How to Customize Your Self-Care

If you had all the time and money in the world, how would you practice self-care? Would you go off on a week-long retreat in some adorable little mountain chalet with all your closest friends? Would you sign yourself up for bi-weekly 90-minute massages into perpetuity? Maybe you’d go for a solo facial on your own private island?

There’s no wrong answer—we’re all a little different, so it only makes sense that our self-care rituals should look a little different. Depending on whether you’re an extrovert, an introvert, or an ambivert (like me!), you may feel the need to choose activities that allow you more social time or more alone time.

As an ambivert, I have the pleasure of seeing self-care from both sides of the spectrum. There are days when I LOVE being around people, but there are also a lot of days when I really need to carve out some me-time and be alone in order to recharge. Wherever you fall on the extrovert-introvert scale, these are some of my favorite tips for customizing your self-care.

Self-Care For Extroverts

If you’re an extrovert, you might start feeling stressed and cranky if you haven’t gotten in enough quality social time. Recharge your batteries by:

• Grabbing lunch with a friend

• Taking a walk and chatting with a colleague

• Inviting your family over for dinner one evening

Self-Care For Introverts

If you’re an introvert, you likely feel overwhelmed when you have too many social pressures. Allow yourself to escape those pressures with:

• A relaxing massage

• A solo lunch on a local cafe’s patio

• A long bubble bath, complemented by your favorite book

Self-Care For Ambiverts

If you’re an ambivert, your needs will likely vary depending on what’s going on in your life. For most of us ambiverts, intimate social events can be a great way to sate our extrovert sensibilities without overdoing it. Some of my favorite ambivert self-care activities include:

• Going for a hike with a small group of friends

• Signing up for a group tour of a city you’ve never been to

• Working from a local coffee shop or library for a day (as opposed to working alone from home or in a busy office environment)

No matter which of these groups you most closely identify with, remember that it’s totally normal to need different things on different days. Learn to trust your intuition and give yourself permission to practice whatever type of self-care sounds good to you—you may just not be a mani-pedi person. Massages might make you uncomfortable. Maybe you dislike hot weather too much to fuss over a garden. That’s all okay. There’s no right or wrong way to take care of yourself, friend.

I hope you’ve found this helpful and that you’re able to incorporate a couple of these activities into this week. Let me know what your favorite self-care activities are in the comments! And while you’re at it, I’d love to know: Do you consider yourself an introvert, extrovert, or ambivert?