Hannah Braime - From Coping to Thriving: How to Turn Self-care into a Way of Life

W elcome to From Coping to Thriving. Thank you for purchasing this book, and congratulations on investing in your relationship with yourself. My intention is that this book will provide you with a comprehensive introduction to self-care. In the following pages, youll find plenty of tips and suggestions that you can use to integrate self-care into your life in a way that best meets your needs .

This is a how-to book, and at the same time, its much more than that. Youll find a variety of self-care practices you can put to use, as well as the key ingredients that will help you make self-care into a way of life, rather than just a routine .

Self-care is crucial to our experience of our day-to-day lives and to other peoples experiences of us. In the first part of this book, well explore why self-care is so important, examine the difference between long-term and short-term self-care, and discover different methods with which you can experiment for creating sustainable habits. Well also discuss how to deal with the dreaded resistance (which, by the way, is very common; most of us deal with this on a daily basis ).

Well cover these foundations first, because this book is about the whole self-care package .

When I began consciously addressing my own self-care, I launched straight into scheming and whipped up a detailed and intensive self-care routine without having a clear understanding of why it was so important (except that many people in the personal development world say its a good idea). I quickly discovered that its hard to figure out what works best for us without knowing why were engaging in self-care in the first place and what needs we want to address .

If we dont know what we need from our self-care, we cannot meet those needs. Instead, we end up fumbling around, engaging in various activities that might feel very pleasant, but dont quite hit the spot. Alternatively, we start engaging in activities that meet some of our needs but sacrifice others. We might also confuse self-care with pampering, end up feeling unfulfilled, and decide that this whole self-care malarkey is a load of woo-woo nonsense anyway .

As well as knowing the why behind our self-care and how we can best meet our needs, we need to get to know ourselves in order to make self-care a way of life. We need to be conscious of whats going to get in our way, times when we will most need self-care, which activities fill us to the brim, and which activities are more draining than nurturing. We need to know what our resistance tells us, and how to work with ourselves to build a sustainable self-care practice .

This book will address all the above and more .

You might be approaching this book from one of the following perspectives: Perhaps you already have a self-care routine but want to delve deeper and find out how to make your self-care even more satisfying, meaningful, and life affirming than it already is. Perhaps youre slightly wary of the whole idea of self-care (I know I certainly was), but you also have a sense that something needs to give. Youre tired of feeling stressed, stretched, foggy, and disconnected. Or maybe you like the sound of self-care, but dont know where to start; you cant afford to splash a ton of cash on spa days, and you dont have much time to spend on yourself .

Wherever youre coming from, this book will act as a guide, supporting you in creating the self-care practice that is right for you. Over the following pages, well talk about how you can build a toolkit of nourishing self-care activities that will support you, encourage you, and provide you with a solid internal foundation so you can meet the world as the best version of yourself .

Lets get to it .

P.S. Would you like a free video class on self-kindness to kickstart your journey? Simply go to http://selfkindness.becomingwhoyouare.net and enter your email to access to the class. When you register, youll also get more free workbooks, video classes and more tools for cultivating courage, compassion, and creativity in the Becoming Who You Are Library (I will never, ever share your email and you are free to unsubscribe at any time ).