Article provided by Dave Knight, a certified life coach and the host of the weekly coaching podcast, 9pm Sunday Settler
What would it mean to you if you realised that you had the inner strength and resilience to maintaining your wellness as we seem to be gradually moving out of lockdown back into normal life?
When I serve my clients as a Life Coach, I help them to realise that they have these abilities through the conversations we have and I’d like to share some tips with you shortly, to help either yourself or someone you may know, to do the same.
Even though this period in lockdown has been a challenge in one way or another for most people, I’ve come across so many people who have seen it as an opportunity to review many aspects of their life. I personally have.
For example, considering our wants and don’t wants in life; what matters and what doesn’t matter to us; what we have control over and what we don’t; what we would like to spend more and less time doing. Not to mention asking ourselves – What can we do to keep ourselves well from this point onwards?
I wonder if this sounds familiar to you?
One particular thing has really been highlighted for me personally during this period is what we do and don’t have control over.
For example, we can’t control what life curveballs are thrown our way. However, we do have more control than we often give ourselves credit for in how we respond to the challenges and in turn, how we can keep on the path that we want to in order to maintain our mental health and wellness. To keep moving forward in our own way.
Here are some tips that I’d like to offer following my own personal insights, as well as through serving clients to maintain their own wellness:
Tip #1
Recognise that you are, always have been, and always will be, No.1.
As lockdown has shown, when chaos and life curveballs are thrown at us, we will always have us. That is the one constant that we always have. We’ve always had this ability to evolve and embrace change far more than we give ourselves credit for. Treating ourselves kindly is the foundation for everything else.
Tip #2
Consider kindness to always matter
If we do see ourselves as important and the more time we take out for us, the more capacity that we feel we have for being there for others; either supporting them in some way, being helpful or just generally enjoying our time with whoever we are with.
I’ve often considered, if we all had the capacity to be able to think of someone else, what an amazing world we would live in.
Tip #3
Start and keep to the Routines
The enforced changes in our life patterns has provided an opportunity to consider what Routines we can build in our lives. It’s a moment to consider how we might want to do things differently and with that, perhaps we can see that these opportunities are always there, using the 4 R’s:
- Reflect –
- What is really important to us?
- How do we want to live?
- ‘What do we want?’ If we’re unsure about that, that is fine of course. Perhaps, alternatively we could start with ‘What don’t we want?’
- Recharge the batteries – acknowledge having ‘me time’ on a daily, weekly or monthly basis is a key part of our routine to maintain our own health and wellbeing in our lives going forward.
- React/Respond – act on it. What is the first thing or what is most important to you to keep on doing? Then, how can you plan to build this in to your lifestyle consistently as an ‘it’s just what I do’ kind of activity.
- Review – this is very much part of making ourselves more accountable for the path that we take following lockdown. When are we going to check-in on ourselves next time? Could we tell someone about our plan who we consider will hold us to account also?
Tip #4
Chart your Daily Settler markers to maintain your mental health and wellness
My clients love doing this. This is very personal to you, of course, as what works for you may not work or be important to me or someone else and vice versa. Using No. 1-3 to be your guide, what do you feel that you need to do each day to keep yourself on track? Examples of our Daily Settler markers might be:
- Have X amount hours of sleep
- Don’t bring work pressures home with you
- Ensure you have X amount of time for lunch
- Speak to someone in particular
- Exercise X amount of minutes per day
I always remind my clients that it’s not the act of performing our routines and behaviours that keeps our wellness maintained. However, just by having pleasurable or enjoyable moments; a period of ‘me-time’ and those times of kindness built-in to ‘it’s just what we do’, we are more likely to stay well.
This is because we have less thinking to do; there is less procrastination and less chance of our motivation to engage in those activities dwindling.
I’d love to hear if you’ve been able to give this a try and how much more equipped you feel to manage yourself against those life challenges when they are presented to us.
About the author:
Dave Knight, a certified life coach and the host of the weekly coaching podcast, 9pm Sunday Settler. With over a decade spent working in the mental health sector and with experience as an addictions and psychiatric nurse, the London-based mental health and wellness expert has worked for various trusts and practices around the UK and New Zealand, before re-training as a life coach.
Dave has dedicated himself to speaking openly and honestly about many of the visible and unspoken issues affecting society and seeks to equip his clients and subscribers with the tools and the mind-set to tackle life’s challenges head on. The aim of The Sunday Settler podcast is to help prepare listeners for the week ahead with a quieter mind by addressing the challenges in key areas of life that people experience. He has also developed corporate wellbeing packages called the Bulletproof Yourself series, which are geared towards helping people to self-manage and maintain their natural state of wellbeing; to calm a busy mind, find the answers and understand where all of our human experiences are coming from.
To find out more about Dave Knight’s Life Coaching and Wellbeing packages for individuals and businesses, please visit www.sundaysettler.com/bulletproof/.
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