Since lockdown, you’ll have probably realised or felt that the worlds just become a whole lot lonelier. We’re currently learning to live in an environment that pushes a lot of people out of their comfort zones and daily routines. It’s more important now than ever to learn how to practice your own self-care and get yourself back on cloud nine.
Building a daily routine
Despite most countries now lifting all initial lockdown precautions, it’s still important to social distance yourself, especially from those who’ve been in contact with the virus. For most people, this now means developing a whole new way of going about your daily routine…
that’s what we are here to help you do. Therapists will often provide checklists and routine plans as a way to support clients with anxiety or depression, it’s proven that building a plan for your day gives you something to work towards, getting you out of bed, job or no job. This is the first and most important step to getting back on a path to supporting yourself. Here are a couple of ideas to kick off your list…
– Go for a 20-minute walk
– Read at least 50 pages of that book you’ve wanted to read for years
– Make a healthy breakfast for you and the family
– De-clutter your wardrobe
Removing Negativity
As much as you’d hate to hear it, usually your phones a big contributing factor towards bad mental health. It’s important to remember that when you’re looking at other people living their ‘lives’ usually, they’re showing you a rose-tinted snippet out of their pretty average day. Take small steps to focus away from living behind a screen and living in the moment. Set yourself screen timer reminders, they’re easy to set-up under your phone’s settings, giving say a 2-hour daily limit to being on social media to kick things off. Secondly, you’d be surprised how mentally free you’ll feel from deleting certain profiles off these channels, realise who truly are your friends, say ‘bye sister’ to the rest!
Practise Meditation
Let’s start this segment off by saying, meditations not for everyone. If you struggle with focusing your attention, it’s ok not to pick up meditation from the very beginning it might take a few sessions to seriously start seeing the benefits of this exercise. Find yourself a safe space, somewhere you know will be quiet, peaceful and most importantly somewhere you can sit for long periods of time without getting distracted. Meditations all about refocussing your mindset, homing in on your desires and take charge of your brain. The proven benefits
of this practise are endless, supporting mental wellbeing, improved energy levels, weight
loss, less stress to name but a few. Plenty of youtube channels have guided meditations, as
well as a great app called headspace that helps you grow along with the exercise.