Self-care is about honoring your needs in your daily life:  those things that make your life physically, spiritually and emotionally nourishing. We like to call it working towards joyful living. Too often we nourish ourselves with inferior substitutes:  food, control, shopping, or trying to have a perfect body. They only feed our emptiness, leading to a constant striving for more. Instead, turn inward. Turn to yourself. Honor your longings, your values, and your needs, and watch these external crutches and compulsions fade away.

Here are links and articles to help you create a nourishing life founded upon a commitment to self-care as the path to joyful living:

• Self-care is a mindset, not a bank account. You don’t need to be rich to feel rich. Here are 15 ways to create a rich life - no matter your net worth.

• Do you have sanctuary? A place to rest? To be, rather than do? A sanctuary may be the hidden secret to help you stop overeating, bingeing on sugar, or yelling at your kids.

• Mourning is about accepting what we can’t change – so that we can embrace the choices that we do have. Read on to learn how you can mourn your losses and create abundance from the ashes.

• Are you a perfectionist? Read Abby Seixas’ tips on softening expectations. Abby is the author of Finding the Deep River Within and a facilitator of Deep River workshops.

• Do you have a scathing inner critic? Learn 5 ways you can talk more kindly to yourself with your inner dialogue.

• Life is meant to be joyful. Do you give to yourself? Read how being generous to yourself benefits everyone.

• Self-care is not about taking time for a bubble bath. It’s about meeting your needs so that you can live out your deepest values:  so that you can be the woman you want to be. Read more about why self-care matters.