Adulting Struggles #3
Leaders, managers, change-makers, parents, movers and shakers - whatever title applies to you - today I’m here to ask: are you okay?
In these adulting streets, I wish you all the positive emotions that make life joyful, and I urge you to attend to any negative emotions that are stressing you out and could be making you sick.
As a very self-aware person, I can’t help but confront my feelings with immediacy and down to their roots. It’s cathartic and helps me carry around less baggage, although as a mere mortal, I’ve never been truly baggage-free.
I’d love to know what habits have been most reassuring and impactful for cultivating your mental health. Reply on email or leave a comment below. When you reflect on how you feel: are your mind, body and soul aligned with your answer? What needs to change for you to be truly well?
I’m still experimenting broadly, and find I’m the kind of person who masters a select-few good habits at a time rather than trying to adopt many things concurrently. I’ve experienced that the right new habit at the time it’s needed most, really can change my life. From this list, Habit #1 has been the most impactful this year as my newest experiment, #2 to #5 have been important anchors for many years.
#1 Therapeutic Treatments
What’s good for the body is good for the mind! I do one of these per week:
Chiropractic treatments - for the knots and misalignments that can’t be fixed by gentle spa massages!
Reflexology - for holistic healing and alleviating stress pressure points.
Cryotherapy - standing in a -85 degree celsius cold room for 3 minutes. It has many benefits, chiefly for me being that it calms my mind.
Psychotherapy - this is teaching me to truly feel the feelings that I am aware of so that they aren’t suppressed in pursuit of being high-functioning. Eckhart Tolle is onto something with the “pain body” concept.
#2 Starting the day with a “power hour”
This is a dedicated slot to do the things that yield joy, energy and focus. My favourites are a combination of exercise, making a healthy breakfast, listening to music, meditation, prayer, enjoying the morning sunshine and saying affirmations. I mix it up weekly or monthly by choosing 1-3 items to fill the hour but the concept stays the same. Cheers to starting the day strong!
#3 Productive boredom
Making time to intentionally do nothing…(here’s the tricky part)…without feeling bad about it. Nothing really means nothing, not even using my phone, for at least 30 minutes. This helps me slow down all the over-thinking I’m prone to doing, and to reduce the usually false perception of urgency I attach to issues. Initially it was frustrating, then it became relaxing. Hold on until it gets good!
#4 “Get More” monthly meeting
On the first day of every month, I set aside 30 minutes to review the previous month and plan the month ahead. I look at what progress was realistic given any challenges that arose, and this helps me be kinder to myself yet focused for the future.
It’s a full circle scan of personal and professional topics to match monthly activities with annual goals. Then I think about what small or big changes I need to experiment with to get more of what matters in a better way. Or maybe I realise I’ve been slacking on some bad habits and the session makes me re-focus on fixing them. I often need to work on my sleep quality, staying active throughout the day and screen time! In my case, I regard building the life I intend to have (or at least trying) as a key part of my mental health strategy. When Henry David Thoreau said, “the vast majority of men lead lives of quiet desperation”, it really made an impression on me.
#5 Narrowing my focus
As a highly empathetic person, I do genuinely try to be supportive and helpful to others. However, there are chunks of time when I retreat from most conversations and social media. It can get quite heavy to be pulled in these different emotional directions such that I need a break to re-centre and narrow my focus to my life and what / whom I’m directly responsible for. I used to feel guilty about it until I considered that continuing without a temporary emotional firebreak was even more distressing!
Before you go…
I’ll be at Exclusive Books Fourways this weekend for my last Homebru Market of the month. Send or bring your Gen Zs so we can discuss their adulting issues!
Click to RSVP
