An app that makes it easier for you to care of yourself – yes, please! We are exploring the best self-care apps that’ll help you upgrade your wellness practices.
Self-care has become a buzzword and a commodity in this modern world. Companies, entrepreneurs, marketers, and consumers – everyone is either buying or selling self-care. And we are not complaining! After all, self-care is essential for keeping yourself mentally and physically healthy.
But even with these widely popular trends and products, we struggle to show up for ourselves because we get BUSY!
Put your hand up if you’ve ever let your self-care plans go to the trash because you had to work or show up for someone you love. We are all swaying both left and right hands by now!
Jokes aside – it’s true!
We often forget to care for ourselves and squeeze in the much-needed ‘me time’ because of our personal and professional commitments.
Additionally, we aren’t really sure where to start when it comes to self-care. You see, most conversations around self-care are centered around bubble baths, spa treatments, scented candles, going for the run, and much more. And when you realize you can’t find space for all this in your daily routine, you give up.
Even if you start, forming a self-care habit becomes a task, and giving up becomes much more appealing.
This is where the best self-care apps come into play.
The best self-care apps in the market are designed specifically to help you take care of your well-being and achieve all your mental health goals. Because it’s so difficult to define a self-care routine and get it into a habit, good self-care apps help you stay consistent and organized.
Think of these daily self-care apps just like your exercise routine apps. Your exercise routine apps monitor your workout regime, calories burnt, etc. In the same way, good self-care apps focus on your sleep, emotional regulation skills, breathing, and thought processes.
To help you get started, we have combined a list of the best self-care apps for you. Let’s dive in.
9 Best Apps For Self-Care To Upgrade Your Wellness
1. Shine
Available: iPhone | Android
What is it? Shine is one of the best self-care apps in the market. It was initially created to provide wellness support for women (so you know it works great).
If you are looking for daily positive affirmations and messages along with an engaging library of self-improvement audio (centered on topics of mindfulness, improving sleep, etc.) – Shine is one of the top self-care apps for you.
Shine sends you personalized motivational messages every morning according to the wellness goals you enter. So, whether you are feeling overwhelmed or just need a friendly reminder about your strength, Shine’s messages will make you feel like, ‘You got this.’ And the best part is that you can save your favorite messages for later use.
It also provides a gratitude section where you can keep tabs on the good things that happen daily.
Best for: Daily positive affirmations to start your day.
Cost: Shine’s daily message feature is free. For mindful moments, you can get a subscription for $9.99/month or $53.99/year.
2. Five Minute Journal
Available: iPhone | Android
What is it: Struggling to incorporate the practice of gratitude journaling into your busy schedule?
Five Minute Journal is one of the best daily self-care apps for you. Each day’s journal provides you with an opportunity to write about:
- what you’re grateful for in that moment,
- your intentions for the day, and
- a positive affirmation for the day.
Additionally, you can also go back and reflect on your daily entries at night and describe how your day went.
The best part? All of this will only take five minutes. You can even add a photo to your daily entries.
Best for: Daily self-reflection.
Cost: Free, with premium features costing £4.49 a month or £34.99 a year.
3. Routines By Care/of
Available: iPhone | Android
What is it: Routine By Care/of is one the best free self-care apps that allows you to build a personalized self-care routine for yourself and stick to it. It provides you with tools to assess how the routine is making you feel and helps you track the benefits of the routine over time.
You also receive a personalized wellness score that tells whether your routine works for you.
For instance, the Routine app will track your energy levels throughout the day and report your average energy levels on the days you did and did not meditate.
So, if you want to figure out what your daily wellness routine looks like, Routine By Care/of is one of your top self-care apps.
Best for: Building a daily wellness routine.
Cost: Free
4. Habitica
Available: iPhone | Android
What is it? Habitica is another one of the best free self-care apps. It’s more like a cute role-playing game where you create your avatar, enter your habits and to-do list, and unlock features and gifts as you work on them.
On signing up, Habitica will suggest a list of tasks you must complete. You can edit this list and add your personalized tasks. Your avatar starts with full health and slowly gets exhausted and drained if you don’t complete your tasks.
As you complete the tasks and adopt a healthy lifestyle, you reach higher levels and unlock more benefits. If you want an engaging and gamified approach toward journaling and self-care – this is one the best self-care apps for you.
Best for: Building and sticking to healthy habits.
Cost: Free
5. Inner Hour
Available: iPhone | Android
What is it? Inner Hour is one of the good self-care therapy apps in the market that actually works. While it’s far from replacing professional therapy, it provides support and healthy coping mechanisms for dealing with regular anxiety and stress.
The app’s content and exercises are designed by mental health professionals using a cognitive-behavioral therapy approach.
Inner Hour makes it to the list of the best apps for self-care because it’s both informative and highly resourceful. It contains credible reading material on the various aspects of mental health and illnesses. It also provides healthy exercises and daily routines to help cope with stressors and triggers around you.
Additionally, it also works like a mood tracker by keeping a tab on your emotions. To top it all off, it integrates artificial intelligence in the form of Allie, a chatbot that’s a great listener.
Best for: Mental health support
Cost: Free with in-app purchases.
6. Being
Available: iPhone | Android
What is it? Being is one of the best free self-help apps available on the market. It offers a host of features, including:
- music therapy,
- habit tracking,
- advice from trained caregivers, and
- mindfulness practices.
Being is one of the best apps to help you address specific mental health concerns, even the one on which advice isn’t readily available online.
Best for: Music therapy and habit tracking
Cost: Free with in-app purchases.
7. Moment
Available: iPhone | Android
What is it? While it’s pretty ironic, Moment is one of the best free self-help designed to help you get off your phone for some much-needed time in the real world. Not just that, Moment enables you to develop healthy phone habits so that you are more aware and present in your everyday life.
How does Moment do that?
Well, it simply monitors your daily phone usage, tracks the apps that take up most of your time, and provides a personalized plan to get off your phone. For those who are too attached to their phones, Moment also offers free coaching sessions to break off unhealthy habits.
Best for: Avoiding phones and digital screens.
Cost: Free
8. NotOK
Available: iPhone | Android
What is it? A considerable part of your daily well-being is just finding the courage to ask for help. And given how hard it is, NotOK is one of the best free self-help apps for you.
It lets you create a group of your trusted friends, family members, therapists, and pretty much everyone else whom you can count upon. Once they accept your invitation, all you need to do is tap the NotOK button to tell them you aren’t feeling well. This way, they can easily reach out to you with help and support.
Best for: Creating a healthy support system.
Cost: Free
9. To Don’t
Available: iPhone | Android
What is it: Don’t feel like striking off another task from your to-do list?
Don’t!
That’s exactly what the concept of To Don’t app is.
Contrary to most productivity advice nowadays, To Don’t believes that the secret to productivity isn’t getting more and more things done. It’s understanding what tasks are wasting your time and avoiding them.
Each morning, you get a congratulations message for all the time you saved by avoiding useless tasks. You also get a clean sheet to write everything you want to avoid doing.
Best for: Managing your time
Cost: Free with in-app purchase
Conclusion:
Self-care is great. It allows you to take better care of yourself. It brings you home to yourself and allows you to unwind and relax after the tiring and stressful day that you’ve had.
But it’s also pretty tricky, and you seldom know where to start. That’s where technology and, specifically, the best self-care apps come in handy. They provide the much-needed framework and guidance to streamline self-care and upgrade wellness. We hope this list of the best daily self-care apps will help you get started.
Looking for some ideas of self-care to add to your routine? Here are the best self-care practices to help you get started.
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