Media telling us we need to engage in self-care is seemingly everywhere these days. What they tend to mean by self-care is mostly all about taking little breaks for ourselves—a 10-minute meditation during lunch, or 10 minutes of journalling before bed, or maybe even a massage on an all-out-Me kind of day.

That’s one way to look at it, and goodness knows that in our overly stressed, overly busy, overly demanding world, little breaks matter a great deal.

But, there’s another way of looking at self-care that is longer-lasting and, in my opinion, more significant.

It involves doing the important daily tasks. Here’s what I mean:

Picture for yourself a cute toddler or preschooler. They’re usually absolutely adorable and utterly dependent on a loving person to care for them.

In a healthy situation, that loving caregiver probably structures the child’s day. There are regular times for getting up, taking naps, and going to bed. There’s bath time. There’s healthy, real food served at regular times of day. There is physical activity—maybe a walk or time at the park, or even just jumping around the room on a rainy, cold day. There are lots of snuggles. And story time. Creative time to draw, paint, or craft in some way. There’s music, most likely. There’s goofiness and giggles. There’s an authority figure to provide safety and, when things go wrong, comfort. That authority/safety figure also takes the toddler to a professional provider for care when needed.

That’s what caring for a child looks like at its finest.

But, if you’re reading this, I bet you’re not a child. Yet despite growing up, you remain worthy of good care.

Who’s taking care of you? In the end, it’s mostly just you. You are doing self-care every day, and my guess is that it doesn’t look nearly as wonderful or perfect as the care-taking I described above.

Perhaps it’s time to change that, because self-care at its deepest level isn’t just about candles or bubble baths or even just regular massages. It’s about creating structures and following healthy habits for sleeping, eating, moving, working, and tending to one’s spiritual and mental well-being.

Those are hard things when the world both pushes us to be perfect and simultaneously drives us crazy.

A few years ago, my favorite nutritionist gave me good life advice without meaning to do so. She said that when she has clients who are eating the Standard American Diet (which is pretty horrific), she starts their enormous shift by adding in one small thing a day instead of demanding that they go cold turkey and never eat anything non-nutritious ever again. She advises them to start the habit of just eating an apple or other piece of fruit to their day, as many days as they can, until enjoying fruit becomes a habit. Then it might be to add a yummy vegetable of their choice. And, it snowballs from there so that within a year, that person is eating well (not perfect, but well) and experiencing better health.

I think this advice of adding in one small thing makes sense in creating any new habit, and I’m sure you can use your imagination to apply this idea to any area in which you want to improve your true self-care, those places where you have to do hard things to be good to yourself, like sticking to a reasonable bed time.

My world, of course, is stress reduction. My approach to neurofeedback is nurturing, not just technology. If you’ve reached the breaking point and know that true self-care is what you need, contact me. I have a full toolkit of ideas to help you take better care of yourself, from brain training to technology-guided relaxation to hypnosis and more.

Adding in some kind of work with me may be just like adding in an apple a day for better dietary habits—it could and usually does lead to a cascade of changes.

If you’re not sure and aren’t ready to contact me yet, please read through my blog posts. They’re categorized so you don’t need to read all 350-ish posts.

In the meantime, I wish you a healthy and calm new year.