Happy New Year! 2021 has finally arrived!
Let’s start this year as we mean to go on…with purpose and strength #JanuaryStrong.
Let’s talk about a New Year, but the same you.
After all, just because the clock strikes midnight and the next year rolls in, you’re still you – right?
2020 was an unpredictable shocker of a year. Who knew that a virus would become a global pandemic and quite literally, grind the world to a halt. Whilst we’re still in the midst of this horror, we can still find ways to divert our attention to try and reclaim our lives and selves once more.
Self-Care
We can start with us. Self-care is a phrase often talked about but not so often done. It’s absolutely essential. Especially in a pandemic. We’re so surrounded by negative news and worrying situations. We can’t change that. But we can change how we absorb that information so that we don’t experience a debilitating overwhelm.
Let’s look at ways we can promote self-care. What can we do to prioritise our wellbeing? Scheduling you-time within your daily time management planning works for many people, especially time-starved women-in-business: self-care is crucial.
I use my Planner to schedule in a daily list of self-care activities for each day.
A few of my tried and tested methods of self-care:
- Mindfulness
- Meditation
- Journalling – or Morning Pages, as coined by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way – 3 A4 pages of handwritten blah-blah of whatever comes to mind, first thing in the morning. Every day.
- Sleep – quality sleep helps us to improve physical and mental health; consolidates our memory; improves concentration, productivity and creativity along with improving immune function.
“Even a brief period of deep sleep, in other words, helps us make the kinds of new connections that allow us to better explore our world. In a nutshell, sleep is what allows us to operate at our highest level of contribution so that we can achieve more, in less time.”
Greg McKeown – Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
- Learning something new – SkillShare (get two months’ free Premium with this link) is a great platform, as is Udemy.
- Have a hot bath with some oils or salts.
- Read – get lost in a different world for a while
- Doing nothing! Seriously, it’s a thing! Niksen is a Dutch word that translates as literally, “doing nothing” – a benefit in helping you reset and deal with challenging or stressful situation. The Italians also have a phrase for it: Dolce Far Niente which translates as “the sweetness of doing nothing” or pleasant idleness. It’s lovely to do something (or nothing in this case) that actually has a name for it!
These are just a few ideas that I find really helpful to use as part of my self-care routine. I hope you find them useful too!