Free Your Mind Friday

Welcome back readers! It is finally Friday! I hope you all have been able to practice some self-care this week and find some calm in these difficult times.Head with thoughts Taking time to care for yourself can help reduce stress and anxiety and who couldn’t use that? Taking time to focus on you gives you the ability to give more to others in your life. Like Rupaul says, “If you can’t love yourself, how are you gonna love somebody else!” If we are not caring for ourselves we get depleted and it can have a negative affect on our relationships. Many of us are at home with our partners or families and not getting that time for themselves. We all need some space and privacy to process our feelings and be with ourselves and if you are living with others during this stay at home order we can feel like we have no alone time.

“If you can’t love yourself, how you gonna love somebody else!” – Rupaul

After another week of elevated stress and uncertainty we could all use some help calming our thoughts and  our minds. With all the changes and added anxiety in our daily lives we can feel like our thoughts are racing and all over the place. We then get stuck in these negative thoughts and it can create more stress for us. Learning some effective skills to change our thoughts from these negative places can really help us to better navigate these unprecedented times in which we live.

Below are a series of videos from Headspace that have helpful tips on how to change your negative thoughts and ultimately your mindset. Over time you can build on these skills to be more effective and resilient during stressful moments.

This video explains the importance of why sitting in our discomfort and accepting things as they are that we learn valuable lessons about ourselves.

Finding our underlying calm can sometimes be difficult and we forget what we need in order to be relaxed is already with us. Using our ability to change our negative thoughts and sit through difficult feeling are skills that help us learn more about ourselves. They help us to reduce stress in our lives and give us information about ourselves that we can learn from.

Learning new ways to change our thoughts and our minds isn’t always easy and may take some practice, however it is worth it. Being able to find a space of calm or change a negative thought cycle can help you better cope with not just the normal stress but also the added stress of these uncertain times. Try to just be aware the next time you find yourself in your thoughts and they start to turn to the negative. Ask yourself what you can do to change those old patterns and develop more effective ones and bring some calm to your life. The more you learn to control where your mind goes the more peace you will be able to find.

I hope these videos help you learn new strategies or improve on existing ones you may have to help reduce your stress and anxiety as well as improving your mood during this time. I wish you all a wonderful day and hope you find some time to practice self-care. I will be back next week with more tips and videos to help you find your happy place!

Please remember to wash your hands, stay home if you can, practice social distancing and wear a mask to protect the most vulnerable among us.

I am writing this blog to be helpful to you all out there during this turbulent time and am looking for your feedback. Please feel free to leave your comments, questions and suggestions under the Contact Me tab at the top of the page. You can subscribe to this blog by clicking on the Subscribe button in the lower right corner. Just enter your email address and receive Self-Care Corner in your inbox every morning! Isn’t that wonderful?

In addition, you can now find Self-Care Corner on Twitter @selfcarecorners, where I will be posting daily affirmations and ways to cope with these changing times. I hope this will help others feel less alone, more relaxed and more empowered to practice self-care.

 

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