4 Caregiver Resolutions That Will Take You 15 Minutes or Less a Day

About Tori Thurmond

Tori Thurmond combines her creative writing background with her marketing experience in her role as the Content Specialist at Brookdale. When she's not writing, she's probably spending time with her two cats or knitting.

Being a caregiver can be incredibly rewarding, but it’s also time consuming and can increase an individual’s stress and anxiety

levels. That’s why it’s so important for caregivers to take time to care for themselves too.

We know that taking time for yourself as a caregiver is easier said than done. Caregivers are often balancing their caregiving responsibilities with another job or helping care for other members of the family, like their children. But did you know that caregivers for adults experience more workplace burnout than those who care for children?

While the idea of taking time out of your busy day to do something for yourself can feel impossible, certain self-care activities may be able to help reduce stress that you might be feeling. Here are a few resolutions that will allow you to take just a little bit of time for yourself each day in the New Year.

Take a short walk every day.

While you may not have the time for long walks every day, try to make space for a five to ten minute walk. A study published in 2020 indicated that taking a ten-minute walk outside every day may help reduce stress levels. Even if you’re not able to go to a park or walk around the neighborhood, you could consider walking to the end of your driveway and back a couple of times or taking a stroll around the parking lot at work just to stretch your legs and breathe in some fresh air.

If you live in a place where it’s too cold to walk outside in the winter or you need to stay close to the person you are caring for, you could consider purchasing a walking pad or mini stair stepper.

Read a chapter or two from a book you’ve been wanting to read.

Reading can seem like a time-consuming hobby, but it doesn’t have to be! Some research shows that reading a few minutes a day may be able to reduce stress levels by up to 60%. You can even make reading a social hobby by downloading apps like Goodreads or StoryGraph where you can connect with other readers, keep track of your reading progress, start a list of all of the books you want to read and rate and review the books you read.

If you’re not a fan of carrying physical copies of books around, consider looking into a reading device, like a Kindle, or trying out audiobooks. Even if you’re only able to set aside ten or fifteen minutes a day to read a good book, you’ll be surprised by how many books you can knock off of your “want to read” list.

Incorporate meditation into your daily routine.

One recent study found that even meditation sessions as short as five minutes have the potential to reduce stress and anxiety. No matter how busy your day gets, you can likely find five minutes to practice a mindfulness exercise that can ground you and help you prepare to face the rest of your day with confidence. Benefits to meditation can include concentration practice, increased mindfulness and better connections. You could even try incorporating some yoga into your meditation practice for some added movement.

Give a friend or loved one a call.

When you’re a caregiver, making time to connect with other friends and family members can be challenging. However, social interaction with friends and family is an essential part of life. Not only can connecting with friends and family potentially help individuals cope with stress but one study suggested it may also be able to lengthen your life by helping to maintain memory and cognitive function (thereby reduce the wear on your brain)! You may not have time for long catch-up phone calls with your best friend every day, but some research suggests that just having a short conversation with someone you care about can have a positive impact on your mental health. See if you can take ten minutes out of your day to chat with a friend or family member you’ve been wanting to keep up with more.

When we think of New Year’s resolutions, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the time and commitment that forming a new habit or picking up a new hobby can take. And when you spend a majority of your time caring for someone else, taking a moment for yourself doesn’t feel like a priority. Consider choosing one of these easy-to-implement, self-care resolutions, so you can start making a little bit of time for yourself every day.

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