It was a mess.
My day and my mental health. Almost everything.
I could see my daily routine affecting my mental and overall health.
I started having trouble concentrating, losing interest in my work and all of these led to having negative thoughts that made me question my very existence.
Your steady mental health is essential for maintaining your emotional response, positive mindset, and physical health. An unbalanced work and life flow is bound to entwine and throw your health off-balance.
A repetitive pattern that serves you nothing can cost you your sanity. To create a daily approach that synchronizes with your mental health, it is necessary to make viable changes to your routine.
For me, tending to my mental health has now become a daily essential. Here I have shared the daily rituals I perform every day to make me handle my day and my health more graciously.
1. Indulging in Self-Care Rituals
Self-care is about taking care of yourself.
It’s about looking after your mental wellness, physical health, and also your emotional and spiritual needs.
You don’t need any coaching advice or a well-thought-out strategy to look after yourself. All you need to do is find practice or rituals that can help you manage stress better and keep you mentally sane.
After I started to take better care of myself, it changed my relationship with myself. This practice has immensely helped me replenish my vitality, beat the exhaustion and my will to live longer.
Now, it is an undivided part of my daily routine.
I always start and end my days with self-care rituals. Every morning when I wake up, I don’t just rush out of bed. I stay still in my bed for a few minutes, as a form of meditation. Then I stretch my whole body. This practice always wakes me up. After the laziness leaves my body, I allow myself to start my day.
Nighttime is more important to me. Since, I have trouble sleeping if I am stressed, no matter how busy or how late it is, I always take time out to unwind.
I don’t always stick to one routine at night. I like to follow the rituals that make me relax and feel good.
Most of the time I read books and enjoy the stillness of nighttime. Some nights when I am feeling overindulgent I would literally just spoil myself. I would massage myself, have skincare sessions, or watch my favorite kdrama.
Image by nati-melnychuk on unsplash
2. Changing Intentions
If anyone had asked me what my typical day looks like a few years before, I would have said ‘Oh nothing much, I binge-watch series, and try to get some work done’. End of the story. [Sorry! end of the day]
It wasn’t until I started my writing career and ran back to back into exhaustion had I realized how important it is to set your day’s tone.
After changing my daily intention, the main goal of my day became the focal point. It helped me to rise above the shackle of daily mundane tasks and give purpose to my day.
This single practice has increased the gratification from my day’s fulfillment and supported my mental health exceedingly.
Related post: Give Meaning to Your Day by Setting Daily Intention
3. Giving Myself Time
The single best advice I could ever give to anyone is to give yourself time.
To reflect.
To accept changes.
To heal from adversity.
To grow from your mistakes.
When you are in the face of changes you go through many emotions at once, and your mental stability gets tangled up in the process.
During, rather than enduring and merely tolerating it, accept and trust the process. In time you will get where you should be.
When you are willing to give yourself time, you open doors to new learnings. Going at your own pace, you make your growth timeless and reduce your own created burden.
It is a subtle mindset shift that can leave a massive impact on your wellness.
Image by toa-heftiba on unsplash
4. Micro Mindful Moments
It’s not always possible to stay motivated throughout your day. Even after setting strong daily intentions and having a work deadline to push you into a corner, it is a struggle sometimes.
The constant interference of meeting my goals and the pressure of getting more things done was putting me off. The daily stress was overwhelming and distracting me from my task.
During the day, I would often start to withdraw, and till evening I would completely lose my will to continue. I found myself losing focus and filling my day with distractions.
Adding mindful moments throughout the day helped ground me and quickly reduce my stress.
A little dose of micro mindful moments to your day will literally help to give you back the energy you need to nudge you in the right direction.
It could be anything that would lift the stress off you like, a quiet walk, eating meals without distractions, journaling, or just staying idle for a while.
Now, indulging in mindful moments has become a part of my daily self-care rituals.
Related Post: Initiate These 5 Mindfulness Rituals to Make Your Everyday Routine Effortless
5. Unplugging for a While
One of the healthiest relationships I built this year is with digital devices.
Social media and smartphones have made their way into everyone’s lives. Blurring the boundaries between your life and technology. It has taken up the productive time and created this dependency to constantly stay connected to the screen.
Staying on digital devices and scrolling for hours is like an addiction. The more you get attached to them, the more it will detach you from your mental health.
As a writer, I cannot part from my computer for a longer time, but reducing the amount of time I spend on social media has improved my mental stability.
Breaking free from the smothering presence of technology and connecting with the real world has given me more room to increase my productivity, improved sleep quality, and replenished my mental wellness.
At the End of the Day
Nothing should matter more to you than keeping your well-being a number one priority.
