In our busy frantic worlds we can forget how to look after ourselves. We start to do more things that pull us down, drain our energy away, and make us feel tense and fragmented, than the things that lift our mood, energise us, and make us feel calm and rested.
What happens to us when we feel like this?
This can leave us feeling stressed, lead to burn-out and if we’re not careful lead to depression.
There’s always something you can change and there’s always something you can do!
When we become entrenched in a high-stress, busy and diary filled lifestyle, we tend not to look outside of our ‘boxes’. Unless something shakes us up, we can easily fail to recognise even the most practical options that are available for us to bring calm and balance back in our lives.
What can you do to change?
At Mindset in Motion I provide support to anyone who feels trapped and help them to find ways to bring self-care into their lives. Here’s how:
First step
Mentally run through the different activities you do in a typical day. If most days are the same, try breaking them into smaller chunks, such as making coffee, talking to colleagues, taking the dog for a walk. And what sort of things do you find yourself doing in a typical evening or weekend?
Second step
Write it all down, listing between 10-15 activities of a typical day in a column on the left hand side of your page.
Third step
Of the things that you wrote down, which things nourish you? What lifts your mood, energises you, makes you feel calm and rested? What increases your sense of actually being alive and present, rather than merely existing?
Fourth step
Of the things you have written, which deplete you? What pulls you down, drains away your energy, makes you feel tense and fragmented? What decreases your sense of actually being alive and present? What makes you feel that you are merely existing, or worse?
Fifth step
Now to complete the exercise, go back to step 2 where you wrote down your activities and put an ‘N’ for ‘nourishing’ or a ‘D’ for depleting, corresponding to each activity.
Next week we’ll be exploring in more detail how we can redress the balance in our lives.
Alternatively, visit my main page and message me for further support.
