What Does Sustainable Self-Care Look Like? (it’s not fast fashion)

Sustainable well-being is something that many of us want to achieve in our lives. That’s the ultimate embodiment of living in harmony with nature. When you feel good and you’re avoiding things that could adversely affect nature, that’s you living the best possible life you could in the ecosystem constraints in which you find yourself. 

What sustainable well-being isn’t is fast fashion. Buying cheap clothes and throwing them away the very next week isn’t something that should be on your to-do list. 

So, let’s take a look at some of the ways you can sustainably support your well-being. Here are our ideas: 

Use Values When Making Decisions

One place to start is to use value-based decision-making. You want to develop choices that align with your long-term goals and personal aspirations instead of short-term fixes. 

For example, instead of importing a bicycle from China, you could buy a better-made one refurbished locally or that will serve you for decades to come and function as your first choice whenever you want to run errands. 

You could also support initiatives that uplift others. These could be passion projects that contribute to global well-being and make a difference in the lives of people you don’t even know. 

Use Slow Fashion

You could also adopt the principles of slow fashion, a movement that is gaining traction as environmental concerns begin to dominate the national conversation. 

The idea behind slow fashion is pretty simple: you only buy clothes you know are going to last for a long time and clothes that have been made ethically. This means investing in quality over quantity and choosing brands that minimise their impact on the environment by producing locally, using organic materials, and avoiding anything made using modern slavery or derived from crude oil. 

Be More Holistic

Being holistic in health practices is also a strategy that can boost well-being while looking after the environment. For example, you could eat a plant-based diet, proven multiple times to vastly reduce ecological impact compared to animal farming. Better yet, you could make more organic plant-based choices. These cut down on things like chemical sprays and may even contribute to better soil. 

Then, there’s physical fitness. Engaging in low-impact outdoor activities, like walking, running and cycling, can be a fantastic way to improve your fitness and feel better overall. 

Look at places like online marketplaces for second hand home furnishings, investing in your home environment can have an amazing impact on your own mental health, even curling up in a comfortable recliner sofa could be a great way to boost your well-being. Changing your furniture choices so you can be more contented is an excellent idea.

Local Engagement

Another way to foster well-being is to engage with local people. Supporting artisans, farmers, and small businesses can boost regional economies and slash your carbon footprint. It can also improve the transparency in where goods are coming from, allowing you to see more clearly what’s local, and what depends on massive global supply chains that cause harm to the environment.

So there you have it: some of the ways you can combine well-being and sustainability.

this is a collaborative post.