Tag Archives: self-care

FEELING GOOD ABOUT YOUR DAY

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I have an ambition in life: to feel good about every day. I want to feel that each day of this precious life is in some way pleasing and/or fulfilling.

There’s an assessment I do every morning, usually with my first cup of coffee. I notice how my body feels, what sort of energy levels I have, and what is my mind doing. I know what’s planned for the day, if anything, so the question I ask myself is: what else do I need in my day for me to feel good about it?

I am always interested in what comes up as an answer. Sometimes it’s getting something done that I’ve been putting off; or it may be going out in the fresh air for a while. It could be using my energy in a physical way, or it could be something that would stimulate my thinking. Some days, it’s to make sure I have a conversation with someone I love, others, it’s to have a quiet period just reading a book. And of course, sometimes I don’t feel I need anything else in there to make me feel good about my day.

Often the addition I make to my day is a small one. It may not take long or be hard to do, but it does change the flavour of the day.

I think we all deserve to have mostly good days in our lives. It may not be possible to make it a hundred per cent, but we can all adjust the flavour of our day to make it feel better – that is always in our control. So spend a few moments each day assessing where you’re up to: what your body, mind, energy levels and heart are telling you. Then add that little extra spice or sweetness to make it a good day. You deserve it.

THE SPACE BETWEEN THOUGHTS

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Our minds are so busy most of the time, with all that thinking. We think about what we’ve done, we run a commentary on what we’re doing, and think about what we’re going to do. And these thoughts link to other things: times we’ve done the same before; how we feel about it; people; random memories – it just goes on and on.

But once in a while, there is a space between the thoughts, a moment of emptiness. That space, however brief, is like an oasis of calm. Nothing is going on and we can just rest in that space, a lull in our everyday busyness. I first became aware of this possibility when I was exploring meditation, but found it almost impossible to stay still, let alone quiet my mind! I was reassured by someone who had followed Buddhist practice for a long time, who told me that it is an aim, but difficult to do – so it wasn’t just me…

But then I realised that we do sometimes have that space, by some kind of accident. So can we find these spaces when we need them? Not always of course, but we can create the environment where they are more likey to happen. Gentle, rhythmic sounds certainly help for me. The sound of waves by the sea, the wind blowing gently through trees, rain pattering on the window – all these can encourage us to find that space as we focus our attention on therm.

So too can looking at something beautiful: a flowering plant with the colours and shapes and contrasting foliage; a landscape with its contours, colours, shadows and light; a piece of art we love. All these can send us into a peaceful reverie if we stay with them.

And of course there are ways to reach that space through the feel of things: cosying into soft warm clothes; gently stroking a dozy cat or dog; enjoying the feel of warm sunshine on our skin.

You will have your own prompts to reach that space between thoughts. Recognise them and use them – they give us a much-needed break, a rest from our busy minds.

THE INGREDIENTS OF MY LIFE

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In any recipe, there are essential ingredients and others that can be varied according to your taste. The same thing applies to creating for ourselves our unique version of a life well-lived.

We all need some basics: some form of physical activity and a reasonable diet to keep our bodies as healthy as possible; we also need some form of mental stimulation through our work, or reading, or lively conversations; and we need emotional connection with others to feed our ability to love and laugh and feel a sense oof belonging; we also need, of course, some way of supporting ourselves financially.

Even with these essential ingredients, we can vary them to suit our own tastes. We’re not all going to go to the gym daily, do a Masters degree, or have a large family!

And once we have the essentials in place, we can begin to add in the extra ingredients which make our recipe for life unique and delicious. These may be hobbies, interests, passions we have, or activities that give us particular pleasure. We may want to have adventures or times of peace and quiet. We may want things that distract us from the less enjoyable aspects of our lives. We may want to try something different, to see if it adds a good flavour to our recipe.

There may be some parts of our life that are not ideal, although essential. But we also have lots of areas where we can make choices to improve that life we’re creating.

So have a look, now and then, at the recipe of your life, and see if you can make it even tastier and more delightful for yourself.

THE LAW OF RESONANCE

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I remember how popular it was in the 60’s and 70’s to talk about ‘vibes’ – good and bad vibrations. This is the law of resonance. Resonance originally means that similar sounds to those you send out will come back to you – echoes if you will. It applies to any form of energy wave, which means it includes our emotional energies, our physical energies, our mental energies.

We all know that when we’re ‘off’ in one of these forms of energy, others can seem to catch it from us, or the universe seems to send us more reasons to stay ‘off’ – the law of resonance at work.

It’s also reflected in the way social media algorithms work:  you show some interest in a particular perspective and you get more of the same sort of thing, tempting you further along that path.

We are often unaware of how powerfully we affect our own perspective on the world, through the ‘vibrations’ we are sending out, and consider ourselves instead to be the victim of circumstance. But we can change the story.

We are creating self-fulfilling prophecies, so let’s make them good ones most of the time! By being aware of the law of resonance, we can interrupt its negative power.

When the vibe feels bad, we can stop and check: is it us who’s setting it off, or someone we’re around? If it’s someone else creating a resonance in us, we can choose to disengage, move away. If it’s us, we can make a deliberate effort to change our state, and change the vibe.

And when the vibe feels good, the same check applies. If someone else is the source, that’s a great person to be around! And if it’s us, let’s amplify it and increase the good vibes in the world.

OUR ENERGY IMPACT

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I was complaining about feeling old, and was given this phrase: ‘We are not our age, we are our energy.’ At first, I was not sure if I got it. After all, I know I have less physical energy than I did when I was younger, and I know that I do sometimes feel my age!

But then further conversation made me realise that this relates to the energy impact we have, on others and ourselves. This is our energetic field, an invisible aura of energy around us, generated by our overall state. It is not our physical energy levels, although that can have an effect on it.

You know how some people seem to carry negativity around with them, whilst others give off a ‘buzz’? And of course, there are variations: an aura of kindness or gentleness; an aura of humour or lightness; an aura of busyness; an aura of life being difficult – you get the idea… And we are all affected by others’ energetic fields – we feel them and react to them, even if we’re not conscious of it.

Once we do become conscious of having that energetic field, we can do things to affect it positively in the way we want it to be, regardless of whether we are feeling energetic or not.

  • We can make a change physically: stand up straight, dance, smile, go for a walk
  • We can make a change emotionally: think about things and people we love, enjoy
  • We can make a change actively: do something that lightens our mood

I know what energy impact I want to have on others, not because I’m a ‘good’ person, but because I’m selfish. If my energy impact is positive, I will usually get positive energy back. And that’s a bonus for my own energy bank, helping me to be my energy, not my age.

LETTING GO

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My friend Rebecca sent me a copy of a poem by Safire Rose called ‘She Let Go’.

https://safire-rose.com/books-and-media/poetry/she-let-go . As I read it through I could feel the relief, the lightness of being that just letting go creates.

It is not easy to stop worrying something through. We go backwards and forwards in our minds, we may talk about it with others, we allow whatever it is to affect our behaviour, our mind. Yet at the same time, this poem reminded me that we can just let it go: say ‘Oh well,’ and let go.

It is easier to do with something in the past. After all, there’s nothing we can do about it now, so revisiting it in our mind changes nothing except our own mood and behaviour.

Letting go of something that’s in our present reality, or that we are predicting in our future is harder. Yet if we think about it with a form of logic, it becomes easier,

If it’s in our present reality, then it’s here, so the best thing to do is accept it, and decide what we can do about it, or at least how we can alleviate the situation. Wishing it away just doesn’t work!

If it’s future and certain, we can plan what we will do to handle it. If it’s not certain, we need to recognise that we don’t know if it will turn into reality, and that worrying about it now may be an unnecessary weight.

It rarely helps us to sort something out when we worry at it like a dog with a bone, and we all have evidence of that truth!

From now on, I’m going to see if I can emulate the ‘she’ in the poem: ‘She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go… It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.. In the space of letting go, she let it all be’.

THE JOYS OF BEING ALONE

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It is a vital part of our lives to be in relationship with others – we need that connection with friends and family, and even strangers. And at the same time, we all need some time on our own, when we can just relate to ourselves and our own needs and feelings.

I love having people drop by to spend time with me, and I also really enjoy having days to myself, where I don’t need to consider anyone else’s needs and can just be however I am. Often, people fill that time on their own, so as not to feel lonely: going shopping, doing household chores, making phone calls, and generally keeping busy. I recognise this – I used to do the same.

But now I find that being alone is different from being lonely, and I think it is important to take advantage of ‘me time’ and celebrate the joys of being alone. It’s an opportunity to gather yourself, listen to yourself, and follow how you feel instead of how you ought to be.

You can eat and drink what you want, when you want. You can stop halfway through doing something and decide that’s enough for today. You can choose to make it a good day, whatever that means to you at the time, without having to explain or justify to anyone else. You can do little or a lot, depending on your mood, not the circumstances.

And you can relax for a little while into being however you are, giving yourself permission to move away from the drives of convention and habit.

So make sure you get some time every week where you’re on your own, and make it ‘me time’, not ‘catch-up time’. It’s good for your soul.

IT’S ALL WRONG – WHAT CAN I DO?

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Everywhere we look at the moment, things are going wrong: the war in Ukraine; climate change; the continuing spread of Covid; the problems with the NHS and many other institutions; the supply chains; the mess called our government; the rising cost of living – not to mention all those other things we all have to deal with in our everyday lives, whether it be illness in our families or failing to get hold of someone on the phone, etc, etc.

Distress, upset, delays, frustrations, doom-laden predictions – they seem to have become part of everyone’s life. It can leave us feeling powerless and miserable. And that doesn’t help.

So what can I do?

Well, it’s the actions of people that change the world, for better or worse, so I have decided to do something each day that makes a small positive difference, hoping that they all add up to something that helps.

At the macro-level, I can write to my MP, I can donate to a charity that is helping those who are suffering most. I can make my voice heard in protest against wrong – as Amnesty International say: one extra may be what tips the balance.

At the micro-level, I can continue to wear a mask in crowded places, I can ensure that I recycle as much as possible, use less plastic, waste less food. I can live my life as ethically, ecologically and caringly as I can.

At an interpersonal level, I can listen to and sympathise with other people’s issues and frustrations, without judgement or interruption, allowing them to express their frustrations so they don’t just go round and round in their heads.

At a personal level, I can tackle one of those frustrations at a time: keep making that phone call until I get a result or whatever it is. And I can take care of my own physical and mental health, and use things that bring me joy to lift my mood. I’m not doing all of this all of the time – that’s too much and would just send me into despair again! But if each day I do something, then at least I’m doing my bit to right all this wrong. And if we all did…

IF ONLY…

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There are some phrases we would be better off not knowing, and one of them is: ‘If only…’ It almost always expresses regret about something in our past: ‘ If only I hadn’t eaten that chocolate cake’, or ‘If only I’d held my tongue in that conversation’, or ‘ If only they had noticed that I was struggling’.

Most of them give us reasons to beat ourselves up, and some of them give us reasons to resent other people. None of them are useful!

They are usually referring to things that have already happened, and we can’t change that. It’s a terrible waste of our energy to wish something in the past were different, and positively sinful to beat ourselves up about it!

The alternative is to use those thoughts as a means of doing something different in the future. We can use those phrases to help us to create a different story for ourselves from now on.

If I hear myself doing an ‘if only..’, I ask myself a couple of questions:

  1. Can I do anything to rectify it?
  2. How can I approach similar situations differently next time, so that it turns out in a better way?

Can I rectify it?

If I ate chocolate cake, it’s done! But if I was mean to somebody, or unfair, I may be able to apologise to them and acknowledge that I know I got it wrong.

If someone upset me and I’m holding a grudge, there’s not much I can do about being upset, although sometimes when we re-examine the situation, we have a different perspective on it, and realise that it wasn’t really that serious – we just took it that way at the time.

How can I approach similar situations differently next time, so that it turns out in a better way?

Here’s the useful bit!

If we think about alternative approaches we could use, we are doing two useful things:

  1. We are learning from our experience, instead of repeating the same errors, or beating ourselves up about it – and by the way, beating ourselves up about it means that we replay the experience and practise to do it again next time!
  2. We automatically play our improved version in our minds, and this is like rehearsing to do it more effectively next time we experience something similar, so we have some practice at the new improved way of handling it, and are more likely to use this version.

So next time you find yourself saying: ‘If only..’, use these two questions and stop it in its tracks!

SOLITUDE

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There is something lovely about being on your own. We often confuse being solitary or alone with being lonely, feeling deprived of company. The two do not necessarily follow: we feel lonely if we wish we did have company, but being alone is a choice to enjoy your own company.

And that choice allows the possibility of just doing and being whatever we feel like – it is a form of freedom. When no-one else is involved we have the opportunity to follow our own rhythms, to indulge our own fancies, to consider ourselves first.

We can eat and drink what we like, when we like. We can sing our hearts out, or have complete quiet. We can get up when we’re ready to, or lie in bed with a cup of tea and read a book. We can even have complete control of the TV remote!

In our busy world, it is good for us, once in a while, to have some solitary time. It allows us to replenish our energy, and that freedom to be completely ourselves,

So this year, see if you can find yourself a little solitary time. If you live with others, suggest they go out for the day, and bask in the freedom of solitude for a little while.

May 2019 be a great year for you!!