Keep it simple
Happy Independence Day! This month we here at TORCH are going to be focusing on helping everyone Keep It Simple. While we are all limiting our activities during Covid-19, the dismantling and disruption of our normal day to day routines offers us an opportunity to reinvent ourselves and restructure our lives to serve us better.
This month we are going to focus on tips and tools to help everyone keep it simple. Simplifying your life means identifying what is important to you and minimizing the rest. As we face times of great uncertainty, and are forced to pull back on our social interactions and retreat to the security of our homes, we are offered an opportunity to consider the structure of our lives and how successfully we have been feeding ourselves. This can be a wonderful time to explore what is really important to us, what brings us joy and then to identify and let go of the things that are not serving us. Here are some easy ways to start simplifying your life…
1. Declutter your living spaces, stuff weighs us down and clutters our minds.
2. Eat simply, you will increase your energy and improve your overall health, as well as save time on preparation and money on take out.
3. Get outside and look up; you will improve your mood and promote relaxation. Looking down releases neurochemicals that support depression and loneliness, looking up bathes the brain in feel good chemicals that promote contentedness and wellbeing.
4. Limit your media consumption as the media plays to our negativity biases and activates a fear response deep in our middle brains. And unfortunately, negative information sticks around for 30 seconds or more, uplifting information is in and out of our brains in less than a second unless we are mindful to stay focused on the feelings this information solicits in our bodies.
5. Do more of what makes you happy. Commit to scheduling fun time with yourself and the ones you love, it will boost your mood and overall sense of wellbeing. Life is short…choose to spend your time well.
I know for myself, I have been feeling lonely, angry, frustrated during this time of Covid-19 and am grateful for the experience. In my own reframing process, I have come to see so many ways I had been spinning my wheels and wasting valuable energy, investing in dead end projects, unhealthy habits and relationships. Now with time to sit and meditate and consider with intention what is most important to me, I have started to restructure my values, my schedule and my life to better support my own personal growth and happiness. I encourage you to do the same. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter (TORCH Wellness) for more prompts, insights and information on how you can also start to simplify your life.
REMEMBER SELF CARE
Greetings friends,
Self-care should be uppermost in our minds during this time of great stress and anxiety. I hear multiple times a day from clients about their frustrations around expectations of how things should be, how they want them to be or how they should be acting during this global pandemic. This kind of self talk, the great “shoulding”, only creates more stress for ourselves and others as we fight against what is. When you say I should, you are throwing yourself out of the present moment and increasing more tension for yourself.
Instead, I encourage clients to remember we are going through a crisis that has not been endured for over 100 years; something most of us never dreamed would happen. So please, go easy on yourself. Instead of allowing the voice of self judgement to run wild in your head, turn to self compassion and self care. Ask yourself, “what could I be doing right now that would help support relaxation and self love?” I have created a type of balance sheet for my time. When I watch an hour of Netflix, I balance that time with an epsom salt bath or yoga, rather than binge watching 2 more episodes of Schitt’s Creek. When I do 3 hours at work, I balance it with a walk through my neighborhood with my dogs.
I would challenge you to create your own balance sheet. Think of all the things you are doing that may not be the most supportive during this stressful time, and start making better choices for yourself. If you binge eat a bag of cookies, commit to making a healthy vegetarian meal for dinner. If you indulge yourself with sleeping in until 10am, commit to doing 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise. I promise, your body and soul will thank you for the attention to better self care.
Here are some healthy self care tips I often recommend to clients…
-Read something uplifting
-Go for a walk
-Take an aromatherapy bath, orange and lavender oil are especially helpful to reduce anxiety
-Learn Tai Chi or an Energy Medicine routine, there are plenty of short ones available on YouTube
-Savor your food
-Watch the birds
-Go outside and lay in the grass, watch the clouds drift by
-Go for drive to a new place
-Color, doodle, draw
-Pet a pet, snuggle with your cat or play with your dog
Be Well,
Lara