{We do this weekly feature over on The Maven Circle called "Truthy Tuesday", where we share our real experiences around different topics each week. We'd love to have people post their experiences around those topics on their own blogs too, to encourage more truthiness around blogland and openly talk about some of these things!
This week I'm doing my Truthy Tuesday post here on my own blog, in hopes you'll do one on your blog too! We'll link back to it from the MC blog so that we can all check eachother's posts out.}
We're talking about "self care" this week, as in how do we take care of our own health and wellness? It doesn't involve getting mani/pedis and sitting around eating ice cream all day, although that sounds like a totally awesome and worthwhile way to spend a day here and there :)
It's more about, how do we give back to ourselves? Keep our personal wells full so that we can be our most awesome selves?
I'm feeling in need of some serious self care right now after an exciting, inspiring, but honesty exhausting weekend spent at WDS.
I normally take weekends OFF from work stuff. As in, I don't open up my laptop on a Saturday. I rarely check my email on the weekend and don't reply to any until Monday, unless it's a really rare something that can't wait. I might do some work on a Sunday evening if I absolutely have to, but it's only the most relaxing, fun kind of work that I can do with HBO on in the background- nothing too thinky.
I do all this in an effort to give myself a break, a relief from analyzing and organizing in my brain all day, a chance to really feel removed from work thoughts and present in what's right in front of me.
So having no brain time off at all this weekend made it really hard to jump back into this work week with much gusto. My brain feels like a computer with too many windows open that hasn't been shut-down for far too long and the RAM is all clogged up. My spinny rainbow pinwheel thingy is spinning for a long-ass time between each click of the mouse, and the only way to fix me at this point is to shut down, and reboot.
But the weekend isn't comin for a many more days, so I'm going to have to incorporate little "restarts" throughout each day to keep me chugging along.
Here are some of the ways I make quick "restarts" to come back to present and take care of my own mental & physical wellness throughout a busy day:
- fetch break with bobohead out in the yard everyday
- walks around the neighborhood with my camera in hand
- a 20 min break out in the garden to weed & prune (yes I like those things), cut flowers or just gaze
- a mid-day shower to clear my head, brainstorm and re-energize
- meditating- a quick guided meditation recenters me in less then 10 minutes
- if one of my cats is lookin' cute, best be sure I'll break to take some pictures
- exercise isn't half bad if you find something you really like- I do kundalini yoga videos at home 2x a week & group training work-outs outside at the park 2x a week (which are super awesome!)
- meeting friends for breakfast or a happy hour cocktail- sometimes an hour convo with a good friend is all the therapy you need
- take my brain-on pills and a multi-vitamin every day
- drink many large glasses of water each day, starting first thing in the morning which helps me keep it up all day- taking vitamins helps increase the water intake too!
- have breakfast every morn, even if it's small- helps keep my metabolism up & helps me eat throughout the day (instead of starving myself til dinner cause I was "too busy" working to eat, like I used to)
- make a mean green smoothie which takes 5 min and is always an energy booster
- listen to music really loud and dance around like the dork-fantastic
- do self-hypnosis downloads to relax and stay motivated- 15-20 minutes to help stop procrastinating? I'll take it!
- take 20 min to watch a video, read a couple articles or a book chapter on something I want to learn about, to help my biz or myself
- and my favorite easy breathing technique which can help me refocus and destress in a minute or less
That's most of what's in my self care bag, and I'll reach in and pull out what I need, when I need it, throughout the day.
Sometimes I need to take many tiny self care breaks during the day to keep my energy and enthusiasm up, sometimes I only need a few... but it's all about listening to what your body and mind needs in the moment, and giving yourself that, so you have even more to give to your work, your people and the world around you!
I hope this list can give you some ideas of how easy it can be to add in self care to your day 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there. What are some ways you take care of yourself throughout the day? Or do you forget to add yourself to your own "to-do" list?
Share in the comments below, or on your own blog & leave me a link- we'd love to hear your stories & tips too- love talking about this stuff!
