"Birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?" - Rose Kennedy
We as humans spend an incredible amount of time, attention, and dedication to a magnitude of things at any given moment. We prioritize the wellness of our fur babies (or human ones), we scramble to meet deadlines, ensure that our loved ones are properly maintained, we bend and juggle the tasks of school, work, family social life, and too many times do we forget that we too deserve to have our wellness headline our to-do list. Wellness to me is a constant intentional choice to choose ourselves and ensure that we are taking care of our mind, body, and spirit. Easier said than done, the hardest part is starting.
Wellness is as unique as we are as people. Mental wellness is more than just the ability to adapt to life stressors. Mental wellness is also a positive sense of self. Practicing self-love and loving yourself is not an act of selfishness, it is an act of kindness toward yourself. Loving yourself enables you to live in alignment with your values and to make healthy choices in your everyday decisions. Confidence, self-respect, self-worth, and self-love are all interconnected. To practice self-love my family and I have what we call a ‘no brain day’ where we are lazy, and don’t worry about cleaning, cooking, or any life issues. The following day we hit reset and we have a productive day, meal prepping, deep cleaning, planning the month, and tackling all urgent and important tasks. Doing this fulfills our need for that mental break without fully neglecting our needs. With my oldest son, I’ve incorporated nightly recaps where we ask.
I found that taking care of your mental wellbeing allows us to be present in moments with our family, friends, and coworkers. Along with how we choose to handle our daily interactions and experience external situations. When we abandon ourselves mentally and just continue to go on with our day-to-day activities, we eventually hit a point where if we can’t be there for ourselves how do others expect us to be there for them. How can we expect ourselves to be there for another human if we are abandoning our self? Taking care of ourselves requires a sense of awareness, patience, kindness, acceptance, and letting go in the moment. When trying to figure out what we can do to take care of ourselves mentally start with little steps every day. We have access to an abundance of resources online; unlimited access to self-improvement/self-care content. We can’t say “I don’t know where to start?” if we haven’t taken a step to prioritize ourselves mentally.
“Self-care is not selfish. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.” – Eleanor Brown
The goal of wellness is creating a sense of inner peace stable enough to overflow on to our loved ones and community. Inner peace is a state of calm that you feel within yourself, regardless of what is happening in your daily life. It is achieved by reconnecting with yourself and becoming a fuller version of yourself To achieve inner peace, you can work on conserving your emotional energy and reducing stress by giving yourself a mental health day, being mindful of your quality of life, and being still. Being at peace with yourself means focusing on your natural energy of joy. The process isn’t universal nor linear. We all move at our own pace the whole journey is progress towards improvement. Be kind to yourself today and every day.
