Forget Face Masks and Bubble Baths: It's Time to Move Beyond Self-Care
Despite having a Masters degree in the topic, I have always been resistant to joining the well-being conversation on Instagram and other social media platforms because I felt that a lot of the conversation is unintentionally harmful, not helpful.
So much of it is about glorifying the self and the pursuit of it: you can’t flick a finger without seeing someone’s green juice, yoga pose, or exhortation to practice mindfulness. And if there’s one thing I’m absolutely sure of from my research, it’s that pursuing your own self as your main focus is not the path to well-being.
Eventually, I realized that joining the conversation was important if I ever wanted to help shift it.
I want us to evolve our conversation from self-care to all-care: from focusing on our own personal well-being to focusing on the practices that provide for everyone’s well-being (including yours!)
THE HISTORY OF SELF-CARE
Self-care has its origins in a fascinating place, one far more aligned to the true sources of well-being: in Ancient Greece, it was used to help people become more virtuous citizens who were more likely to care for others.
The African-American feminist poet and activist Audre Lorde wrote in 1988 that “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Her proposal was, sadly, radical: she advocated for caring for herself, because as a member of suppressed and marginalized populations, she received no support from governmental or medical institutions. People of color were forced to take care of themselves because they were ignored by those who should be helping them. Tragically, this is still a problem that exists today: for example, black women are disproportionally affected by fatal and chronic illnesses, and self-care remains a matter of life and death for many. Self-care was a form of activism, tragically necessary, of standing up for your own survival in a world that was unsupportive of your very life.
SELF-CARE TODAY
Today, there are two types of self-care. The first has origins in Lorde’s words, supporting activists and addressing their emotional burnout. The second is the one that I want to address, the one that is all over my Instagram feed, marketed by companies as the beautiful path to wellness for you and your needs, usually at a steep price.
The second form of well-being is about focusing on your health, your well-being, you exclusively. And as self-care has become more and more associated with wealthy white women, it becomes even more challenging for those who might most need to prioritize their well-being to take part in it.
Individual well-being is absolutely essential for each and every one of us; we also all know ourselves and our needs best, and often have to take charge of giving that to ourselves. And if green juices and yoga retreats meaningfully contribute to your well-being, that’s fantastic. I personally have found healing and joy in both of those things. I’m also aware that Instagram is a visual medium that lends itself towards showcasing these practices.
It’s still important to remember that for women and minorities, self-care is still a radical act. Women are twice as likely to suffer from severe stress and anxiety as men. The UN recently reported that women do nearly three times as much unpaid domestic work as men do at home. And, of course, black and Hispanic women make 67% and 62% of what white men earn, respectively.
If our goal is to have a society with the maximum amount of happiness for the most people, then we need to shift our self-care conversation to help us to achieve that goal.
People are being presented with the message that they should focus exclusively on a self-focused approach. That makes it easy to forget about what the real potential of self-care could be: taking care of ourselves so we can be of maximum benefit and service to others.
Yashna Padamsee of the National Domestic Workers Alliance sums it up beautifully: “There is a distinction between self-care and treating yourself. … What is the purpose of your self-care? Is it to do this for all of our lives, not just yours?”
Let’s take the example of mindfulness as a self-care practice. I first started to meditate in my teens, and became very serious in my practice in my early 20s. Mindfulness was, and is, a gift. It helped me to learn how to manage my emotions more effectively, and reduced my extreme highs and lows to a more manageable wave. It has helped me to deal with stress, sadness, loss, grief, and feelings of overwhelm. It has even connected me to other people who are also passionate about the practice.
Mindfulness is an internal practice, just like practicing gratitude, looking for the good in life, cultivating resilience, building a growth mindset, and many other self-care strategies.
Internal approaches can only go so far. They don’t pay the bills, or reduce the need to work two jobs, or address the inequality that you might face due to the color of your skin or your gender or your sexuality. They can make it easier for you to cope with those things if you are facing them, but here’s the issue: that puts the responsibility back upon you as something that you have to fix.
“Just be more mindful,” corporations and society and the self-care story tell you, as you face enormous challenges that come from systemic structural issues in our society. Just be more mindful, as you are overloaded with work. Just be more mindful, as you are refused maternity leave or benefits. Just be more mindful, as you struggle to navigate a healthcare system that seems designed to make you suffer, rather than to heal.
That’s insulting and wrong.
We can - and need to - take responsibility for ourselves and our well-being in many ways. However, this elevation of self-care as a panacea is actually another way of putting the onus for well-being on the individual instead of addressing the larger structures that are actively hurting people.
Individual well-being matters because having a strong, resilient, healthy, flourishing self is the platform from which we can drive change for the world.
Self-care might be a first step towards collective well-being. But it’s not the end point.
It doesn’t solve the major issues we face: the structures that create the stress and illness and suffering; the acute needs of populations who truly need care like food and shelter and medical treatment; and then the chronic suffering of billions of people who need the care that goes beyond physical necessities, such as love, safety and belonging.
SELF-CARE IS JUST THE FIRST STEP
It’s great that we are getting better at caring for our individual selves. But I have a plea for any of us who have any amount of power or privilege or influence or security: let this be just the first step in our journey.
We need to take those learnings from self-care and move towards all-care, because we have a responsibility to the other beings of our world to make it a more equitable, compassionate and safe place.
All-care is the practice of doing things that contribute to either increasing the happiness of the collective or decreasing the suffering of the collective.
Sometimes, all-care could be taking yourself out for breakfast with a friend at a local cafe that supports sustainable coffee farmers, where you laugh and share and leave feeling more able to help people. Sometimes, all-care could be going for a quiet walk so that you move your body and are strong enough to play with your kids. Sometimes, all-care is having a green juice because it makes you feel alive and inspired to smile at people you pass on the street. This is a very subtle shift - all of the practices might look similar, but the intention, and therefore the execution, is different.
And sometimes, all-care is waking up early to volunteer at a food bank, or staying late to help a colleague who’s stuck on a problem, or pausing in your rush to work to help an old lady cross the street safely. It’s taking stock of all that you have and finding ways to contribute to others, because being compassionate will save our world and will save each of us by bringing us true, lasting, fulfilling happiness.
We do have to be operating from a place of relative health to serve someone else. But when we have that stable base of wellness, we can and must shift our focus to giving to others or prioritizing practices that serve people other than ourselves exclusively.
The beauty of this approach is that self-care prepares you for all-care. Self-care is all about learning two skills: self-awareness (what do I need right now?) and self-kindness (how can I be generous and loving to myself right now?)
All-care is about taking those skills and turning them outward: other-awareness (what do other people need right now?) and other-kindness (how can I be generous and loving to others right now?)
All-care leverages everything you learn in taking care of yourself, and offers it outward, enriching the learning along the way. And ironically, it’s the fastest route to true happiness for yourself, above any green juice or yoga retreat out there.
Happiness that is only focused on the self isn’t complete.
THE IMPACT OF ALL-CARE
Dr. James Doty, a neurosurgeon at Stanford and director of their Center for Compassion and Altruism, speaks about the difference between transformation and transcendence. Transformation can happen through self-care and other internal practices like mindfulness, but transcendence only happens unless you also turn outward to connect to others.
Transcendence is forgetting yourself. And you can’t forget your self when it is your main focus.
“In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer. To forget oneself is to be happy.”
Within and without are so deeply connected. We believe we have solid skins shielding our insides from the world, but really, they are incredibly permeable. We are completely interconnected with others in our world, in ways we can never even begin to understand. Aside from our reliance on other people for everything in our lives (food, shelter, transportation, clothing, work, love, our very existence…), it manifests in some unexpected ways:
You are 61% more likely to smoke if you have a direct relationship with someone who smokes
If your friend becomes obese, your changes of becoming obese increase by 57%
If you observe someone doing something positive, you are far likelier to do a positive act for someone else, without ever knowing why you did it
Over the past fifty years, Western society has become far richer. But happiness has decreased. I believe this is because it has become increasingly individualized, we have prioritized self-indulgence, and we are moving away from the connection that characterizes more collective cultures.
One of my favorite studies found that telling people in Western cultures to go out and make themselves happy doesn’t work. They take that instruction and go out to satisfy one of their desires. That doesn’t have more than a quick boost that disappears in a matter of minutes or hours.
However, when they perform this study in collectivist cultures, like Japan and Brazil, it does work. People are able to make themselves lastingly happier. The reason it is different is that they interpret the instructions differently: they hear ‘go make yourself happy’ and recognizing that all happiness is tied together, they choose to do something nice for someone else instead of themselves! And that is what leads to a measurable increase in well-being.
When we feel empathy towards others, we are more inclined to offer them help. To feel empathy, we have to look beyond our own selves. If we are focused solely on our own wellness, we miss the enormous chance to explore and contribute to the interconnectedness of everything in our world.
All-care is also something we can model for others. Instead of posting our smoothies, can we post about what we learned through giving? Could we highlight the work others are doing to give? Can we spread all-care best practices and the joy of compassion? This is my goal for the New Happy.
Abraham Maslow, the humanistic psychologist, said it best:
“The empirical fact is that self-actualizing people, our best experiencers, are also our most compassionate, our great improvers and reformers of society, our most effective fighters against injustice, inequality, slavery, cruelty, exploitation (and also our best fighters for excellence, effectiveness, competence). And it also becomes clearer and clearer that the best “helpers” are the most fully human persons. What I may call the bodhisattvic path is an integration of self-improvement and social zeal, i.e., the best way to become a better “helper” is to become a better person. But one necessary aspect of becoming a better person is via helping other people. So one must and can do both simultaneously.”
PRACTICING ALL-CARE
How do our self-care practices change into all-care practices when they are motivated by a spirit of compassion for all?
What does all-care mean in daily life?
Where does what I have to offer meet a need?
The answer to those questions will be different for each of us.
If you find yourself in a place where you are able to make yourself happy through self-care, then the question to ask yourself is: to what end will I use my well-being? Will I use it to uphold existing conditions of injustice, or will I challenge the world to improve society and institutions so that others’ journeys are better? And how will I do that?
If you are in any position of influence or leadership, or possess resources, then the question to ask yourself is: how will I be an agent of change in the world to help others to experience greater well-being?
A fantastic example are Bill and Melinda Gates who, through the Gates Foundation, have donated billions of dollars to eradicate polio, malaria, and many other manifestations of suffering. They could have spent their billions focusing on pursuing their own happiness - there is no shortage of ways to spend money on fulfilling one’s desires. And yet, they are choosing to make more work for themselves as they build and run a foundation, bequeathing their fortune, and choosing to actively bear witness to the suffering of others who are far from them in every way.
We may not have billions to donate, but we have unique gifts within each of us that we can share: our strengths, our passion, our capabilities, our time, our attention.
Often, the best opportunities you have to make a difference are local: in your home, in your workplace, and in your community, where you can help people to feel like they are valuable and matter.
True self-actualization means taking all that you have done within you and turning it to the world to serve others.
I want to use my self-care for the world, not just for me. It would be such a silly thing to take such good, thorough, immaculate care of myself that I never get to anyone else.
If self-care is all about taking care of me, then all-care is about taking care of all, which includes me.
This is compassion in action. Will you join me in a new story, the story of all-care?