Ultimate Guide to Self-Care: 100 Self-Care Ideas

It’s cozy time.

Sick of seeing the word self-care? Me too. Merely hearing it or daring to utter the phrase makes me cringe a bit. But you know what? It feels damn good. And turns out, it may actually be doing something? Even the National Institute of Mental Health is calling out self-care for its “role in maintaining your mental health.”

The trick is to be proactive. That means practicing self-care BEFORE you feel like you’re going to have a nervous breakdown—not mid freak-out when your symbolic hair is on fire and/or you’re about to collapse from burnout. 

Self-care doesn’t have to be expensive or even very time-consuming. If you’re suffering from a severe case of the blahs, and don’t even know where to get started, bookmark this page. This is your ultimate guide to self-care with 100 ideas for a self-care day, including:

• DIY self-care ideas
• Cheap self-care ideas
• Free self-care ideas
• Beauty self-care ideas
• Sunday self-care ideas
• Outdoor self-care ideas
• Creative self-care ideas

100 Self-Care Ideas

It’s not easy to give self-care a strict definition because it means something different for everyone. Really, self-care can be pretty much anything you do for yourself to take care of both your mental health and physical health. [Source: National Institute of Mental Health]

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Does Self-Care Even Work?

We all hear about how important it is to go on a stupid little mental health walk, spend less time doomscrolling, and get regular physical activity. And while self-care certainly looks different for everyone, these three activities tend to be pretty good recommendations for just about every individual out there. 

But do these self-care ideas even do anything? They sure do.

Self-Care Reduces Stress

A 2019 study from the Loyola University Chicago found that “ongoing engagement in multiple types of self-care strategies may decrease perceived stress and influence one’s well-being.” 

It’s worth noting, however, that you can’t really “catch up” on self-care when you’re already feeling distressed and overwhelmed. Instead, the study cautions that:

“Self-care is most effective when practiced on an ongoing basis with the goal of reducing stress … As stress builds towards distress, self-care needs become more pressing but paradoxically, self-care and the ultimate prevention of negative outcomes may become more difficult.”

TLDR: Basically, you can’t put self-care on the back-burner and then expect it to “work” (i.e., reduce stress) when you need it. Self-care really can help you reduce stress and improve your overall well-being and life satisfaction—but you need to make it a habit. 

Self-Care Enhances Productivity

Taking time to focus on yourself usually comes at the expense of doing something “more productive.” Or at least it often seems that way. 

But practicing self-care can actually go a long way in enhancing your overall productivity. (Not to put the emphasis of life on just being productive, but hey—we all gotta get stuff done sometimes, right?) 

Dr. Russell Thackeray is a business psychologist and director of QED, where he provides training on emotional and mental toughness. In a conversation with Trello, he said: 

“People that look after themselves [and practice self-care] do have better cognitive ability. They do have better focus and they do have better con