Disconnect, to reconnect and be connected.
Disconnecting from the internet and our devices should become more and more important to us. We will feel better connected to our heart and the hearts around us when we disconnect for a full day a week and several times a day.
Move everyday
Moving our body with a walk and stretching every day will make our body and our heart feel good. It will help us release stress. It will also allow us to be more flexible when we are working through something stressful. We can’t always walk away from stress but we can walk and move through it. Difficult conversations are often easier when done when we are out for a walk. There’s more room to pause and breathe when we are moving, compared to sitting still.
Be thoughtful about when and how to engage.
Be thoughtful and keep an open mind. Even when people disagree with what we said, or when we disagree with what others said. Most things don’t require a response. If we reflect on arguments or debates that we’ve had with people we know or with strangers on the internet, hardly any of them were productive. We can be curious without being argumentative. We can love people whom we don’t agree with. We do not need to engage to prove that or anything at all.
Prioritize rest and sleep.
The old rules go on to say that resting, relaxing and nourishing yourself is selfish. That’s why we call it a ‘guilty pleasure’. We ‘reward’ ourself with rest and relaxation. Now, all of our ‘guilty pleasures’ should become our core self-care practices. We must have no guilt or apology for that.
Saving rest for the weekends and relaxation for vacations will not serve us well. That’s because our body and brain will forget how to relax in between weekends and vacations. It will take the entire time we had ‘saved’ for resting to learn how to rest again and just about the time we begin to feel rested, it will be time to rev up again. We would not have time to linger or immerse ourself in a restful state we desperately needed.
There are seasons in life when it’s harder to find the time to rest. When we do have the time, we should not waste it trying to be extra productive. We should use it to take good care of ourself so that we have the resilience to navigate the less restful seasons.
Live without clutter and debt
These are two things many of us grow up with or around. Many of us never consider what life would look like without them – we thought we’d always live with clutter, and debt. Being clutter-free and debt-free will make our life simpler, happier and healthier. When we let them go, we will live with less stress and more peace of mind, even during stressful circumstances. This rule might be not be that easy to uphold, unless we remind ourself daily about how much better our life will be without these things.
Source: ‘5 Gentle Rules to Help You Feel Good’ by Courtney Carver.
