A big part of mental health maintenance is just about adequate self-care.
Medication and therapy when necessary do some serious heavy lifting, but because our mental state is so closely tied to how we see our essential selves (for example, when we talk about mood or personality disorders/disturbances, we also, often, mean mood or personality as facets of the self), providing some basic services for our bodies and psyches can go a long way in keeping us happy and healthy.
Here’s a quick list of things I try to hit everyday and where I am in practice:
- 15,000 steps: I’m averaging above 15k steps daily for sure, but that is a combination of 20k days and 10k days. I would like to be consistently above 15k everyday, because it would mean not skipping on any part of what I want built into my routine.
- blog: I’m trying to add something here everyday even if it’s not ready-to-publish when I leave it. Obviously I’m very, very far from being on top of this goal, ha!
- dog park & mid-morning walk: My younger dog gets me to the dog park just about everyday, barring severe weather. To be fair to my older, I try to also give her a mid-morning walk everyday (with which I hit my 15k steps goal without fail), but sometimes she and I will play hooky 😉
- multi-vitamin: I only recently started this so it’s easy to forget sometimes. I have brittle nails and a horrendous habit of using my nails (and truth be told, teeth) as multi-purpose tools. I also bombed my hair a few years ago by going the ‘grey-silver’ that was so, so trendy then. Achieving that color requires a platinum/white-blonde as base. For dark-haired gals like me, it meant bleaching four times and breaking off fistfuls of hair. (Also crying in the middle of the 7 1/2 hour session, but that was probably just me.) As such, I’m now on a hair/nail focused vitamin just in case I’m not getting all I need from food alone.
- read: I definitely read everyday, but I would like to start dedicating time specifically set aside for it. I feel like reading would feel more productive, and not just a way to procrastinate on chores!
- stretch/yoga/bodyweight fitness: I’m not doing this very often lol. I’ll get into the groove and have days in a row, and then crap out for a week or more at a time. I’d like to see myself getting even just reps of 5 in everyday so that 1) it’s sumfin’! and 2) it takes so little time that I don’t have a good excuse not to do it!
Happily, I already have a decent routine built up and I’m just try to fit in new items in new configurations to maximize efficiency and productivity.
Here are some other good basics you can do for yourself today and everyday:
- 10,000 steps
- brush & floss
- drink water
- get good sleep (consistent time to bed/rise)
- shower
Well, that’s all for now, squirrel friends. Let’s get (nut-)cracking!
