It is easy for us to slip in to the mindset that we should look after other people and that we don’t need to be taken care of. But the reality is that if we don’t look after ourselves, we are not really able to look after anybody else. Putting ourselves first is a lesson that everybody should learn at some point in their life.

Putting ourselves first is not always an easy thing to do – or indeed learn. I have found, to my own detriment that saying yes to other people all of the time, only leads to my own misery. I get run-down, emotional and frazzled because I’m struggling to find time for all of the things that I have responsibility for because I am too busy helping people to do the things that they want to do. I seem to take on other people's priorities as my own. This is something that lots of us do and it really is no wonder. From when we are born we rely on other people to help us with getting to sleep, what food to eat, to teach us to walk and talk and do all the things that we do. Some of us continue to be the caregivers of others and some of us never learn to rely on ourselves even in our adult lives.

Self-care is not taught. We learn to treat others with respect, to be courteous, to hold doors – as we should, but we often learn to treat ourselves with tough love and harsh words and this is where our problems often start.

People often feel that self-care is difficult to do, and sure, It is not always easy to fit in the time to be kind to ourselves; we are often so focused on our goals, achievements, our own realistically high expectations and what we feel these should be that we forget to take care of ourselves. But actually, there are many small things that we can do to practice self-care, things that we can easily fit in to our everyday lives and its also important to realise that self-care isn’t a one-size-fits-all wonder. It’s about getting to know yourself and finding out what makes you feel cared for in order to not just function – but to flourish.

Try some of the ideas below to help you figure out what works for you and remember self-care is not selfish ...