In order to flourish, making time for your wellbeing in each and every day is an important thing to do.
Important but not always easy. When life is busy it can be easier to keep going on the treadmill than to stop and pause and notice how you are, or even make time to do the things that help you to thrive.
Little and Often Wellbeing
I recently attended some training where the trainer told us all that everyone should spend an hour a day looking after their wellbeing. An hour!
Whilst that would be wonderful, I’m pretty sure we were all sat there thinking the same thing. Where on earth do we find a spare hour in our already hectic schedules?
Then she helpfully said that that doesn’t have to be in one go; it could be three twenty minute slots.
And that stuck with me.
‘For everyone, well-being is a journey. The secret is committing to that journey and taking those first steps with hope and belief in yourself.’
Deepak Chopra
Since lockdown has eased and the roadmap out of covid has changed, life has become busy again. But it is possible to live out the little and often of wellbeing in the midst of that.
Little and often wellbeing each day
In fact if you take an average day you’re likely to be awake for somewhere between 15 and 18 hours. What if you broke that hour down into five minute blocks. There would be 12 five minute blocks of time for wellbeing to spread throughout the 15 hours of awake time in your day.
Each hour on the hour you could schedule five minutes to pause, to watch a short meditation, to move your body, to sit and drink a hot drink in silence, to have a quick chat with a friend, to enjoy nature.
Suddenly an hour of wellbeing a day seems more manageable.
So here’s a challenge.
For the next week, take your hour and work out how you want to break it up. It could be exactly the same way each day or you could try different things. Perhaps it’s a one hour chunk on Sunday when there’s space for that, three twenty minute blocks on Monday, one twenty minute block at the beginning and end of the day on Tuesday and the remaining forty minutes comes in five minute blocks throughout the day.
Work out what works for you and plan how you will do it.
Write down some activities that would be an investment in your wellbeing in those slots.
Now give it a go.
At the end of the week, reflect on how it has been and try to notice…
How you are feeling; has this practice helped your wellbeing?
What worked best for you ; you might discover that twenty minute blocks work better than five for you.
Was there something missing ; is there something you value or are passionate about that you didn’t get to do and feel like it would have helped?
You are worth the daily investment.