When someone told me I should be spending an hour a day looking after my wellbeing I thought they were being ludicrous. But a simple tweak in the way I thought about it made it possible to do this and it has helped me to learn how to flourish. Find out more about little and often wellbeing and join in the challenge to take it up.
Wellbeing Made Simple : Self Compassion
The Wellbeing Triangle : Connection with 'Other'
Finishing off our series on the Wellbeing Triangle, Ben explains why he believes connecting with something that is more than us and having a sense of awe is important for us to live well, live fully and live deeply. He also provides some practical self-care techniques to help us engage with ‘Other’-ness.
The Wellbeing Triangle : Connection with Self
Self Scan : Heart Scan
Self Scan : Body Scan
Self Scan : An Introduction
Learning to Love Yourself
Self-care is a phrase that seems to pop up in lots of places these days. But far from just being a trend, we believe self-care is important.
As Psychology Today state in this article:
Self-care is a holistic process that we all need in order to foster presence, engagement, wellness, and self-love.
Which is why we have chosen today, Valentine’s Day, to talk about looking after yourself. Choosing to love yourself. Because to love those around you well, you need to learn to love yourself well.
Learning how to look after ourselves doesn’t necessarily come naturally. It takes an understanding of what gives us life, what we enjoy and what we have time and capacity to do or not do. It can be hard to remember or make the choice to look after ourselves, particularly when we spend a lot of time looking our loved ones or those around us. It can quickly become low down on our priority list.
As the famous saying goes, you can’t pour from an empty cup. Self-care is something we all need.
So how do you fill up your cup?
We suggest starting with your values. Those values that we talked about back in January.
Self-care to one person might look like starting yoga. But if yoga is far from what you enjoy, then don’t do that just because that is the trend. Find what you love and what gives you life. Being in nature, writing three things you’re thankful for each day, spending some time in silence, going for drinks with friends, saying ‘no’ more often, prioritising you. Self-care looks different for everyone and it needs to work for you.
It can involve doing something that doesn’t feel easy. I know my easy choice would be to sit and eat a bar of chocolate when I’m feeling down but I actually feel a whole lot better if I go for a run. It’s a tough choice for me to make in the moment but down the line my body and mind thank me for it. There are other times sitting and enjoy my favourite cake and tea with a pal is just the kind of self-care I need. And there are times I need to ask for help; it’s vulnerable and hard but to be my best I can’t battle through the tough moments alone.
On a day when we celebrate love, perhaps feel a bit low because we don’t have someone to celebrate love with, or a day that even the most loved up of us avoid because of commercialism, let’s make some time to think about how we can love ourselves well.
Walking for Wellbeing
This year we’ve kick started a series of wellbeing tips on our social media aimed at helping you to flourish throughout this year. We’re going to be sharing simple, practical ways that you can engage in some self-care, whether you already have healthy habits in place or you feel like you would like to develop some new ones. This post shares the idea behind our first simple habit, walking.
