Deborah Tosline wrote and published “Skin Remodeling DIY: An Introduction to the Underground World of Do-It-Yourself Skincare” in 2015. Her approach to skin care is based on a scientific background, love of research and over 30 years of DIY skincare experience.

Are you the kind of person who takes special care of your belongings? Do you ensure that your car is well-maintained and serviced regularly? Do you spend time cleaning, upgrading, remodeling, organizing, and refining your personal space? Are you fastidious about your clothing, cleaning, steaming and arranging? Do you attend to the needs of others ensuring their comfort above all else? Do you devote yourself to your work, have high expectations and strive to produce the highest quality work products?

Consistent care of loved ones, hard work and maintenance of one’s home, garden, automobile, and belongings is important. Caring keeps us engaged, gives purpose and provides satisfaction. Attending to these details enhances the aesthetics and quality of our lives. It makes sense to develop routine maintenance, it is economic and environmental to protect and preserve our assets.

A caring life can be deeply meaningful and enriching.

You may drive a beautiful car in perfect working condition, detailed to an immaculate gloss. Your home may be orderly, clean and polished providing you with an inviting abode for protection and leisure. You may support others to allow them to live better lives and pursue their dreams. You may accommodate, volunteer, and do more, give more, seek more and be more to achieve your desires.

Your belongings may be stunning and you may be a top performer, but it is all meaningless without you. Yes, all the people and things that you work so hard at maintaining do not mean a thing unless you are there to give, enjoy and experience.

If YOU are not well-maintained, what’s the point of maintaining anything else?

Have you checked your personal owner’s manual for maintenance requirements?

How do you maintain yourself? I am not referring to grooming. I am talking about moving consuming, nurturing, nourishing, broadening, overreaching personal maintenance. Do you make your health a priority? Do you pursue self-care?

You may rely on generational familial habits, copy the trends of your circle of friends or maybe you use advertisements to inform your personal health decisions.

Do you want to keep yourself or will you let yourself slip away over time and lose your cognitive and regenerative abilities, flexibility and mobility? Do you care if you can walk a mile, touch your toes, or easily get out of a chair? Would you like to keep your strength and your skin and brain health? Would you like to strive for a pain-free life?

Holistic health includes a diverse array of lifestyle habits, including: whole foods and nutrition, body and brain exercise, muscle stretching and strengthening, soft tissue therapy, avoiding synthetic chemicals, teeth and gum maintenance, sleep hygiene, mental health, interior home health, high emotional intelligence communications, joyful hobbies, meditation, time in nature, connecting and loving others, being loved, etc.

If you want to maintain yourself in a manner that is similar to how you maintain your car, your career, your home, and your family and friends it’s going to require effort. Personal maintenance requires a daily and weekly commitment to practices that can help keep you whole throughout your life.

I am thankful that my brain helped me establish a lifelong broad personal maintenance path. There is a lot of detail behind my brain’s decisions but I’ll be concise. My self-maintenance pursuits evolved this way:

• As a teenager, I realized that I needed to be able to take care of myself asap and for the rest of my life.

• In my early 20’s I realized that it’s hard to work when I don’t feel good so I vowed to do everything in my power to maintain my health.

• I read, analyzed and integrated information to develop personal health routines throughout my adult life.

• My brain identified the logic, developed the processes and provided the discipline to engage in consistent life-long self-maintenance.

• My lifestyle and personal maintenance program makes my brain and body feel so good, that it is easy to keep doing it. Self-maintenance provides a coping mechanism for me when life is challenging.

• My personal maintenance routines provide calming, nourishing, strengthening, expansive, and mandatory rejuvenation.

I maintain myself to keep myself. I would like to be able to move in any direction, do back bends, ride my bike, hike mountains, learn difficult topics, practice musical instruments, and remain engaged throughout my life in all of my interests and favorite activities.

My primary personal maintenance goal was to maintain my health so that I could work and take care of myself and to date, I am grateful that I have achieved that goal. I am 64 and because of my revelatory teenage and young adult decisions and the focus and discipline of my brain, I am able and interested in doing any activity that I would have done at the age of 35.

This is success for me and my personal maintenance goals remain the same. I continue to do everything in my power to maintain my personal health. This pursuit promotes well-being and contentment.

There is a lot to consider when committing to self-maintenance. Number one – YOU need YOU, keep yourself well maintained! Mainstream culture does not teach us healthy habits. Ignore manipulative advertising from corporations that make bank on your dollars while your health declines. Your health and mobility are important and you’ll need to expand your perspective on health and wellness to optimize your well-being.

A personal self-maintenance plan will be specific to you. It is your path to personal freedom and must include routines that appeal to you, fit your budget and schedule. Items to consider while planning your self maintenance program include:

• Identify your favorite topics and special interests.

• Identify how to transform your interests into healthy sustainable self-maintenance activities.

• Self-maintenance should be fun and effective.

• Research, read and compile information to develop your personal maintenance program.

• Practice alternative integrative naturopathic self-maintenance methods.

• Return to fundamental human practices and reduce exposure to the automated, processed mainstream culture.

• Pursue nature-based health for you and the planet.

Have you deferred personal maintenance? Have you lost some or a lot of yourself? Do you want to recover and rejuvenate? Do not delay another day. No fear. It is possible to get yourself back. The body and brain are resilient and plastic and will follow your lead. You can recover yourself over time.

If you have the opportunity, at your earliest age choose to keep yourself through life via personal maintenance. Consistent, cumulative self-care may result in your best polished self, honed yet soft, moving through life naturally, healthfully because you choose to maintain and keep yourself.

If you need more information, check out the local library, search the Internet, or check out my past Blog articles. It would be an honor to me if you purchased my facial care book. Thank you! 

Take good care of yourselves!

XO Deborah

This article is intended to be used as general information only and is in no way intended to replace medical advice, be used as a medical treatment program, diagnosis, or cure of any disease or medical condition. There are no warranties, expressed or implied, regarding the effectiveness of the practices described in this article. Products or substances discussed herein are for educational purposes only and are not intended as recommendations of the author.