The past 12 months have been a real strain for many of us. How have you managed your situation during the pandemic?
What have been your biggest challenges with your general health and wellbeing? The global pandemic has brought a range of questions and uncertainty to many lives, impacting mental and physical health, challenging your thoughts and emotions.
How can we help ourselves as we start to move forward a little at a time? What can you do to help, motivate and encourage yourself to work on you!
As restrictions slowly (very slowly) lift, how do we find the courage to start reliving our lives without fear and anxiety? Let me see if I can lay out some helpful tips that you can begin to incorporate into your life.
Firstly, let us take a good long look at your mindset. If this is not in the right place, you are not going anywhere!
Mindset
Recognize your emotions and the impact they have on your thinking. Allow yourself time to connect your mind to the impact of what is currently happening. Through the negativity, try to pull on a tiny slither of positivity and hold on to it. As the emotion attempts to take over, pull harder on the positive feelings, allowing them to pull you through the dark moments. Always remember that you are in control of your emotions they are not in control of you. The body responds to what the mind is thinking, so positive thoughts bring on positive action; what a great way to start your journey as we come out of this awful pandemic.
A growth mindset can help improve your mental health and self-esteem. It gives you purpose and focuses on where you are going instead of where you have been or where you are right now. Having a growth mindset can help ease stress and anxiety. It also enables you to grow, improve your thoughts, beliefs, set goals, bringing with it motivation and drive, along with a newfound discipline.
Emotions and Fears
Moving forward after a year of sadness due to bereavements, challenges, uncertainty, and confusion on many levels can be daunting, bringing with it fears and releasing a wave of emotion. Emotions that you may have never experienced before. How do you cope with this? The good news is that you are in control of all of it…you just need to learn to realize it.
The challenges that come all with shielding, living under lockdown restrictions, unable to connect physically with friends and family, living alone, grieving, or just a little anxious to leave the house because of fear of catching the dreaded Coronavirus. These factors can bring on a high level of stress and anxiety, possibly causing you to become withdrawn and unsure of life and what it may bring. This is where a goal is necessary, giving you something to aim for.
Physical Health
With gym’s closed, local parks restricted to social distancing and smaller group gatherings, this may also have affected your physical being. Feeling restricted, unable to carry out your regular exercise regime can have a massive impact on your mobility, physical and mental health. Loss of motivation, slowing down and restricted movement alongside weight gain, loss of muscle mass and sluggishness. The aim is to return slowly at your own pace.
Eating Patterns – Your Gut Health
All the above points can have a massive impact on your eating pattern, causing you to snack more, choose unhealthy options, leave long gaps between eating causing bloating, munching on more and more sugary foods, and eating less of the good foods. Foods that keep the gut healthy, helping keep blood pressure and cholesterol levels under control, and in return impacting on your joints, mobility, sleep general focus, and moods. It is now time to increase your water intake and eliminate the sugar, slowly bringing back the healthier, glowing you.
Goalsetting
Moving forwards with life is all about having something to aim for or work towards, a goal. Again, during the COVID pandemic, you may have lost your way and wondered, what is the point? Where is life leading, feeling locked in against your will, unable to move around at your own pace without a restriction in place, continuously facing obstacles and challenges along the way?
There are so many obstructions each of us have faced during this tiring time. So, how do we move on from it all? Here are some great ideas to help you move forward and ease out of the pandemic slowly, positively and with a goal in place.
The easing out of this pandemic brings long-awaited opportunities to meet up with family, friends, play sports or even get back to work. Craving, some form of normality. Just as at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, with all the restrictions and social distancing, readjustment can be difficult and add more pressure to mental health and all the other points mentioned above. So, let us look at what you can do to make this new life adjustment a little easier and less challenging.
Firstly, do not compare yourself to others and move at your own pace.
- Making yourself a priority MUST be at the top of your self-care/self-love list (you are number 1)
- Write down your needs and wants.
- What is important to you?
- Who are you? Who do you want to be?
- Get into a routine. Try a few different ones until you find one that suits you and your new lifestyle.
- Focus on the present moment (do not linger in the past)
- Talk to others you trust, tell them how you feel. It is good to share and learn that you are not alone.
- Make time for YOU (remember you are number 1)
- Clean up your gut health. Start by slowly eliminating refined sugars and starchy foods. To stop the cravings, increase your water intake. Start your day with a good high protein breakfast, do not leave huge gaps between meals. Do not eat late at night, as this can affect your sleep pattern and digestion slows down. DO NOT snack in the middle of the night. If you get hungry, have a glass of water by your bedside, drinking water can help stop the craving.
- You may have had months of not being able to carry out your exercise regime. Take your time getting back into it, do not overdo it. Start slowly, maybe with a light walk (counting steps) or some gentle stretching to loosen up those tight muscles that have not done anything for about a year. Again, as I said earlier, work at your own pace, do not try to compete with others. The only person you are in competition with is yourself.
- Book yourself a Life Coach to get you moving and setting goals. A Life Coach helps you to focus on your present life, helping to make positive changes and remove obstacles, supporting you to move forward realizing your professional and personal goals. Helping to plan your journey and walking with you every step of the way. Check out my website: www.carolynwellington.com
- Invest in a journal; A journal is personal to you and one of the best ways to ease yourself away from a world full of uncertainty. Begin to explore who you are, who you want to be. A journal gives you clarity and focus, helping to bring awareness of your current state. Choose to work with a journal and Life Coach, you are certainly going places.
As you slowly begin to emerge and find a new sense of normality, adapting yourself to a new way of life is not always going to be easy. With support, a great network, focus, a goal, hard work and consistency, you can achieve anything you desire.
A positive mindset + positive actions = ACHIEVE.
If you are ready to learn more about resetting your mindset, build a healthier lifestyle and achieving your goals, contact me via my many links or through my website www.carolynwellington.com
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Very true words given. Always try your hardest to remain positive and give yourself time to adjust. Lovely words of encouragement given by Carolyn who and is helping others find there way out of this pandemic. X
Some good points there Carolyn, I think we’re all finding it difficult to push the door open and go outside and meet our old lives, so making a few improvements as good idea
Such a great article I got a lot out of reading it and have already got a lot in place with having a journal doing my goal setting and I have also started focusing on the now and not the past. This has all been possible because of the help of Carolyn.
My 2 takeaways from your article; “slowly bringing back the healthier, glowing you” and “getting into a routine that suits me and my new lifestyle.” The first time I read this I immediately purchased an organic skin care kit to begin my “glowing me” back to life from the dull grey tone that I’ve looked at in the mirror for the past year. And, clearing up the gut, working on the glow from the inside out. That’s been the easier goal. But the second was a bit challenging, yet liberating. Getting into a new routine to suit my lifestyle meant revisiting boundaries to put myself and my physical health first, again. You have made me realise that without my physical and mental health, I would have no business, no connection to the people I love and what I love doing the most. Thank you for this much needed and enlightening article. Thank you for giving your readers a breath of “new” fresh air!