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Journaling is a powerful tool for self-reflection that I actually recommend to almost all of my patients. We can journal in the morning, we can journal at night, or we can journal at any time throughout the day. Often when we journal in the morning, we're looking to just clear our minds and focus on what we want from the day ahead of us, and when we're journaling at night, it's often an opportunity to actually reflect on the day that's passed and process all of the emotions and experiences and thoughts that we've had throughout the course of the day. I often recommend that we don't get overly strict or rigid with our journaling practices. A lot of people tend to get self-critical and feel like "I'm bad at journaling. I'm not good at it. I can never finish a journal." And so being flexible and really aware of how those self-critical voices creep in is important and maintaining a sustainable journaling practice.
Journaling is a powerful tool for self-reflection that I actually recommend to almost all of my patients. We can journal in the morning, we can journal at night, or we can journal at any time throughout the day. Often when we journal in the morning, we're looking to just clear our minds and focus on what we want from the day ahead of us, and when we're journaling at night, it's often an opportunity to actually reflect on the day that's passed and process all of the emotions and experiences and thoughts that we've had throughout the course of the day. I often recommend that we don't get overly strict or rigid with our journaling practices. A lot of people tend to get self-critical and feel like "I'm bad at journaling. I'm not good at it. I can never finish a journal." And so being flexible and really aware of how those self-critical voices creep in is important and maintaining a sustainable journaling practice.
So what does it mean to practice self care? We often associate self care with things that we do once in a while - like getting a massage or taking a bath, but I like to think about self care as meaningful self care on a daily basis as a way to take care of our emotional and physical needs. I like to think of the four C's of self care: Clock, Care, Connection, and Compassion. When we think of clock, we think of making time, dedicating time to taking care of ourselves. Sometimes this could be a very short practice - taking one or two minutes to do some deep breathing, a brief guided meditation or some journaling - or sometimes we might decide to dedicate a longer time to a more involved practice. The second step is care. How do you really take care of yourself? This often begins with physical practices, such as nutrition, sleep, exercise, and then can move beyond that to meditation, journaling practices, and so forth. The third step is connection. Making time to connect with family and friends on a regular basis so that we're both giving support and receiving support. Connection can also mean connecting to a professional. So for example, if you're struggling with severe stress, depression, or anxiety, making it a priority to seek professional support can actually be a very important part of self care. And the last step is compassion - self compassion in particular. Oftentimes when we think of self care, we can actually get a bit rigid with our routines and get hard on ourselves if we're not doing our journaling every night or we haven't exercised every day. Really noticing our internal voice and making it a practice to be kind to ourselves as we go through our self care routines is very, very important. Also, compassion towards other people. Things like random acts of kindness, service, and helping others can go a long way in helping us to feel good about ourselves.
When you think about a nighttime ritual, there are three factors to consider in determining what might work for you. The first is keeping your rituals personal. What are the things that are really supportive of your mental and emotional wellbeing? The second is allowing them to be flexible, maybe setting an intention to practice them every night, but if you can't, letting that be okay. Flexibility also means being able to take your nighttime ritual with you wherever you go. So if you're traveling or on the road, you can still practice if you would like to. And the third thing to consider is keeping your ritual small and manageable. Really elaborate rituals can be difficult to maintain or difficult to be sustainable with, so the smaller that we can keep them, the better we can be at practicing them on a consistent basis. I like to think about nighttime rituals as really focused on restoration and reflection. So restoration means: how do we relax and unwind at the end of the day? And again, this looks different for every person. For some people, it could be journaling, it could be meditation, it could be a spiritual practice, reading a magazine or taking a walk - thinking about the things that allow us to really decompress and unwind. And the second component is reflection. How do we make sense of the day that just passed by us? And one way to do this in particular is journaling. For example, a gratitude list is a great nightly practice to help us think back on the day and think about the things that went right as a way of daily reflective practice.
When we think about creating a morning ritual for ourselves, I think there are three factors that are important to consider. The first is making it personal - knowing what really works for you. Sometimes we look at other people's rituals and think that we want to incorporate those. But what works for each person is very different. The second is keeping the rituals flexible. This means being able to be flexible in how we incorporate them into our day, but also considering using rituals that we can take with us wherever we go. So for example, if we're traveling, if we're in a different location - that we can still stay consistent with our rituals if we would like to. And the third thing that I recommend is keeping them small. Really elaborate, time-consuming rituals often are difficult to maintain and practice. So thinking about just keeping the rituals really small and manageable so that we can be sustainable with them. When we think about morning rituals in particular, we want to think about what allows us to feel like we are bringing our best selves to the day - cognitively, emotionally, and physically. And we also want to think about how we can set our intentions for the day. So these are the two factors I recommend taking into consideration: so for example, for some people that might involve drinking a glass of water, eating a nutritious breakfast, and maybe doing a meditation or some journaling to help you clarify and focus on your intentions for the day. For somebody else, it might involve exercise and prayer or a spiritual practice. But really thinking about what's going to allow me to feel my best and what's going to help me get clear on what I want to get from this day is a great way to guide how you construct your morning ritual.
Oftentimes, we take sleep for granted and it can be very difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep. Whether you're depressed, anxious, or just really feel like you have a tough time sleeping, here are three tips to help you get a good night's sleep. Number one, no screens, 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime. Screens emit blue lights, which are harmful to our circadian rhythm. They make our bodies think it's daytime. When we have a screen in front of our face, our bodies say, okay, we're going to be awake, and then the second you shut it off, the body doesn't think, oh, alright, now it's time to go to sleep. It thinks now it's time to start winding down. So it's really important to not have any screen time including phones, tablets, televisions, computers, any kind between half an hour and an hour before bed. Second, develop a routine. Try and come up with a few different things you can do the night before to prepare yourself for the next day. Preferably things that don't include screens such as laying your clothes out for the next day, brushing your teeth, making your lunch, preparing something to help you get ready for bed. Just doing something that doesn't require a lot of thought and you can just do without looking at screen. As a side tip, many electronics now have a night mode where it eliminates all the blue lights and that are harmful for your eyes and for your circadian rhythm. That being said, it's still good to pair down the electronics as it gets closer and closer to bedtime. And number three, try to come up with a relaxing bedtime ritual such as mindful meditation or a breathing exercise that can help really bring your energy down so that you're ready to go to sleep. Keep in mind that it's a process to get yourself to sleep and be kind to yourself. Give yourself the opportunity to fall asleep. By utilizing these three steps, you'll find that you can have better what we call sleep hygiene or taking care of yourself towards sleep, and you'll find you'll have a much more restful sleep.
Being present means listening with purpose. Imagine showing up - not just physically but also emotionally and with all of your senses for your partner and most importantly - for yourself. Imagine those simple tasks, how much better they will look when you, for example, wash the dishes and you feel the warmth of the water in your hands or smell soap. Or even better, each morning when you prepare your coffee and you grind those beans and you can smell the coffee about to start getting ready and then you pour yourself a cup of coffee and you feel the warmth in your hands. Imagine each thing being able to enjoy it with all of your senses. Well, that is the magic of being present and how it brings happiness into your life. This is something that you can do with every activity you have each day. Nowadays, we focus so much in technology and we've missed this - enjoying the here and now of each day. Why don't you try it?
A great breathing exercise that I encourage clients to do is the 4-7-8. Four: you're going to inhale: 1, 2, 3, 4. You're going to hold it for seven: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. And then you're going to let it out from eight: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. This is a great technique for those struggling with anxiety, panic attacks, and depression and it is a great relaxation technique. If you have children and they struggle with anxiety and they need some breathing techniques as well, there's a great exercise called the starfish: you tell the child to open their hands wide like a starfish and then they're going to trace with their other finger - each finger. As they go up, they inhale. As they go down, they exhale. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. And they can do it about four times, three times - as many times as you think that it will help them - usually three times and they're tired. This is a great exercise to teach them to also start regulating their emotions as well. I hope you give it a try.
Some of the great tools that I encourage my clients to use are breathing techniques (which helps those who struggle with anxiety), journaling (which is a great source to relieve some emotional tension), meditation (you don't have to do 20 minutes on the first time, you can start with one minute a day and there are some good apps out there that help you with that), exercise (it's great for your health and it's also great to release some tension), and last but not least, the support network (the use of a support network is very important and it will help you thrive and live a healthier life.
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