Show yourself some love
There’s a lot of focus on self-care in our world, though lately it’s hard to hear due to all the shouting about coronavirus, which has brought so much anxiety and uncertainty into our lives. Should schools open? If they do open, should we send our kids?
What about work? If you haven’t gone back, it’s likely you are stressed about finances. If you have gone back, it’s likely you are stressed about the possibility of contracting COVID—especially if you are somewhere that doesn’t require masks.
No matter your situation, whether working or not, masked or not, it’s entirely likely that you are finding yourself more tired each day than you are used to, and feeling worn out much of the time.
If you are feeling exhausted, confused or overwhelmed, please know that you are not alone. I was speaking last week with two of the brightest energy workers I know, and they are both depleted.
I can’t make those feelings go away entirely, but I can explain WHY you are feeling the way you are, and provide a bunch of ideas to help you up your self-care game in ways that might make things a little better.
Fatigue is related to stress
In particular, what is causing you to feel so wiped out is emotional fatigue, which comes from worrying. Some people also refer to it as “moral fatigue”, or “morale fatigue”, which occurs when something awful is happening, but we don’t have any idea when it will end.
Everyone I know worries about family and friends. You worry about your own safety or the safety of others, worry about your job, worry about surging COVID cases in your area or in the country at large . . .
All of these causes of worry are based in our current reality, so it’s not as if anyone is overreacting if they have concerns or are stressed right now. We know that this virus isn’t going away any time soon, and we are told that things may get worse than they are now, when that feels impossible. It’s as if we are handed an additional five-pound weight to hold each day, only we aren’t allowed to put any of the weights down. Things pile on, nothing comes off.
Instead of weights, you are holding their emotional equivalent. Worries and concerns pile on with each news report and statistic and person we know who is facing issues due to COVID, whether those issues are health-related or not. The hits keep coming, and there’s no end in sight.
No wonder we are tired.
Girlfriend, you need some sleep.
Did you just roll your eyes at me because “DUH, Kelly”?
It’s fine if you did. But it had to be said.
The thing is, emotional fatigue is the thing that keeps people awake at bedtime or wakes us up in the middle of the night. Emotional fatigue wants you to rehearse your worries for tomorrow or rehash the ones from today, when you should be going to sleep or staying asleep.
If sleep disruption has started to become a problem for you, there are lots of things you can try in order to nurture and take care of yourself so that you improve the amount and quality of your sleep. If you want to scan through some prior blog posts on this, start here, and scroll daily for something like 10 sleep-related posts.
Some of the most basic tips are to establish a consistent bedtime for yourself. If you have to literally send yourself to bed as if you are a child, DO IT. Another huge help is to turn off screens, such as phones, iPads, laptops and (if you can) TVs at least an hour before bedtime; it gives your brain time to calm down and get over being stimulated by all that blue light. Finally, avoid caffeine or alcohol for several hours before bedtime, since they can disrupt your ability to fall asleep (in the case of caffeine) or stay asleep (in the case of alcohol).
If you want all those posts (plus more information) fleshed out and in printed form, I invite you to purchase my ebook, 12 tips to help you sleep, which is available for purchase and immediate download. I wrote the book to help as many people as possible to get better sleep during this difficult time period. And I’ve discounted it to half price through the end of July to make it more affordable.
Here are some tips to reduce your stress or anxiety levels
I frequently advise my one-on-one coaching clients to revert back to checking these basic four boxes when things get rough:
These are literally the basics that keep us going in life. If you are a parent or have taken care of kids at any point, you probably recognize these as the sort of issues you tackle when dealing with children. I advise people to revert to these basics when things get rough, because we all need to take care of our inner child, and that includes remembering to drink enough water, eat meals and (hopefully) get proper nutrition, move our bodies, and get enough sleep.
If you need to set alarms for yourself on your phone or otherwise to remind you to take a break and have a drink of water, or to take a walk, or to put yourself to bed, then do it.
Nutrition
If you’d like an idea of how to improve your nutrition, may I suggest something that I started doing about three weeks ago? It requires a little bit of prep work, but not a lot (once you set it up), and it has helped Morris and I to increase our intake of fruits and vegetables, plus it’s given us healthier snack options than we might usually grab once we are hungry, or even hangry.
The “graze board” or snack tray that I set up for us today.
The idea is to set up a graze board for yourself. I got the idea from an account I follow on Instagram called Happy in Bold, which is run by two sisters who work together on creating and delivering goal-getting workbooks (a combination of planner and workbook) to people on a monthly basis.
As you can see in the photo above, ours includes a variety of items, from carrot and pepper strips with dip, to pretzel balls or almonds with dried blueberries, to granola bites and trail mix, to several kinds of fruit to peanut M&Ms, we have a bit of everything. Some days we’ve had pepperoni or cheese cubes on there; other days I’ve added hummus instead of dip (Morris won’t eat hummus, because he’s a weirdo that way). We’ve had Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers on there, pretzel rods instead of the pretzel balls, and I even tried mini rice cakes (which I do not recommend, because they get soggy fast in summer humidity).
Combine your categories if you can
To reduce stress or anxiety, four of the things that help most include things like sleep (*see above), exercise, talking with others, and meditation or mindfulness practices.
To be honest, all of that might seem out of reach right now, but there are ways of combining some of those things in ways that help boost them. For instance, perhaps you can take a morning or evening walk with your partner or another family member. Talking, walking, and being outside in nature are all good at lowering stress levels. Or perhaps you prefer (or need to take) a solo walk, in which case, being mindful of things that surround you while exercising and being in nature helps a lot, too. Or perhaps you want to listen to a meditation app while falling asleep. The point is that you can often combine a bunch of the things that are helpful in lowering stress in order to get more benefits for yourself in the same amount of time.
As I wrote in this prior blog post, many of us have toppled down to the lower levels of the pyramid that is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Our physiological needs—food, water, sleep, shelter, and so forth—have to be met first, then comes safety in the form of things such as personal security, health, and employment. Only once all of that seems stable are we able to move into the higher levels of the pyramid, where things like self-actualization and spirituality dwell.
If you shore up the base of your pyramid with the four things I recommend here, and then work on reducing your stress with some of the tips I posted in prior blog posts, starting with this one, it should help you to breathe just a bit easier and result in lower stress and anxiety levels. If you’d like to download an extended version of my blog posts with additional information, I created an ebook called “Lower your anxiety” that is available for purchase at half price through the end of the month of July.
On sale until July 31st for only $22 for the bundle!
You can get both ebooks as a bundle for the discounted price of $22 this month, which is a discount of the usual bundled price of $35, for $50 worth of books.
Sending you so much light and love, and hoping that you are taking care of yourself,
