5 Spring Self-Care Ideas To Boost Your Mental Health
When we fail to look after ourselves, we end up feeling drained, angry, and resentful. Always running and never taking a break to just breathe or think. Our society encourages productivity and those striving to be productive. People pat themselves on the back for putting in 80 hour work weeks. They boast about how little they sleep and how much they accomplish. Busy and productive seems to be the trend and it doesn't seem to be going away.
Companies like Google and Samsung among other Silicon Valley corporations realized something. They discovered that by investing in people's emotional and physical well-being they could benefit off their productivity. For example, Google offers a variety of learning, social, and developmental programs for their employees, and their employees can spend 20% of their time at work, working on their own creative pursuits. I used to work at Samsung and we could bring our dogs to work and they had a robot that escorted people to different places on campus. We also had a mouth watering buffet that was out of this world. Delicious salmon, lots of veggies, fruits, and fresh squeezed juices. These companies realize that happy and taken care of people are productive people.
What if we applied this same corporate philosophy to our own lives only instead of working harder, spent that extra emotional and mental energy on our hobbies, friends and loved ones, or on spiritual exploration?
Google and Samsung discovered something and that something is very powerful. By taking care of your human needs, which are physical, emotional, and mental, we re-charge and fill our emotional cup. This blog post will cover 5 self-care practices that you can use this Spring. Practices like cleaning up your environment so your mind can feel at ease.
Here I will also cover some other important self-care strategies to transform you into a happier, healthier, and overall more pleasant individual to be around. Because what you do eventually benefits other people, too. We're all connected and a healthy and happy human being is a force to be reckoned with.
Clean-Up Your Environment
Some of you might get surprised and wonder what cleaning up your space and decluttering your life have to do with self-care. So let me explain a little, and by the way, we are offering a truly worthwhile 30 day decluttering challenge that goes into details as to why decluttering is so imperative and how much you can stand to benefit from eliminating junk from your life and living a more minimalist lifestyle. You should take the decluttering class and notice immediately how your life positively altered. You can find the decluttering challenge by following this link - Declutter Mini-Course. But let me start out by listing some of the benefits of decluttering your space here -
Improved mental health
Greater focus
Increased creativity and productivity
Greater financial health
More energy to spend with your kids, family, loved ones, or whomever….
The benefits of clearing out junk are truly astounding. First of all, most of us have stuff that we don't need, and by giving it to someone who needs it more than us, we eliminate unnecessary clutter that weighs us down and help other people. A less cluttered environment feels balanced and our well-being improves almost immediately. Imagine a room or garage filled with stuff, from old books and gadgets to clothes that you can't even fit into anymore. Shelves are overstuffed with useless things that are merely collecting dust. Yikes. Try going into that space and see how you feel. Now it might be comforting to disordered individuals, and that's something that we also discuss in our declutter course. But for the majority, the clutter will distract us and make us feel as if our life and ourselves are in a complete state of disequilibrium.
That's why decluttering is so powerful. It's also how we show love to ourselves. Because a minimalistic space or external environment is a reflection of the internal environment and vice versa. So to feel calm and collected on the inside your environment must match too.
2. Spend Time in Nature and On Your Own
Most of us have been taught that being alone is strange and some even become concerned when others withdraw and stop being social. But that shouldn't always be the case. In most cases, being on our own clears the constant social chatter that surrounds and distracts us from our higher selves and from our emotions. In fact, the greatest inventions and creative endeavors that changed all of our lives for the better were invented when the said individual was on their own.
Spending time in nature and on our own isn't weird. It's healing. Nature doesn't judge us; it doesn't criticize or belittle us like another damaged and unconscious human being could. It actually has the opposite effect. You leave feeling more powerful and more peaceful. By simply observing your surroundings, tuning in to the sounds of the birds and the waves crashing or the water flowing, your mental, emotional, and physical health improves. Leaving you feeling calm about your personal problems and anything that you might be worried and anxious about at the time.
By the way, if you're struggling to get off social media and are too dependent on your gadgets, then you don't want to miss our social media detox challenge where we help you unplug from the digital and tune-in into calmness and space to think. Here is the link to the social media detox course- Social Media Detox Mini-Course.
3. Cook Some Healthy Food and Have a Picnic Outdoors
When it comes to taking care of our body and our mental health, nutrition is imperative and should take priority. What we eat impacts everything in our body, from the way that our immune system functions to how much energy we have to the way that our body regenerates itself and handles stress. Eat poorly and eventually your eating habits will become a part of you and your health and mental health will decline. When we eat poorly, our body works harder at removing unnecessary waste and we also get sick more often. Just because you’ve eaten doesn’t mean that your body got what it needed. And that's because it's the quality that matters and not the quantity. Junk food is mostly empty calories, which will increase your appetite until you finally eat something nutritious that your body needs. Your body is an intelligent mechanism, so learning to listen and work with it is what self-care is all about.
Stroll into nature and pack a picnic basket with whole-based, natural and organic foods. My meals in nature with family, playing games, and laughing, were the most memorable to me while I was growing up. Being in nature is rewarding and natural and where we should be spending the majority of our time. And when you add nourishing and filling foods to that, then you've got the perfect equation for mental balance and emotional fulfillment.
4. Learn to Create and Set Firm Boundaries
Healthy boundaries are another very important aspect to helping us maintain our personal power, our sanity, and our health. For instance, as a mother to a toddler, if I didn't set boundaries and have clear rules and expectations in place for him, then I wouldn't be a healthy or happy person to be around. I would always feel drained and like I was giving way too much of myself and that in turn would make me into a poor mother. When we don't know how to set clear boundaries or have developed people pleasing personalities, or when we have low self-confidence, boundary setting becomes a challenge.
No matter the current situation, we can always learn how to set, develop, and enforce boundaries. Boundaries teach others how to treat us and not only build self-respect and self-esteem within, but also create stronger and better relationships where we are respected by others. Sometimes thought, disordered individuals that tend to be highly narcissistic or psychopathic, will not take well to boundary setting. And that's okay. You're much better off on your own than in a relationship that's abusive, which tends to happen when we fall into relationships with disordered individuals.
5. Enjoy Inspiring and Motivational Books, Podcasts, and Blogs
The mainstream news is always negative and there are a lot of materials and information that you want to be careful with.
What we read is just as important as what we ingest.
Feed your mind with positive and inspiring materials and you'll soon discover that your life is changing for the better. Our brain literally changes with positive information and we begin to form new neurons that train us to look for positivity everywhere. New and inspirational blog posts, books, and podcasts will open our minds and expand our awareness. We'll start seeing life in a different light, but also, new information can help us make better decisions and come up with more original and creative solutions to our problems.
I can't even begin to tell you how much inspiring books and positive materials have helped me in the past. I've learned from books and got inspired to try my own projects. They gave me courage and ideas and helped me view things from an angle that I wasn't seeing before. Uplifting materials are food for your mind. Always remember this. The same can be said about your surroundings, by the way. If there is a highly negative person in your life that is constantly dragging you down by the information that they tell you, then either stop feeding into it or avoid them.
In Conclusion
To wrap it up here - there are a lot of different things that we can do to take better care of ourselves this Spring. Decluttering our space and selling unneeded and unnecessary stuff will help empty our minds and create a feeling of balance within. Focus on feeding your body right and have an awesome picnic with your friends or loved ones or alone. There is nothing more Hygge and energizing than having a healthy and nourishing lunch on the soft ground or on the grass. Learn to create and maintain boundaries because by doing so you'll not only teach others to respect you but also raise your self-esteem. And finally, stop giving negativity your attention. Where attention goes, energy flows and you don't want your energy to be sucked away. Now with everything that's happening, we need more positivity in this world and not only does being positive benefit you, but it also greatly benefits others. Many people are afraid right now and uncertain about the future. Always remind yourself of this - in order to appreciate the good, we must go through the bad. It's a challenge, but the goodness in humans sometimes gets lost and needs to be found again. And once it is found it is there to stay. Have faith ;)
What are some other awesome tips to take better care of yourself this spring? Here are a few more……..
Plant a garden and learn to be self-sufficient
Load up on in-season produce
Workout
Take a bath or go to the sauna
Try talking to a stranger
Volunteer and help others
Take a nap during the day
Stop drinking caffeine and switch to herbal tea instead - trust me, you'll feel the difference in your calmness levels in about 4-5 days after you quit.
Pray or Meditate
Indulge in something delicious