Thursday, May 10, 2012

Challenge

30-ish day challenge to myself.

I want to do 15 specific minutes of self-care every day.  I'm thinking that breaking it into 5 minute chunks will be a way to get in some nice variety and make it manageable when things get busy.  My initial thought is:

5 minutes meditation
5 minutes stretching
5 minutes writing/journaling

I'm wondering if there are other things I can throw in there to mix it up...  

5 minutes yoga?
Might be a lot of prep work, with generally needing a change of clothes and kind of falls into similar categories as stretching and meditation.

I've played around with the idea of throwing housecleaning into the mix.  I've gotten into the habit previously of spending at least 10 minutes a day cleaning/straightening up the house and it's been pretty good for my mental health.

I also wonder how to put sleep into the mix.  I've gotten into quite a habit of gazing into my iPhone at night before bed instead of reading or just shutting off the lights and letting sleep come.  I value putting more sleep into my self-care schedule, but not quite sure how to quantify it.

I'm noticing quite a bit of internal resistance going on.  My mind seems kind of scared by the idea of 1. committing to specific self-care activities and 2. committing to introspection.  It's a little farther out of my comfort zone than I'd like to admit, but I also know that the first step is the hardest.  It's not often that I sit down to write and struggle with the words or the process.  Usually when I meditate I can get into a positive space pretty quickly.  But it's getting over the hump that really challenges me.  

So, the 30ish day challenge is named this because it will be both a challenge in the sense of naming my commitment as well as stretching my comfort zone.  But I suppose that's where all the good growth is supposed to happen, right? :)

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