#mywwwellbeing

30^th August 2018

Take time to make your soul happy

What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours.  I feel 100% better than I did when I woke up on Tuesday morning and lots of things contributed to that, friends, family, my WW members and Weight Watchers as an employer.  See they care about our wellbeing too, to the point where they’ve actually introduced an annual Wellbeing Scheme for coaches as well as a Friends and Family programme.  Just knowing they care about my wellbeing makes me care about it even more. 

#mywwwellbeing

If you were given an envelope with a sum of money to spend on your wellbeing, say £75 what would you spend it on?  What does wellbeing include, what does it mean?  You could spend it on your physical, financial and emotional wellbeing?  What would be your first thought and would that be the one that really needs it most.  The first thing I did was went to look up what ‘wellbeing’ actually meant, I do like a definition, so according to the very excellent website www.mind.org.uk wellbeing describes your mental state - how you are feeling and how well you can cope with day-to-day life.  Our mental wellbeing is dynamic. It can change from moment to moment, day to day, month to month or year to year.

If you have good mental wellbeing you are able to:

• feel relatively confident in yourself and have positive self-esteem
• feel and express a range of emotions
• build and maintain good relationships with others
• feel engaged with the world around you
• live and work productively
• cope with the stresses of daily life
• adapt and manage in times of change and uncertainty

If you want to read more and I suggest you do, go to their website https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/wellbeing/#.W4ZUJ7gnaUk

Anyway if you read yesterday’s blog you know I’d felt overwhelmed Tuesday morning but after doing what I said I was going to do I felt 100% better by 9am yesterday, I’d emptied all my drawer in my bedroom out and worked my way through them, filling a couple of bin bags, then I cooked myself the most delicious breakfast.  

Seriously it was that good, having a new non-stick frying pan has changed my life – no I’m not being dramatic, it makes that much difference and if it only stays that way for a few months, I’ll buy another one!  Never will I live with a crappy frying pan ever again.

Back to what would you spend £75 on if someone gave it to you to spend on your wellbeing?  I put some thought into this and I have to say just thinking about it did my mental health and wellbeing the world of good because it made me think about me and what I need for a change.

Okay what did I come up with, physical for me would be a super indulgent massage and facial session.  Emotionally well thankfully I have great friends that listen, so I asked myself what do I enjoy doing that would recharge my emotional bank, because let’s be honest everything is easier to handle when you’ve had a good time or done something you enjoy.   I came to the conclusion, I haven’t got the inclination to cook from scratch too much at the moment, plus I’ve been doing online shopping for a good while now and one of the things I really enjoy doing is food shopping in Waitrose – posh food for the kid who’s family was skint always does it for me.  So a couple of hours out, browsing round Waitrose, spending money, buying some delicious ready meals and saving with a coupon they’ve sent me is one of my indulgent pleasures.  

What it also made me realise is financially I’m not in a bad place, I could afford to do both of those things anyway and I’m going to with my own money, I have a good job, my house is paid for thankfully, I’m very, very lucky, yes I'm a full time carer for my mom who has Alzheimers and Vascular Dementia but wow it could be a great deal more difficult!. So what I plan to do with my £75 is put it in an envelope and I’m going to use it to help someone else’s wellbeing, to give them something to look forward to or to help them with a debt they can’t afford.  That helps them and makes me feel good for doing a good dead.  We all need to take care of each other because we never know when our good fortune will change.

Improving our wellbeing doesn’t always have to involve money, cleaning my closets out yesterday really helped me, cooking a delicious breakfast reminded me I can do that and it’s not that difficult either.  Writing it out helps me daily, some days I have nothing to say, others I don’t know when to shut up.  Catching up with my bestie and having a giggle is the best medicine in the world.  Getting closer to my sister is helping my wellbeing, we’ve never been the kind of family that live in each others pockets so this is new to us both, we’re new partners in crime.  I need to get my crochet back out, I’ve avoiding the last few squares because they’re the difficult ones then I’ve got to sew it up but the sense of achievement when it’s finished will be worth it.

Yeah being kind to myself, accepting it’s okay not to be okay, appreciating that my life has its difficulties, noticing the smile moments, these things all help me have good mental wellbeing. 

Here’s to having a very great day, looking for the smile moments and focussing on creating those healthy habits for life.