I can buy myself flowers, Miley sings, and she has a point. No matter what your relationship status, the first and most important relationship you can have is with yourself. This Valentine’s Day, we are sharing five easy ways that we are showing ourselves some love this month, mostly without buying a thing. Instead we are focusing on experiences, from taking a favorite exercise class (which can feel like a luxury, since some of them have gotten super pricey) to hosting a fun and easy dinner party with our best friends.
Self love starts with self care, and that includes your mental and physical wellbeing. Studies show that getting into nature, such as taking a hike or a quick getaway to spend time among trees, on forest trails, taking in a lake view or waterfall sound, calms our brain’s alarm center, soothes our mood, builds resilience and activates the same dopamine response as drugs do. This is why taking a hike, even a local or easy one, is on our list. What else? Read on for more simple and inexpensive ways to treat yourself, for less than the cost of a dozen red roses or a pricey dinner out.
Want the Best Valentine’s Day Ever?
Take the approach that it starts with loving yourself and others too. Here’s how to get inspired for one of the most fun, rewarding weeks to remember. Our self-love suggestions and advice are below. We tried these, and now you can too, whether or not you also want to shower some love on your gal pals or a significant other is entirely up to you!
1. Take an Exercise Class
Whether you’re into pilates, cardio or sculpting and strengthening, treating yourself to 50 minutes or an hour of hard-core working out, sweating and challenging yourself feels like self-love to us, especially when it’s over! We love these three options for the best body-busting for your buck. And at $45 per class, every time you go is an investment. So we end up working hard!
- The NoFar Method, $45, toughest pilates moves and a great experience.
- The Class, $30, mash of resistance training, cardio, mindfulness and music.
- Tracy Anderson, $90 – $130 a month for live streaming classes. Tracy may be the OG of body-sculpting gurus but she always keeps it fresh.
2. Arrange Your Own Flowers
Here’s a fun activity and decorating tip wrapped into one. When you buy a ceramic, terra cotta or woven vase at Crate & Barrel, and they show you how to create your own professional-looking flower arrangement for your vase. Place it in a central position, and admire not only the beauty of the botanicals, but your own handy work.
Best part? These are faux flowers, so you can enjoy decorating with realistic looking botanicals all year long. The folks at Crate & Barrel will help you with artistic suggestions for styling the pieces according to your home’s aesthetic. Here’s how mine turned out. I love it.
3. Host a Dinner Party
I am no cook, so when it came time to make a dinner party with my girlfriends (and one guy friend) I punted. I used a company called Chef Omakase, and the amazing thing was that the Chef walked in, set up in my kitchen and created this fabulously delicious and elegant sushi dinner for my guests. And I have a tiny New York City apartment kitchen! It worked out great.
Everything is included in the Omakase experience, and you can choose what you want. If you are on a budget, you can recreate this same menu with your local sushi place, but I guarantee that the theatre of having your own sushi chef make the meal in front of everyone is worth the cost!
The Omakase dinner party was a big success! Thanks to our Chef!
4. Make a Healthy Recipe
For dessert, I made this viral recipe of date bark that requires zero baking and no added sugar. All the sweetness comes from the dates. Not only that, but along with being relatively healthy it’s festive looking. I find that with the right recipe, cooking or baking can be self care! Try this one from @thebalancednutritionist made with dates, peanut butter and chocolate. I love how easily she lays out the steps for you. And… It’s sooo good.
5. Take a Hike or Plan an Easy Getaway
There is no question that getting into nature is a form of self care, whether you hike, go skiing or just take a long walk in the park. This weekend I’m hiking Bear Mountain, a rugged mountain that affords beautiful views of the Palisades, high above the Hudson River, an easy drive from New York City. I do this hike whenever I need a of a nature fix. (It’s not hard, but highly enjoyable, and you can have long conversations the whole way up.)
Going for a long, scenic, destination hike sustains me for days; my mood just stays up all week, which makes sense. There are scientific studies that show nature is calming, restorative and makes us feel more resilient when we get back to the daily grind! Plan any easy getaway that affords you a change of scenery.
Bottom Line: Valentine’s Day is a chance to show love all around, starting with yourself. Everyone defines that differently. To me, self care is getting out in nature, having genuine conversations, exercising, and eating fairly clean.
This may sound counterintuitive, but self-care is also getting ahead on work, so I don’t have to feel overwhelmed. Those are all things that make me feel better and ready to go have some well-deserved personal time with loved ones, without stress, and open to feelings of gratitude and love.
The conventional Valentine’s Day tradition aren’t really for me. I love going to my favorite restaurants, but not on Valentine’s Day, when it is all too expensive (the special menu is often double or triple the price of an ordinary night out). The traditions of a big dinner, a dozen red roses and a box of chocolates are over the top. What’s your version of self-care and love? We want to hear from you.
And Happy Valentines Day to everyone out there: You, your friends, your significant others, your parents, your siblings, your pets and anyone in your life who you want to shower with love this week. Starting with yourself!
Leave a Reply