What Self-Care Can Do for Your Career

Photo by @jareddrice

When it’s cold outside, you put on a jacket. If your feet get wet, you put on dry socks. If you touch a dirty surface, make sure to wash your hands. When caring for our physical health, being mindful of what can make us sick is almost ingrained into our behaviors. 

But what about our mental health?

Enter the rising popularity of self-care. The phrase itself may seem like a trendy way to say you’re drinking a glass of wine on a weeknight or going to bed early on the weekend, but it’s code for something much more profound. At its root, self-care is a holistic way to be more in tune with oneself, fostering engagement, overall wellness, and self-love. 

There’s no hard-and-fast rule about what qualifies as self-love and what doesn’t, but what’s more accessible to gauge is self-care's positive impact – and not just on your mood. To better understand the relationship between self-care and professional success, FitRated surveyed over 1,000 people to know how most employees practice self-care and the impact it can have on their jobs. The results were enlightening. 

What Does Self-Care Look Like? 

On the surface, self-care may seem like a fad, but its popularity is overwhelming. Compared to 32% of employees who said they don’t practice self-care, 68% acknowledged making some effort to self-care during an average workweek. While roughly a third of people said self-care was something you had to work hard enough to earn, their efforts might not be in vain. One in three people not practicing self-care throughout the week also admitted feeling burned out from their jobs. 

The most popular forms of self-care include physical wellness (exercising and eating healthy), interpersonal self-care (spending time with other people), and mental self-care (solving puzzles or reading). Additionally, exploring the best self-care in London, or wherever you live, can be hugely beneficial to your personal life as well as professional life, as well as potentially being a lovely treat that you can look forward to.

Neglecting your own personal care can make things worse for yourself as you're not giving your body time to heal mentally and physically. Going for a swedish massage in Laguna Beach, CA or taking a weekend trip to the hills with your friends can reset your mind and get you back on track. We all need self-care, and luckily it is not just one specific thing.

Professional Impacts of Self-Care

If self-care sounds like something younger generations would be champions for, you might need to reset your expectations. Millennials were the least likely to dedicate time to mental or spiritual self-care but also the most likely to be burned out at work. 

Regardless of age, you may still be able to take advantage of the benefits of self-care in your career. More than 4 in 5 workers practicing self-care said those efforts decreased their feelings about work burnout, and more than 2 in 3 said those efforts had positively impacted their career success.

Getting the most out of your self-care routine doesn’t mean committing to a significant upheaval in your everyday rhythms. Yoga was the leading example of self-care that led to increased focus and relaxation, while hair treatments and baths helped people find motivation at work—looking for a promotion in six months or fewer? People polled said skin treatments, hair treatments, and practicing gratitude were the things that did the trick. 

While only 1 in 4 workers said their jobs encouraged them to prioritize self-care, people working in these caring cultures were nearly 20 percentage points less likely to say they experience burnout on the job. 

For some people, a workplace culture that encourages self-care isn’t just excellent; it's necessary. Twenty-seven percent of people acknowledged having quit a job in the past because it didn’t seem to promote the mental wellness of its staff. Another 26% of people started working remotely to increase their time for self-care, and 20% of people (including 23% of millennials) changed jobs to make time for themselves. 

Taking Time for Yourself 

Self-care can look like anything, from taking a long bath at the end of the day to making time for exercise during the workday and eating healthy. It can even be you spending half an hour a day relaxing with a game of solitaire. It doesn’t matter what helps you feel more focused or relaxed; it only matters that you take the time to identify what works best for you.

And remember, self-care isn’t just about finding a way to unwind after a particularly rough day (or week or quarter) at the office. It can also be about finding the motivation to succeed—and maybe even getting a promotion. As this FitRated survey found, self-care is caring for your career, too.