The Soft Girl Reset: 10 Ways to Romanticize Your Life Again

It’s a Tuesday evening in London, and the city is humming with its usual, relentless pace. The day has been a blur of activity, a series of boxes ticked and tasks completed. Now, in the quiet moments after the day’s demands have subsided, a familiar feeling might creep in—a sense of depletion, of having poured everything out without taking the time to pour anything back in. In a world that often glorifies the hustle, the grind, and a state of perpetual busyness, it’s easy to feel like a supporting character in your own story. But a gentle, powerful counter-movement is taking root, and it’s inviting you to reclaim the narrative.

Welcome to the era of the “soft girl” and “main character energy.” Flourishing across visual platforms like TikTok and Pinterest, this aesthetic and lifestyle philosophy is a beautiful, intentional rebellion against burnout culture. It’s not about weakness; it’s about embracing softness as a profound strength. It’s about choosing a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside—a life filled with gentle routines, mindful moments, and the deliberate act of finding beauty in the everyday. It is, in essence, the art of romanticizing your life.

To “romanticize your life” doesn’t mean ignoring reality or living in a state of delusion. It means consciously choosing to see the magic in the mundane, to elevate simple actions into cherished rituals, and to treat yourself with the care and attention you would give to the protagonist of your favourite film. It’s about curating a life that feels aligned, authentic, and deeply nourishing. This is the heart of the “soft girl reset”—a gentle, intentional process of stepping back, evaluating what’s draining you, and weaving practices into your life that restore your energy and reconnect you to your joy.

This guide is your invitation to embark on your own soft reset. We will explore ten practical and heartfelt ways to infuse your life with this gentle, main character energy. These are not grand, life-altering overhauls, but small, sustainable shifts in perspective and habit that, over time, can lead to a profound transformation in your well-being. It's time to stop running on empty and start filling your own cup.

1. Curate a Morning Ritual, Not a Routine

The way you begin your day sets the tone for everything that follows. A routine is something you rush through; a ritual is something you savour. The soft girl reset begins by transforming your morning from a frantic scramble into a gentle, intentional welcome to the day. This isn't about waking up at 5 AM for a punishing workout (unless that genuinely brings you joy). It’s about carving out just 15-20 minutes of quiet, screen-free time that is entirely for you.

How to Create Your Ritual:

• Hydrate Mindfully: Before you reach for the coffee, start with a glass of water. As you drink it, think about nourishing your body. Maybe you add a slice of lemon or a sprig of mint. It’s a simple act, but doing it with intention turns it into a ritual of self-care.

  
  

• Gentle Movement: Instead of jolting your body awake, try some gentle stretches. You can find thousands of free, 10-minute morning yoga or stretching videos on platforms like Yoga with Adriene. The goal is to connect with your body, not to push it.

  
  

• Journal One Page: Before the world’s demands rush in, check in with yourself. Write down a dream you remember, a feeling you’re waking up with, or one thing you’re looking forward to. This practice is a cornerstone of the advice in the Top 10 Daily Self-Care Habits to Ignite Joy and Happiness in Your Life.

  
  

• Savour Your First Sip: Whether it’s tea or coffee, take the first few sips in silence, without your phone. Sit by a window. Notice the warmth of the mug, the aroma, the taste. This small act of mindfulness can be incredibly grounding.

This ritual is your anchor. It’s a daily declaration that your peace and well-being come first.

2. Craft a "Dopamine Menu" for Instant Joy

A key tenet of the soft life is having tools to lift your spirits on difficult days. The “dopamine menu,” a trend popularised on TikTok, is your personalised list of small, quick, and accessible activities that are guaranteed to give you a little boost of joy or pleasure. It’s your emergency toolkit for when you’re feeling low, anxious, or uninspired.

How to Build Your Menu: Take some time to brainstorm a list of things, big and small, that genuinely make you happy. The key is that they should be easy to do at a moment's notice. Organise them like a restaurant menu, perhaps by the amount of time they take.

• Appetizers (5-10 minutes):

  • Listen to your favourite upbeat song.

  • Watch a funny animal video on YouTube.

  • Step outside for five minutes of fresh air.

  • Light a beautifully scented candle.

    
    

  • Make a cup of your favourite tea.

• Main Courses (15-30 minutes):

  • Read a chapter of a comforting book.

  • Do a short, guided meditation (apps like Calm are great for this).

  • Tidy one small area of your space (like your desk or bedside table).

  • Call or message a friend who always makes you laugh.

  • Spend time on a relaxing hobby, a theme explored in 10 Relaxing Hobbies to Unwind After a Stressful Day.

• Desserts (An Indulgent Treat):

  • Eat a piece of high-quality chocolate, mindfully.

  • Take a luxurious bath or shower with your favourite products.

  • Watch an episode of a comforting TV show.

Having this list ready means that in a moment of stress, you don’t have to think; you just have to choose.

3. Create a Sensory Sanctuary in Your Home

Your home should be your sanctuary, a place where you can truly rest and recharge. The soft girl aesthetic places a huge emphasis on creating a living space that soothes the senses. This isn’t about expensive renovations; it’s about small, intentional touches that make your environment feel like a hug.

How to Create Your Sanctuary:

• Engage Your Sense of Smell: Scent is powerfully linked to emotion. Use an essential oil diffuser with calming scents like lavender or bergamot. Find a signature home scent with a beautiful candle from a brand like The White Company or NEOM Organics.

• Focus on Touch: Fill your space with soft textures. A chunky knit blanket on the sofa, a plush rug under your feet, a soft set of pyjamas to change into when you get home.

  
  

• Curate Your Soundscape: Be intentional about what you listen to. Create playlists of calming instrumental music, gentle jazz, or ambient sounds. Silence, too, can be a luxury.

• Please Your Eyes with Gentle Light: Harsh overhead lighting can be jarring. Use lamps with warm-toned bulbs, fairy lights, and candles to create a soft, inviting glow in the evenings.

  
  

• Declutter One Small Space: You don’t need to Marie Kondo your entire home. Start by creating one small, beautiful, clutter-free zone. This could be your bedside table, a reading nook, or a single shelf. Having one area of visual calm can have a surprisingly powerful effect on your mental state. This kind of mindful home-making is a creative act, a topic delved into in Creativity in Relationships- The Secret to Building a Stronger Bond.

4. Become the Curator of Your Own Digital World

In the 21st century, self-care must extend to our digital lives. Your social media feeds are environments you inhabit every day. A soft reset involves a conscious and sometimes ruthless curation of this digital space to ensure it is a source of inspiration, not anxiety.

How to Curate Your Feed:

• The Unfollow Button is Your Friend: Go through your following list on Instagram, TikTok, and any other platforms. Unfollow any account that makes you feel inadequate, anxious, or "less than." You don’t owe anyone your attention.

• Mute with abandon: If unfollowing feels too confrontational (like with a friend or family member), use the mute function. You can protect your peace without creating drama.

• Follow for Joy: Actively seek out and follow accounts that inspire you and make you feel good. This could be artists, poets, nature photographers, travel bloggers, or accounts dedicated to beautiful interiors.

• Set Digital Boundaries: The practice of setting limits is crucial for well-being, a theme central to Setting Boundaries in Relationships. Designate screen-free time, such as the first hour of your day and the last hour before bed. Turn off non-essential notifications. Be the master of your phone, not the other way around.

• Create Beautiful Digital Spaces: Your phone's wallpaper, your desktop background—these are spaces you see dozens of times a day. Choose images that make you feel calm and happy. You can create beautiful, aesthetic collages for free using an app like Canva.

5. Find Beauty in the Mundane: The Art of the "Little Luxury"

Romanticizing your life is about finding the beauty hidden in your daily routines. It’s about elevating mundane tasks into moments of simple pleasure. A "little luxury" is not about spending a lot of money; it's about investing a little bit of care and attention into your everyday items and actions.

How to Find Your Little Luxuries:

• Upgrade Your Daily Tools: Use the "nice" mug for your morning coffee every day, not just on special occasions. Buy a beautiful pen to write your to-do lists. Use a luxurious hand soap in your bathroom. These small upgrades can make daily tasks feel special.

  
  

• Plate Your Food Beautifully: Even if you’re just having toast for breakfast or leftovers for lunch, take the extra 30 seconds to put it on a nice plate. Arrange it artfully. This simple act tells your subconscious that you are worthy of a beautiful meal.

• Create a "Going Out" Playlist... for Staying In: Make a playlist of the music you’d want to hear in a chic, cozy wine bar, and play it while you cook dinner on a Tuesday night.

• The Art of the Single Flower: You don’t need a huge bouquet. Buying a single, beautiful flower or a stem of eucalyptus and placing it in a small vase on your desk can bring a surprising amount of joy.

This is the essence of main character energy: recognizing that your life, right now, is worthy of beauty and care. This mindset can profoundly affect your relationships, a topic central to the Relationship Advice section.

6. Dress the Part: The Power of a "Soft Girl" Wardrobe

Your clothes have a powerful effect on your mood and how you carry yourself. The soft girl aesthetic in fashion is about comfort, femininity, and feeling good in your own skin. It’s about moving away from restrictive, uncomfortable clothing and embracing fabrics and silhouettes that feel like a gentle hug.

How to Embrace the Aesthetic:

• Focus on Fabrics: Think soft, natural fabrics like cotton, linen, cashmere, and silk. The feeling of the fabric against your skin is a key part of the experience.

• Embrace a Gentle Palette: The aesthetic often leans towards soft pastels, creams, and earthy neutrals. These colours have a psychologically calming effect.

• Prioritise Comfort: This doesn’t mean sloppy. Think elegant, wide-leg trousers, soft-knit jumpers, flowing midi skirts, and comfortable yet stylish flat shoes. For inspiration on finding this balance, check out these 10 Best Shoes to Wear for a Comfortable Yet Stylish Date Night.

• The "Getting Ready" Ritual: Turn the act of getting dressed into a ritual. Play some music, light a candle. Take the time to choose an outfit that makes you feel good, even if you’re just working from home.

  
  

• Find Your Signature Scent: A beautiful perfume is the ultimate invisible accessory. Find a scent that feels like "you" and wear it every day as a small act of self-love. You can find beautiful and unique scents from niche perfume houses like Jo Malone London.

Dressing in a way that feels authentic and beautiful is a powerful form of self-expression.

7. Gentle Nutrition: Listening to Your Body

The soft life approach to food is one of gentle nutrition, not restriction. It’s about moving away from diet culture and towards a more intuitive and joyful relationship with food. It’s about nourishing your body with delicious, wholesome foods while also giving yourself unconditional permission to enjoy the foods that bring you comfort and pleasure.

How to Practice Gentle Nutrition:

• Eat Intuitively: Pay attention to your body's hunger and fullness cues. Eat when you're hungry, and stop when you're satisfied. This sounds simple, but it's a practice that takes time to relearn. The book "Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works" by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch is a foundational text on this topic.

• "Crowd Out," Don't Cut Out: Instead of focusing on what you "shouldn't" eat, focus on what you can add. How can you add one more colourful vegetable to your dinner? How can you add more protein to your breakfast to keep you full and energised?

• Romanticize Your Groceries: Visit a local farmer's market. Take the time to pick out beautiful, seasonal produce. The act of choosing and preparing your food can be a joyful and grounding experience.

• The Joy of a "Snack Plate": A trend popularised on social media, the "snack plate" or "girl dinner" is the ultimate in low-effort, gentle nutrition. Arrange a small selection of things you love on a plate—some cheese, crackers, fruit, olives, a few squares of chocolate. It’s a playful and satisfying way to eat.

Nourishing your body is a fundamental act of self-care. For more on creating healthy habits, see these Best Daily Habits For A Better Life.

8. Speak to Yourself with Kindness: The Power of Affirmations

Your inner dialogue shapes your reality. A soft reset involves a conscious effort to quiet your inner critic and cultivate a voice of self-compassion. Affirmations are a simple but powerful tool for rewiring your thought patterns and reinforcing a positive self-concept.

How to Use Affirmations:

• Keep them Present and Positive: Phrase them in the present tense, as if they are already true. For example, instead of "I will be calm," say "I am calm and at peace."

• Make them Personal: They should resonate with you. Some examples for a soft girl reset might be:

  • "I am worthy of rest and gentleness."

  • "I find beauty in the small moments of my day."

  • "I release the need to be productive at all times."

  • "I am the main character in my own beautiful story."

• Practice Repetition: Write them on sticky notes and place them on your mirror or desk. Say them aloud to yourself in the morning. Choose one to be your mantra for the day.

• Combine with Journaling: Use your affirmations as journal prompts. Write down the affirmation and then explore what it brings up for you.

This practice is a key part of building a loving inner world, a theme explored in 10 Habits of Couples Who Stay Deeply in Love for a Lifetime, as the way you love yourself sets the foundation for how you love others.

9. Reconnect with Nature’s Rhythms

In our urban, digitally-saturated lives, it’s easy to become disconnected from the natural world. Re-establishing this connection is a cornerstone of the soft life. Nature is grounding, restorative, and a powerful reminder of a pace of life that is slower and more cyclical than our own.

How to Reconnect:

• Find Your "Sit Spot": Find a comfortable spot in a nearby park, a garden, or even on a balcony. Visit it regularly, even for just ten minutes. Notice the small changes from day to day—the way the light hits, the new flowers blooming, the types of birds you see.

• Bring the Outdoors In: Fill your home with houseplants. Tending to them can be a meditative and rewarding practice. For beginners, a snake plant or a pothos is famously resilient.

• Notice the Sky: Make a point to look at the sky every day. Notice the colour of the sunrise or sunset. Watch the clouds. This simple act can instantly pull you out of your own head and connect you to something vast and beautiful.

• Eat Seasonally: Align your diet with the seasons by eating produce that is currently being harvested. In late summer/early autumn in the UK, this means enjoying apples, blackberries, plums, and squash. This is a delicious way to feel more connected to the earth's cycles.

Connecting with nature is a powerful form of personal growth, a topic you can explore further in Things to Give Up for Personal Growth and Success.

10. Embrace Rest as a Radical Act

In a culture that equates busyness with worth, choosing to rest is a radical and necessary act of self-preservation. A soft girl reset means unlearning the guilt associated with rest and embracing it as a vital, productive, and non-negotiable part of a healthy life.

How to Embrace Radical Rest:

• Schedule "Do Nothing" Time: Literally block out time in your calendar for "doing nothing." This is not time to catch up on chores. It is permission to lie on the sofa, daydream, listen to music, or simply be.

• Define What Rest Means to You: Rest is not just sleep. It can be active or passive. A gentle walk might be restful for one person, while reading a book is for another. Identify what truly recharges your batteries and prioritise that.

• Learn to Recognise Your Body’s Cues: Your body tells you when it needs to rest. Don’t ignore signs of fatigue, brain fog, or irritability. See them as gentle invitations to slow down.

• Practice "Productive Procrastination": If you’re feeling burnt out from a big task, give yourself permission to switch to a low-energy, restorative activity. Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is step away and come back with a rested mind.

This commitment to rest is the ultimate expression of self-care. It is the foundation upon which a softer, more romanticized, and more sustainable life is built. It is a core principle for overall wellness, a key part of the conversation on That Love Podcast.

Conclusion: Writing Your Own Soft Story

The “soft girl reset” is more than just a fleeting internet trend; it is a profound and timely response to a world that is often hard, fast, and demanding. It is a conscious choice to cultivate a life defined by gentleness, beauty, and intentionality. It is the empowering realization that you are, and always have been, the main character of your own life, and you have the power to write a story that is filled with moments of peace, joy, and quiet magic.

Romanticizing your life is not about creating a perfect, Instagram-worthy existence. It is about finding the perfection that already exists in your imperfect, real, and beautiful life. It’s in the taste of your morning coffee, the comfort of a soft blanket, the kindness in your own inner voice, and the courage to choose rest in a world that tells you to keep running. By embracing these ten gentle practices, you are not just adopting a new aesthetic; you are embarking on a journey of coming home to yourself.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1) What does "soft girl energy" actually mean? "Soft girl energy" refers to a mindset and aesthetic that prioritises gentleness, emotional intelligence, self-care, and finding beauty in the everyday. It's a move away from "hustle culture" and towards a more balanced and nourishing way of life.

2) Is this just for women? Not at all! While the term "soft girl" is gendered, the principles of romanticizing your life, embracing gentle routines, and prioritising self-care are universal and beneficial for people of all genders.

3) Do I need to spend a lot of money to live a "softer" life? No. This is a common misconception. The core of this lifestyle is about mindset and intentionality, not consumerism. Many of the most effective practices, like journaling, spending time in nature, and curating your digital space, are completely free.

4) How is this different from just being lazy or unproductive? The key difference is intention. Laziness is often accompanied by guilt and a sense of avoidance. The "soft life" embraces rest as a productive and necessary act for long-term well-being. It's about working smarter, not harder, and preventing burnout so that you have more energy for the things that truly matter.

5) I'm a busy parent/student/professional. How can I possibly fit this in? Start incredibly small. The goal is not to add more to your plate, but to change the way you approach what's already there. Try romanticizing just one small moment a day—your morning tea, for example. Even five minutes of intentional peace can make a huge difference.

6) What if I don't feel like a "soft" person? Can I still do this? Absolutely. Softness here is not about being passive or weak; it's about being compassionate and gentle with yourself. It's a skill you can cultivate, regardless of your natural personality.

7) How long does a "soft reset" take? It's an ongoing process, not a destination. You can do a focused "reset" weekend to kickstart the new habits, but the real benefit comes from weaving these practices into your life for the long term.

8) Isn't romanticizing your life just ignoring your problems? No, it's about building the resilience to face your problems. By creating a foundation of self-care and filling your own cup, you are better equipped to handle the inevitable challenges and hardships of life from a place of strength, not depletion.

9) My life is genuinely chaotic right now. Is this realistic for me? In fact, this is when these practices are most important. When life is chaotic, creating small, predictable rituals of calm (like a 5-minute morning meditation or a cup of tea in silence) can provide an essential anchor and a sense of stability.

10) Where can I find more inspiration for the "soft girl" aesthetic? Pinterest and TikTok are fantastic visual resources. Search for terms like "soft girl aesthetic," "romanticize your life," "main character energy," and "that girl routine" to find a wealth of visual inspiration and practical tips.