
Some of the best self care planners include a nightly reflection journal. These could be in notebook form or bullet journal form. The idea is that you use the journal pages to reflect on your day, to record what went well and what didn’t. You can use your reflections to alter your self care plans or just as a mind dump to help you sleep better.
Journal Prompts
if you like the idea of keeping a daily journal (even if it’s just a five minute journal), but struggle to think of what to write, then a page of journal prompts would be helpful to add to your new self care planner. You can find lots of free prompts on Pinterest.
Routines
A pre-written routine can often be helpful if you have a busy schedule and don’t have time to plan. Spend some time creating routines that will help make your life easier, which will make you feel happier. Some examples of routines include the following:
Pamper Routine
Sometimes all you need is a bit of pampering. Creating your own spa session can give you a much needed pick me up. Create a page that lists your favourite pamper products and equipment and which order to use them in. This can also act as a shopping list so you’ll be ready whenever a bit of pampering is needed.
Morning Routine
Having a routine that takes you from getting out of bed to when you leave the house to go to work (or to your home office) can set you up for the day. A simple self care page that allows you to plan this routine will be really useful. Explore what things put you in a bad mood in the morning (for me it’s watching the news) and don’t include them. Add things like reading a chapter of a motivating book or listening to an uplifting podcast.
Bedtime Routine
As we already mentioned, getting a good night’s sleep is key to good overall health. Lots of things can cause you to have a bad night’s sleep such as scrolling on your mobile phone too much, eating or drinking too much before bed, or watching television programmes that make you think! Plan some self care habits that will encourage a good night’s sleep such as leaving your phone in another room, making sure the room isn’t too hot or too cold or having a relaxing bath before bed. Add these self care activities to your bedtime routine page so they start to become daily habits.
Meal Planner List
Not strictly a routine but if you include a page of go-to meals that you and your family love, then you’ll never have to stress out about ‘what’s for dinner’ again. Remember to add new favourites to your meal planner list.
If you’re looking for some small self-care changes then these Self Care : Back to Basics ideas may be just what you’re looking for.
30 Day Self-Care Challenge
If you’re new to self-care planners then a 30 day self-care challenge could give you a good kick-start.
Take a look at these self care ideas or add some of your own current self-care practices you’d like to do more often. If you have a busy schedule this month, adding one simple self care acitivity per day can be a great first step to creating an effective holistic planner.
Mood Boosters
Your mood booster page is where you create a to-do list of all the things that can help you when you’re bored, sad, lonely or stressed. It’s easy to forget about the things we can do to boost our mood when we’re feeling down, so having a mood boosting list of things to hand can quickly jog your memory and help you take better care of yourself. Mine would include: having a cup of coffee, doing a crossword or looking at photos of my grandchildren.
Bucket List
Self care planner ideas can also include things you’d like to do in the future. A bucket list page lets you list all those things you’ve dreamed about. Don’t just list exotic holidays, build in some smaller things you can do without a lot of cash or time. For instance, if you have always wanted to indulge in a relaxing experience like a Swedish Massage in Dallas, TX, or another location, consider adding it to your list. It can boost mental health just to tick a couple of things off it.
Planner Stickers
Some people find adding colourful or motivational stickers to their planner pages can really help their self care journey. You can find some really nice colourful stickers over on Etsy to suit most people’s needs. Just search for ‘self care planner stickers’.
Inspirational Quotes
If you’re the type of person that loves an inspirational quote then create a planner page that lists your favourites. If you’ve chosen a digital planner format then a link to a Pinterest board full of inspirational quotes would be very useful.
I hope you find these self care planner ideas helpful in building your own self care planner. If you need some more inspiration for your own pages then the following links should help:
14 Page Self Care Planner Bundle
