Be a human being, not a human doing.
I have had a lovely couple of weeks off work, away from social media and totally unplugged. We’ve recently moved, to a house which is a bit of a ‘project’, so it was also great to get away from the endless to-do list of all the things that go along with moving and renovating. I went with the best intentions to leave work at work, and leave the to-do list undone, knowing that it will all still be there when I got back. It was surprising to notice how difficult it was to really switch off. I consciously thought “right, now it’s holiday time, hurrah, I get to stop for a while”.…
- 30 Days of Healthy Living, Lifestyle Medicine, Living Lifestyle Medicine, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Stress Reduction
25th January – Do something you enjoy
Do something you enjoy. Just because. De-stressing, relaxing, chilling out… it sounds like it should be so easy, doesn’t it? Just do… well, nothing, right? But ‘just relaxing’ is not as easy as it sounds for some people. I am definitely not very good at doing nothing. And, ironically, the more stressed you are (and therefore more in need of relaxing) the harder it is to settle and turn off. This is because when we are stressed our brains are busy churning out lots of stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline for example. These stress hormones put our bodies into “fight or flight” mode so we are revved up, jittery,…
- 30 Days of Healthy Living, Living Lifestyle Medicine, Mindfulness, Relationships & Connectedness, Stress Reduction
18th January – gratitude
Be thankful A daily gratitude practice at the end of the day really helps me to reflect on the day and be mindful of the positive things that happened during my day. Our brains are hard-wired for survival, we are pre-programmed to be alert and on the look-out for threats – this was how we as a species have survived and evolved through the last 100,000 years. However, it does mean that we automatically tend to focus more on the negatives, and conversely we discount the positives as less important, so we are less likely to remember good things. In fact, we tend to remember 6 negative things for every…
