Celebrating Self-Renewal Day With Self-Care

Self-Renewal Day is celebrated on February 2 each year and offers an opportunity for individuals to focus on self-renewal in all forms, including self-care, self-assessment, and self-improvement. Learning more about how to celebrate this day may help you commit to yourself and your growth in the new year. One way to engage in self-renewal may be to participate in online or in-person therapy sessions.

Aspects of self-renewal to focus on for Self-Renewal Day

Self-Renewal Day is an event dedicated to personal growth and self-improvement. Although the origins and history of Self-Renewal Day are unclear, people worldwide can dedicate this special day to trying various self-renewal exercises and self-care practices to make themselves feel good. 

Although Self-Renewal Day may offer an opportunity to engage in these skills, you can practice them year-round. Learning the basis of self-renewal may be a positive first step, and it often includes the following aspects. 

Self-care

Self-care can be a physical practice involving activities like exercise, meditation, or eating a nutritious diet. This skill can also be mental and involve self-reflection and activities like journaling, setting healthy boundaries, and ending unhealthy relationships. 

Standard self-care practices to engage in on Self-Renewal Day and beyond may include the following: 

• Practicing mindfulness or spiritual meditation 
• Having a special spa day to rest and relax
• Giving yourself patience when you’re stressed
• Taking a break when you need them 
• Taking care of chores and errands 
• Finding ways self-love lives in you and around you and showing gratitude 
• Contacting loved ones to spend time together 
• Cleaning your home to have a tidy space
• Practicing hygiene 
• Saving up for a fun trip 
• Considering your limits in relationships 
• Making difficult decisions that can enhance your life and health  
• Taking a long bath or shower 
• Going to therapy
• Going to doctor appointments when you need to 
• Avoiding harmful behaviors and habits
• Giving yourself empathy and compassion 
• Reading a book you enjoy 
• Partaking in a hobby 

Self-reflection

Self-reflection can be a type of self-care to renew your confidence, strength, and power. This practice generally involves looking inward and observing what you see in your thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. For those who struggle with self-awareness, practicing healthy forms of self-reflection may be challenging. However, there are exercises you can use on Self-Renewal Day to help you get started, and a therapist may be a helpful resource. 

You don’t necessarily have to come up with answers to self-reflect or assess on Self-Renewal Day. Some areas of life may be confusing or difficult to understand, and asking questions can be a good place to start. One way to self-reflect may be to consider whether your behaviors and thoughts align with your moral code and values. If not, this may be an area to work on. 

Self-improvement 

Self-improvement can refer to the steps you take after self-reflection to grow and make positive changes in your life. It can involve self-care practices but also challenging choices and difficult transitions. Self-improvement may not occur overnight and can often happen without trying and over time. 

However, by taking proactive steps to find areas of improvement on Self-Renewal Day, you may be committing to self-growth and a growth mindset, which may guide you and make you feel strong, even when you struggle to believe it is possible. 

How to celebrate Self-Renewal Day 

To celebrate Self-Renewal Day, it may be beneficial to practice self-assessment with the following self-reflection exercises, often recommended by therapists. 

Journaling for self-reflection

Studies show that all forms of expressive writing, including journaling, poetry, and emotional writing, can be helpful ways to cope with challenging emotions and improve mental well-being, although updated evidence may be needed. For example, with journaling, you can write down your thoughts during the day and read them back to yourself afterward. 

Having a journal can be a way to monitor your growth over time and keep up on memories that you might have otherwise forgotten. If you don’t like writing by hand, you might try writing in an online password-protected journal. You can also keep an audio journal by saving audio notes on your smart device or taking video diaries. Other ways to journal on Self-Renewal Day can include scrapbooking or photo journaling. 

If you struggle to express yourself in words, you might try a few journaling prompts for self-reflection, such as the following: 

• What gives you the most joy in your life right now? 
• Are you making choices based on what you want or what you think others want of you? 
• What does happiness mean to you? 
• What would you like to change in the next week? 
• What need are you seeking in others that you struggle to give to yourself? 
• Do you trust yourself? If not, how can you work toward trust? 
• In what ways do you wish you could set more boundaries? 
• In what ways do you have genuine and healthy connections with friends and family? How could you change your unhealthy relationship patterns? 
• What lessons have impacted you most in life, and how could you use them to work through present-day challenges? 
• Write about three of your favorite aspects of yourself. 
• What made you happy as a child? 
• What makes you happy as an adult? 
• How could you soothe your inner child right now? 

Self-inquiry from RO-DBT

Radically open dialectical behavior therapy (RO-DBT) can be defined as a form of therapy based on DBT but structured to support individuals with difficulty letting go of control. This therapeutic modality is often helpful for those with anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). However, anyone can use the skills taught within this framework, including the self-inquiry skill, which is generally structured to help you practice self-reflection without trying to find “all the answers.” 

To try this process on Self-Renewal Day, come up with a question related to your current challenge and write it down. For example, if you are worried about someone not being interested in you, you might ask yourself, “What do I hope to accomplish by achieving this person’s validation?” Write down this question and set a timer for ten minutes. 

Do not answer your question. Instead, think of other questions that pop up into your mind without trying to filter or judge them. If you notice yourself trying to solve or answer the questions, acknowledge the thoughts and move past them without ruminating on what they might mean. Add more questions until you sense that you are getting close to an emotional “edge” or a question that seems to impact you substantially and bring you closer to learning a new skill.

By practicing self-inquiry, you may get more of an idea of which themes commonly pop up for you when experiencing challenges. This may also help you identify solutions naturally instead of getting stuck in a mental cycle of worrying or trying to fix every problem in your life. 

Writing a letter to your past self on Self-Renewal Day 

Connecting with your past on Self-Renewal Day may offer insights into how much you’ve grown. Try writing an empathetic and compassionate letter to who you used to be. Choose a period of your life when you were experiencing similar themes or challenges and find ways to thank yourself for overcoming those challenges. You might also notice areas where you succeeded and how you might use those memories to help you in the current moment. 

Some people may also find it helpful to create a letter to their “inner child,” which can represent the parts of you that most remind you of who you were as a child and who may still react in wounded ways when triggered by traumatic or difficult memories. 

Self-reflection support options 

If you aren’t sure how to practice self-reflection for Self-Renewal Day, it may be beneficial to ask for help from a therapist. You don’t have to have a mental health disorder to see a provider, and a therapist can guide you in exercises from modalities like cognitive-behavioral therapy and RO-DBT. 

Benefits of online therapy

If you face barriers to meeting with a therapist in your area, you might also benefit from talking to a therapist online through a platform like BetterHelp. You can set your goals upon signing up, get matched with a therapist based on your needs. preferences, and location.

Effectiveness of online therapy

Studies show that online therapy can be as effective as face-to-face interventions, if not more so. One study found that internet interventions tended to be more effective in treating anxiety and depression, with clients frequently reporting higher cost-effectiveness and quality of life after treatment.