Self-care is a fundamental part of living your one and only life as best as you can. There is not just one type of self-care, I have to take care of myself physically, mentally, and emotionally.

To take care of myself physically it is important that I stay active and spend time outside. Staying active means exercising, and some of my favorite ways to exercise are football, baseball, wrestling, and running. Team sports, like football and baseball, require me to interact with other people, which has taught me to be a better player. If you always play sports by yourself, you only have to focus on yourself. However, when you are playing a team sport, you need to learn to work with and communicate with other people. For example, in baseball when I got up to bat and the bases were loaded, I needed to decide what my strategy was, and adjust my strategy based on what other people had done before me. I also needed to think about making my teammates proud, or even potentially disappointing my teammates. In 7th grade when I played baseball I never got a hit until my last game, which disappointed me. But then, in the last game, I got one of the best hits of the game, and that inspired my team. It started a hitting streak that took us from 8 runs down to only 1 run down. We ultimately lost, but the fact that we gained 7 runs in the last two innings and only lost the game by 1 run was a proud and significant moment for me. 

Individual sports like wrestling and running have taught me that you do not always have a team to cheer you on, so you need to motivate yourself mentally to keep going. For example, in my first wrestling match my competitor was much better than I was, but I managed to prevent him  from pinning me! While I was wrestling him I was mentally motivating myself, saying “You have to keep going! You have to keep going so you don’t lose the match by a lot of points!” I didn’t think I was going to win so I decided to go for the next best thing which was minimizing the number of points he scored against me. All of the pressure was on me, as opposed to shared across the members of the team, so I had to respond by staying calm and focused. I used my mental power to help my emotional state. 

Taking care of myself means exercising my body, being mindful of my responsibilities, and making sure that I stay happy with how I live my life.