The best thing I have done this year is structured my day so I go to work at 9am. That allows me plenty of time in the morning to exercise, meditate, and do other personal tasks. I find at the end of the day after work I’m too tired to prioritise myself in any productive self-care practices. What has helped me a lot is to use a daily checklist of things I want to do for me (yoga/walking/drink 8 bottles of water/take medicine/etc.). I can accomplish most of the list by the time I leave for work (not the water!) and that feels good. In the reading, I found it reassuring to acknowledge how schedules will likely need to be changed at times but the “template” gives a place to return to. Overall the weekend I realised I had not referred to my daily checklists for a week or so and I’m back in the habit now.
I make my love of lists work to my advantage too. I use a water tracking app and the Productive habit tracker app to track a lot of the goals on my Rule of Life, including meditating, exercising, spending time with family/friends, and doing something fun.
What has been very grounding is to allow for silence, reflections, prayer “Care of Soul” to start my day and “Care of Self” to end my day with physical stretching, walking, or dancing (to move my body because of a sedentary type of day).
When heavy emotional or spiritual distractions interfere the flow of the day, I tend to pause, breathe and do a quick body scan. It is my way of seeing where my body is holding the heaviness of the distractions.
Doing this Lenten Study now has been teaching me how to continue to be intentional in pacing and self-care, to avoid getting back into “exhaustion land.”
Do you know about the Dancing Resilience group on Facebook? It was started by Kathryn Mansfield during the pandemic. They hold scheduled group dances via Zoom a few times weekly. She plays music for about an hour and everyone just moves their body however they want. I've only done it once and it was a lot of fun. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2882347251808648/
Thank you for sharing about the Dancing Resilience group. I am not on FB.
A colleague coach who incorporates movement and dancing in her coaching sessions has inspired me to introducing dancing in retreats. I did it this past weekend. It was so well received!
One of my goals for the year is to soothe my overactive nervous system. I've realized that doing so requires me to have more spaciousness in my daily life. I have to take on fewer deadlines and projects (I'm getting good at making no my default response). I still tend to put too much pressure on myself to get going in the morning. So this week, I've been intentional about slowing down and giving myself all the time I need for self-care. I'm getting more comfortable with leaving work tasks undone in order to give myself the time I need for exercising, meditating, napping, and making healthy meals.
A lot of my self-care priorities right now pertain to physical health, yet I am not getting myself to the gym with regularity, and I’m not eating as many healthy foods as I’d like. One simple thing I can do is lower perfectionism in terms of meals. I need to eat more vegetables: worry less about making a gourmet side dish, and just microwave some frozen broccoli 🥦. (I actually really enjoy like cooked broccoli.)
With getting to the gym, I find that I am emotionally/mentally/physically exhausted and I really crave downtime (just to read books) which is why I have been lolling around the house in the mornings instead of going to the gym first thing . Perhaps, I need to try scheduling an hour or two one evening a week to just enjoy reading without any other responsibilities.
For Lent, I blocked half an hour from my workday every day to get outside and get a quick lunch. I am going to keep this on my calendar as a standing appointment! Part of my self care this month was to start some basic body weight exercises — I started out consistently, started getting some knee pain, and haven’t done anything since. I think it’s partly fear of injury but also because I haven’t made space or time for it as part of my routine. I think I’ll try an experiment where I schedule a little time for that in my workday as well.
The best thing I have done this year is structured my day so I go to work at 9am. That allows me plenty of time in the morning to exercise, meditate, and do other personal tasks. I find at the end of the day after work I’m too tired to prioritise myself in any productive self-care practices. What has helped me a lot is to use a daily checklist of things I want to do for me (yoga/walking/drink 8 bottles of water/take medicine/etc.). I can accomplish most of the list by the time I leave for work (not the water!) and that feels good. In the reading, I found it reassuring to acknowledge how schedules will likely need to be changed at times but the “template” gives a place to return to. Overall the weekend I realised I had not referred to my daily checklists for a week or so and I’m back in the habit now.
I make my love of lists work to my advantage too. I use a water tracking app and the Productive habit tracker app to track a lot of the goals on my Rule of Life, including meditating, exercising, spending time with family/friends, and doing something fun.
What has been very grounding is to allow for silence, reflections, prayer “Care of Soul” to start my day and “Care of Self” to end my day with physical stretching, walking, or dancing (to move my body because of a sedentary type of day).
When heavy emotional or spiritual distractions interfere the flow of the day, I tend to pause, breathe and do a quick body scan. It is my way of seeing where my body is holding the heaviness of the distractions.
Doing this Lenten Study now has been teaching me how to continue to be intentional in pacing and self-care, to avoid getting back into “exhaustion land.”
Do you know about the Dancing Resilience group on Facebook? It was started by Kathryn Mansfield during the pandemic. They hold scheduled group dances via Zoom a few times weekly. She plays music for about an hour and everyone just moves their body however they want. I've only done it once and it was a lot of fun. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2882347251808648/
Thank you for sharing about the Dancing Resilience group. I am not on FB.
A colleague coach who incorporates movement and dancing in her coaching sessions has inspired me to introducing dancing in retreats. I did it this past weekend. It was so well received!
One of my goals for the year is to soothe my overactive nervous system. I've realized that doing so requires me to have more spaciousness in my daily life. I have to take on fewer deadlines and projects (I'm getting good at making no my default response). I still tend to put too much pressure on myself to get going in the morning. So this week, I've been intentional about slowing down and giving myself all the time I need for self-care. I'm getting more comfortable with leaving work tasks undone in order to give myself the time I need for exercising, meditating, napping, and making healthy meals.
Leaving work tasks undone is a hard one for me.
A lot of my self-care priorities right now pertain to physical health, yet I am not getting myself to the gym with regularity, and I’m not eating as many healthy foods as I’d like. One simple thing I can do is lower perfectionism in terms of meals. I need to eat more vegetables: worry less about making a gourmet side dish, and just microwave some frozen broccoli 🥦. (I actually really enjoy like cooked broccoli.)
With getting to the gym, I find that I am emotionally/mentally/physically exhausted and I really crave downtime (just to read books) which is why I have been lolling around the house in the mornings instead of going to the gym first thing . Perhaps, I need to try scheduling an hour or two one evening a week to just enjoy reading without any other responsibilities.
For Lent, I blocked half an hour from my workday every day to get outside and get a quick lunch. I am going to keep this on my calendar as a standing appointment! Part of my self care this month was to start some basic body weight exercises — I started out consistently, started getting some knee pain, and haven’t done anything since. I think it’s partly fear of injury but also because I haven’t made space or time for it as part of my routine. I think I’ll try an experiment where I schedule a little time for that in my workday as well.