Category: Blog posts

Celebrating 2023: A Month of gratitude – Day 16

It’s been a challenging year. I share my wellness techniques including ample sleep, hot baths, walks, and more.

Hi there! I can’t believe I missed writing about day 15! I have to admit, though, that this year, I am super tired, and all I want to do these days is “veg”. This year has been fabulous, but it has also taken its toll on me.

Usually, I would feel terribly guilty because I would be worried that I am just being lazy, but I know I am not. I am just really, really tired. I know that if I don’t listen to my body now, I am likely to crash and burn at some point in the near future. That helps no one. Our well-being is so important, yet we take it for granted until our health takes a huge hit. I have a few tools in my well-being arsenal that have helped me through this year. These include:

  • Lots of Sleep: Some weekends and even some weeknights, I spend most of my time just sleeping as much as possible until the day arrives when I feel well-rested again. I don’t know about you, but I often find that it takes more than one night’s good sleep to get me back to feeling rested when I am exhausted. 
  • Hot baths – This is usually my weekend go-to when I need to sort my thoughts out. With a few candles, an essential oil burner, and my Spotify “Chill Beats” playlist, I am good to go. I love the smell of jasmine, wild orchid, ylang-ylang, and sandalwood. I also enjoy the scents of lime and clary sage and Ginger & lime. The latter has such a clean scent. 
  • Walking– walking in the afternoon with my friend, Megan, has helped as we bounce our thoughts, ideas and some of our frustrations off each other. Walking is known to help generate new ideas, so it has been great to have someone to walk with and talk through the ideas as they come through. 
  • Green Tea with Jasmine/Camomile Tea – These help me get a good night’s rest. I sleep like the dead when I drink jasmine-scented green tea. I woke up feeling like my brain had completely shut down. My sleep feels dreamless, although it probably isn’t.
  • Journalling – This is where I vent most of the time. It is so liberating to get stuff off my chest without any filters. Journalling is proven to help people get through difficult periods. In “Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within”, Janet Conner has a well-researched chapter on the science behind why journalling works. The entire book is beneficial as well. I don’t always do it daily, but knowing that I have somewhere to vent unfiltered when I need to is always reassuring.
  • Friends and family – sometimes, connecting with a friend is all you need to leave you feeling rejuvenated. It’s just my son and I at home, so I come to teenage conversations every day. Sometimes, I need to connect with a fellow adult in the evenings. Then I pick up a phone and call a friend. Thankfully, whoever I call is always available to chat. I am very grateful to my friends. I really don’t know what I would do without their support. I am blessed.
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What tools do you have in your toolbox to get you through life? I would love to hear what works for you. Please add them in the comments.

Well, that’s it from me today. I think I will hop into the hot bath and then enjoy a cup of jasmine-scented green tea next :). 

Celebrating 2023: A Month of Gratitude- Day 14

Phew, I am so exhausted! We had our end of year party today. The event was outdoors and we were blessed with a beautiful day. There was a gorgeous sea breeze that helped us all deal with the heat. The food was good and the drinks flowed. This was our first event since before Covid so we all made the most of it.

The were spot prizes and I won a hamper🙌. It was good fun all round. I am really glad I went.

My friend, Megan, and I relaxing at the event.

Keeping it short because my bed calls.

Be blessed!

Celebrating 2023: A Month of Gratitude – Day 13

Today I did a quick course at work on how to get your team to change. It was an interesting little course. The instructor shared a few interesting examples that illustrated various attempts to digitise the farming industry. I was fascinated by what’s available to farmers today. That wasn’t the point of the exercise though. The point was to illustrate how to get people to adopt new behaviours.

While I have had many firsts and quite a few wins this year, there are goals that I have not met so I need to go back to the drawing board. There are two goals in particular that I have not met:

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I have not achieved my weight goal

In fact I am further from it than I was at the beginning of this year. I am very disappointed but it is what it is. One of the lessons learnt in today’s course is that the change needs to have few barriers to entry for easy adoption. Well I have done myself a disservice by joining a gym that is essentially out of my way. I had done so that I my son and I could attend it together but it is so far out of our way in the evening that we just never get there. I have one of two choices. Join a gym that is closer or let go of the idea of going with him and find something else to do together. The gym is not really out of my way as it is close to work. If I choose the latter option, I can work it into my lunchtime schedule and make a big dent in that weight loss goal.

Photo by Ann poan on Pexels.com

I have not created an organisational system that works

Yet. It’s not for a lack of trying all year long. As I mentioned previously, I like the idea of the system shared in Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain, but it’s not intuitive for me so I am figuring out how to make the principles work. Which brings me to another principle I learned today, which is that the system needs to be user friendly. The fewer sets you have to get things done, the more likely you are to have a positive attitude about it and do it. I am trying to get my system down to 3-4 steps at most to store information and retrieve it. I get can quite get lost when I have to click on too many things to find what I need.

The system must be implementable immediately

If a system still needs to be modified and adjusted or you need to buy additional equipement to get started, it’s pretty likely that you won’t achieve your goal. The first time I logged onto my MacBook Air, a YouTube video popped to show me how to use my new computer. It was a few minutes long and it showed me how to do the basics and I was good to go. I am so grateful for that video because I would have been very frustated with the laptop and regretted my purchase. I also would not have used it as much as I would have liked. I was able to get to work immediately after that video which was a huge bonus.

So I failures are a great way to learn and I have enjoyed the challenges that I have faced this year. I experienced more challenges than just these two this year and I am very grateful that I come out standing strong on the other side.

Do you have any tips on how to adopt new systems/habits? I would love to hear form you in the comments. Thanks for reading! Be Blessed!