by Safiyyah Boolay-Jappie
As I started writing the title to this post, I was merrily typing out the words “6 quick and easy ways to claim back your wellbeing”. As if by intuition, my pointing finger defiantly punched the backspace key. It doesn’t feel quick, and some of it is not easy. Essential, Yes! Very Definitely ‘Yes’. Quick and easy? Not when you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed by never-ending to-do lists and people who seem to think you’re made of some marvellous stretchy substance that can get to everything. Creating and maintaining optimal well-being is a goal for the vast majority of people I know, and it is vital to recovering and staving off burnout. And yet, universally, in one way or the other, well-being is something we all struggle with most.
Below are 6 simple strategies that you can implement today that will create significant ripples of positive change in your health and well-being. Here are 6 key things to focus on for your wellbeing:
1. Breathe
Perhaps this is the easiest way to de-stress and come back to equilibrium, and yet it is probably the most forgotten and obscure remedy for exhaustion, fatigue, overwhelm and anxiety.
Your breath operates like a signalling system to you brain.
Short shallow breath alerts your brain to danger, creating a response of even shorter and shallower breaths. It becomes self-fulfilling prophecy of stress and anxiety. In our busyness we forget about our breath. And when we forget about our breath, our perspective narrows. As our perspective narrows, we personalise interactions with others and we catastrophise things we would otherwise consider insignificant. And this in turn creates even shorter and shallower breath. The cycle kicks in spontaneously when we step onto autopilot and lose sight of ourselves and here and now.
Yet, a few deep breaths and long exhalations can do wonders for your state of mind and energy levels.
Set an alarm and regular intervals throughout the day and breath deliberately. If you’re indoors for the better part of your day, pop out for a minute or two as frequently as you can so that you can fill your lungs with fresh oxygen and delight your eyes with whatever greenery and skies are available to you.
The difference in the short-term is almost instant, and in the long-term, it becomes part of a self-regulating ritual that staves off the critters that threaten to take over your mind.
2. Sleep
Sleep is almost always the first casualty when you’re busy and time poor.
You convince yourself that you can get by just as well on 5 hours of sleep as the recommended 8 hours. Maybe. But in the long-term, this creates more issues than you are aware of, and directly or indirectly impacts multiple areas of your life.
When you don’t get enough sleep, it damages your health, your mood, your cognitive brain capacity, and your productivity. Scientists have found that losing just 90 minutes of sleep reduces your daytime alertness by one third.
Yikes!
If you struggle to get the sleep you need, try to create a bedtime routine that can ease you into sleep by creating a restful zone – things like herbal tea, calming music, restorative yoga or some light reading.
Too often we seek rest by numbing ourselves out with TV and TikTok, often simultaneously. This is neither restful, nor restorative as a bedtime routine.
Turn your devices off at least 30 minutes before bed so your sleep cycle doesn’t get impacted by the device’s blue light. It also helps to maintain consistent times of waking up and going to bed every day of the week to bring those circadian cycles into rhythm.
3. Nourishment
There’s so much conflicting advice about what you should eat. And what makes you feel great is going to be different from the person next to you. But the core goal with the food you eat is to feel nourished, energised and well. A helpful way to choose what to eat particularly during your workday is to start thinking of food as fuel, not as pleasure.
Food as pleasure has its place, but when you’re busy, it is important to prioritise your foods nutritional value to ensure you don’t become depleted.
Pay attention to what you eat and focus on things that make you feel energised. Think wholegrains, clean protein, healthy fats and lots of greens and vegetables. Track what you eat each day for two weeks and note in a journal the energetic impact of that meal.
Which foods have you feeling tired 30 minutes after eating?
Did the meal or snack give you sustained energy?
Was your brain foggy?
This is the best way to determine what is your best food as fuel, particularly during your work week.
4. Movement
The average person with an office job spends more time sitting than sleeping!
Sitting has been declared the most underrated health threat of our time. Researchers warn that sitting is the new smoking in terms of its detrimental impact to our health. Regardless of how you get your exercise in, focus on moving your body frequently, working up a sweat often and getting in 7 500 steps to promote optimal health.
5. Restoration and Revitalisation
For a lot of people, restoration is one of the most challenging of all of the wellbeing steps. This is about renewing and replenishing your energy and restoring yourself on all levels. It’s about building surpluses when you are able to for times of lack and its about having access to quick and easy replenishers that hit the spot when things become chaotic.
It’s useful to create a self-soothing / restoration toolkit for yourself so that you always have a few things that you can draw on to restore your energy.
Your restoration toolkit may include:
A calming cup of tea
Relaxing bath with candles
Quiet reading time
An early night
Time in nature
An evening walk
Chatting to a friend
Watching a funny video
Your favourite TV show
Afternoon nap
Coffee in the sunshine
Quiet morning time
Essential oils
Meditation break
Prayer
A breathing routine to sweep away the cobwebs that may have settled in your mind.
6. Mindfulness
Apparently, you have an average of 60,000 thoughts a day. That’s around a thought a second. This is why it’s so easy to go onto autopilot without stopping to actually experience here and now. Mindfulness will help you to direct your attention and look after your mental wellbeing and energy.
There are two key aspects for mindfulness practice.
The mindful pause. When you practice mindfulness, you bring yourself into the present moment with your attention and your energy, which creates a moment of pause between what’s happening (the stimulus) and your response to what’s happening. This pause gives you the space to see a situation clearly, and to choose a response rather than just letting your ingrained patterns or neural pathways trigger responses automatically.
Your breath is THE easiest way to come back to the present moment. It’s pure magic. You’re doing it anyway; you may as well do it in a way that brings with it all the benefits it holds.
The witness state of awareness. Our minds travel through time and space in perpetuity. The great benefit of mindfulness is that it brings your mind to where your body is, in the here and now. The other is we can become observers of our thoughts. When you pause in mindfulness, you’re taking a mental step back from whatever is happening. Instead of reacting, you give yourself the opportunity to create a response that is aligned and congruent with your values and intentions.
Safiyyah Boolay-Jappie is a life coach, based in South Africa. She helps high achieving, ambitious women to create impactful careers without sacrificing their well-being, themselves, their relationships, and quality of life. She helps women to beat burnout and to thrive. Having worked in the corporate world for 20 years, most of these in complex leadership roles whilst raising two children, she understands the demands being juggled by professional women, both in their professional and personal lives. Today, she wants to share those learnings with other women through her personal coaching and training.
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