Words for self care

I took this week off work to look after myself and practice some self care. One self care tool has been giving myself the time to read.

At the beginning of the year I ordered quite a few books. 2015 has been all about growth and that growth is in myself, my happiness and my business.

I have read Add More -Ing and Spirit Junkie and by Gabrielle Bernstein. I have read the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People and I just finished The Alchemist.

Each of these books has had lessons to learn and given my great insights into myself. But I never thought that taking the time to read a good book was nourishing for the soul and a way to practice self love.
This week I have ‘let go’ of my never ending ‘to do’ lists and am doing my best to just with ‘the flow’. I laid out some books and some recent e-books I had downloaded and instead of choosing with my head as I always do I made my choice with my heart.

My aha moment

If you’ve been following my blog then you’ll know it has taken me a long time to recover from adrenal fatigue. I wasn’t crashing after work anymore or on the weekends but I was still finding it really hard to get motivated or have the energy to workout and I was procrastinating a lot!

My naturopath had suggested I switch to a low carb, high fat diet which I started at the beginning of July but only lasted 9 days before I gave in to emotional/stress eating! I started the diet again last week and so far haven’t had any uncontrollable cravings :) I don’t know if the change in diet is making me more alert and energetic but I have been noticing that I feel more and more like myself.

What else has changed? I finally started meditating again. You can read last week’s review here. I started meditating at night because that was when I could fit it in but I don’t think I was getting the full benefits. Plus I was falling asleep half the time! So I knew I should meditate in the morning but I was only just getting into a routine to wake and workout. I caught up with some girlfriends the other weekend and had a really good chat with them. They knew everything that I had on my plate and that I didn’t want to give anything up. But they could see I was struggling. They suggested I alternate my mornings between meditating and working out and see how that went.

So on Monday I woke up and did my meditation. On Tuesday I woke up and meditated and then worked out. And that was my routine for the rest of the week. I guess I just had to let go and let it all fall into place.  Letting go has been really hard for me to do. It’s not that I’m a control freak. It’s the organisational Virgo in me. I have to plan things and then I have to stick to the plan. But then it got to the point where I was avoiding my plan because I knew I couldn’t do everything on it or procrastinating when I did try to tackle my to do list.