One of the common objections I hear about doing any kind of self-care work is “I don’t have time”.
I’m going to create a slow of gentle New Year’s Resolutions you could make so it could feel like you have more ease in the time you do have.
Let’s start with:
- Reduce the guilt around resting
- Take more naps
- Stop thinking your weekends are a time to cram extra work in
- Take your lunch breaks
- Enjoy the food you are eating
- Call an old friend once a week
- Write someone you love a letter
- Put a monthly kitchen disco in your diary
- Read a page of a book before you get out of bed
- Close some tabs on your browser
- Spend three minutes every day thinking of an emotion you like and times you felt that
- Plan your day ahead of time
- Make a decision to refuse to say unkind things about your body
- Swear more, if you think it is big, clever and funny
- Once a day, have a speed cleaning session to your favourite tune you sing at the top of your lungs
- Try a new meditation / relaxation
- Get things out of your head and onto paper.
- Once a day wiggle your toes. Seriously. You have feet fingers attached to yourself and plonked on the ground most of the time. How absolutely ridiculous is that?
- Set a time to finish work and stick to it.
- Find an elder you know who doesn’t “get” the internet, ask their favourite song from when they were young and introduce them to youtube as a jukebox.
- Unsubscribe from email marketing newsletters you don’t read.
- Take all year, but clean THAT cupboard.
- Practice tiny ways you can tune into more of what your body wants.
- Create a mini gardening experiment of a plant pot in your kitchen which you pop seeds into when you cook.
- I'm not trying to be Baz Luhrmann, but you probably want to floss.
- Give up on drying up. It is literally the only chore you will ever find in your life where if you leave it long enough, it does itself.
- Find a favourite leaf and go on a journey with it this year as it blooms and fades.
- Stop overriding your emotions – instead, ask them what they are trying to tell you
- Take a selfie once a week & spend 3 minutes staring at it and repeating “This is a human face.” or “This is a human body,” – train your brain t look at yourself with neutrality
- Stop doing things you don’t want to do to please other people in the hope they will like you more (spoiler: you’re trying to get them to like someone you are not).
- What old stationary are you holding onto which you never use? Use it or give it away.
- Try to draw something you have a strong memory of. Don’t try and make it good, just give it a dabble.
- Stop wearing uncomfortable pants. You have bought them, but that does not necessarily mean they still fit you.
- Stop conflating weight and health.
- Be willing to let other people be wrong about you.
- Look at your bank accounts on a regular basis. Fear of the unknown is always worse than strategising with facts.
- What can you give up which does not earn you money, time, peace or joy?
- Find a task you do often and dislike and delegate it or give it up.
- Delete that app on your phone you have no intention of using.
- If you can, give blood.
- Ask your neighbour if they need anything from the shop when you go.
- Try cooking with a new spice.
- Clean out clothes with no longer fit you.
- Add another pillow to your bed. I suggest 5 minimum. If you can make it feel like you are sleeping in a cloud, why wouldn’t you?
- Make a list of things you loved when you were a child. Which would you like to bring back into your life?
- If you’re able to, buy one thing for a food bank when you go shopping.
- Cook something using an ingredient from your nuclear fall-out cupboard.
- Check all your reoccurring subscriptions and cancel ones you don’t want.
- Take full responsibility for keeping to your own boundaries – it is not other people’s job to enforce them, it’s yours.
- Splash in a puddle. Jump or wheel. You do you, but do it with glee.
- Put a pebble you like the feel of in your jacket pocket and whenever you rediscover it, remind yourself that we’re all made of star dust.
- Sort your posture out. Thank me later.
- Reread your favourite book.
- Practice saying “No” without explaining yourself.
- Go to the gym, do some exercise or find some fun movement you enjoy because you WANT to, not because you will chat shit to yourself if you do not do it.
- Watch a sunset without distraction.
- Do the washing up at a mate’s house.
- Decide to reach out to mates who share their struggles online with more than just a sad emoji. They may not pick up the phone, but be the person who calls.
- You’re not going to find that sock. Let it go.
- Post books you have loved to friends you love.
- Make a firm commitment to yourself that you will not buy more hummus if there is already hummus in the fridge.
- Support the strikes.
- Consciously look around on public transport to see if anyone else needs your seat.
- Get some support, be it one of my coaching courses, therapy, a dance class or a regular meet-up with a friend. Have your own back by finding a someone who will be on your side and talk back to you when you are going astray.
Ok, that should be enough to get your imagination simmering.
New Year’s Resolutions do not have to be just cramming more things into an already packed life, in fact, that’s why most of them fail.
This podcast episode out is about The Art of Disappointment. If you’d rather listen to some of these type of ideas instead of just reading a big long thread.
And if you would like to invest some time in learning new ways to apply selfcare into your life check out the courses at www.SelfCareSchool.co.uk