Wishful or watchful wellbeing?

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When no one’s watching, are you taking real good care of you?

If you had been watching yourself today, when no one else was watching you – how would you assess your choices and actions? Did they support the highest version of you? In other words: how well are you serving your physical body, your beautiful mind, your fragile heart and your sense of spirit?

Before you start answering these provocative questions, though – please, please, make sure you answer with kindness, and without judgement of yourself. The point of reflecting on your wellbeing is not to inflict more suffering or shame on yourself! Okay, are we good – are we being kind? Excellent.

Back to it. When no one is watching, are you taking real good care of you? Your version of ‘taking care of you’ will be different to mine, of course.

The inspiration for this blog came when I asked this question of myself a few weeks ago, and the answer was ‘NO’. NO. I wasn’t taking real good care of me, according to my standards and version of ‘good’, particularly regarding the physical aspect of wellbeing. Some small choices and actions that had subtly become normal were not supporting me during a time when I was working hard and living a very full life, running at Speed 5 most days. I became aware that I had been seeking pleasure and instant gratification to get me through my days a little too often. I’d been giving in to:

– the urge to indulge in a sweet treat or snack as a reward for hard work

– the desire to hit snooze instead of getting up early to do yoga

– the temptation to go out for drinks on a work night instead of getting a good night’s sleep.

Now, these are minor little things, but added together, these choices over time resulted in me not giving myself the best chance of being well and operating at an optimum level. Of course, it’s totally human to chase instant gratification and allow bad habits to slip in – but eventually it pulls you out of balance and leaves you in need of a reset. (You can read more about instant gratification here Positive Psychology – What is Instant Gratification? if you’re curious.) If you are resonating with this and can see small little habits which ultimately aren’t serving you starting to rule the show, then what I share next may be of interest.

Being aware of something is the first step to change. So, what’s the next step?

Just having an intent to do something different, in my opinion, is not enough. If you want to make change, it’s critical to have a system or structure in place to support your intent. Because the system and structures won’t fail you. An intent without systems and structures is wishful thinking.

In my case, I needed a gatekeeper to help me get back on the straight and narrow, and I decided to focus on my diet first to rewire some good habits. This was the reset I knew I needed in order to get back into balance. Sometimes we need to be watched, accountable – and we need to call on our village and support teams to help us reset. A shout-out to the beautiful, talented Alessandra Edwards, my friend, mentor and performance coach, whom I reached out to for some systems and structures. In this case, it was a six-week meal-plan project.

To sum up: once you have an awareness that change is needed, there are three steps:

1. With your new awareness, be kind and caring to yourself. You’re human.

2. Decide what habit(s) you want to change – get really clear on your intent.

3. Create a system or structure to support you, and commit to the plan.

Question

When no one’s watching, are you taking real good care of you?

Practice

Take stock of where your wellbeing is at, mentally, emotional, physically and spiritually. Work with the three steps above to put any needed changes in place. And remember, once you make a decision to change, be patient – it may take some time. Not everything is instant.