On Self-care And Mental Wellbeing!

Today's journaling prompt asks me - what is your favourite form of self-care? 

One of the biggest lessons that life has taught me is that, mind matters a lot. If the mind is healthy, so is the body. If the mind is sick, the body is sick too! I have seen people lose 20 kgs in just a matter of two to three months all due to anxiety. I have seen people overcome major illnesses with the strength of their mind. I have seen people live through various traumatic experiences and carry on in their lives, all because they had strong minds. So my form of self-care would be to take care of my mind.

Unfortunately, the daily irritations of life have started taking up too much space in the mind and I find myself losing my calm over petty issues. Most of all, the mind is weakest in the evenings and brings in anxiety and worries of the present as well as the foreseeable future. Situations became dire to an extent and that is when I started paying more attention to mental well-being.

I would like to share some of the things that I do for mental peace.

Reading: 

This seems to be a recurring theme in all of my journals. But reading really helps me to relax and to calm down. I read for about three hours every day. In the afternoon I read books on fiction mostly. In the evening, to fight its gloom, I read books on spirituality and philosophy. Sometimes the gloom makes it difficult to concentrate on just one book. So I made it a point to read one chapter from multiple books every evening. Currently I am reading from the following: Mindful Zen Habits by Marc Reklau, Be Your Own Sunshine by James Allen, Patanjali Yoga Sutras by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh and The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma. While these make my desk cluttered, they help to clear the mind sure! Reading makes evenings far less gloomier for me.

Learning New Languages:

This actually started in sheer desperation. When my kid was in the second grade, Telugu classes began in school. However, that year being 2020, while the rest of the subjects had online classes, Telugu had only offline sessions. Plus, it was intimated to us by the school that Telugu isn't compulsory. So none of us at home paid attention to the offline classes or tried to learn. All of a sudden, in the fourth grade, when the school finally started conducting physical classes, we came to know that the government has made it compulsory for all schools to conduct exams for Telugu. Since my kid had no basic foundation for the subject, we all had a difficult time trying to learn it. Google helped to an extent. But then I realized that this is going to be an issue every year. So I started learning Telugu alphabets. When I started writing the alphabets, I realized that I cannot write in Tamil or Malayalam as well, these two being the native languages of my ancestral village Palakkad. So I decided to learn all three at a time. I am still stuck up in the alphabets and have a long way to go! But learning new languages takes off the focus from daily responsibilities and makes me feel young in my mind. This is a much loved ritual of the day - writing down the alphabets in my book and trying to memorize them.

Mindful Meditation:

I tried the normal method of meditation but realized very soon that I am not cut out for this. Either the mind kept running here and there or I nodded off in blissful sleep. So I gave up my attempts to meditate and now I am trying mindfulness meditation. It is nothing but trying to do every work mindfully. Walking? Take deep breaths in and out and walk in rhythm with the breaths. Cleaning? Focus on the task and its intricacies and do it with a relaxed frame of mind. Cooking? Feel every texture of the veggie/fruit you are cooking with, take in the aroma of the dishes being prepared and lose yourself in the activity to such an extent that you and the activity become one. I have to admit that this is extremely difficult for me and more often, my mind wanders and I fail at the task. But I attempt it every day and just the thought that I am trying to it makes me feel better and gives me hope that someday I will be able to do this effectively.

Yes to astronomy, No to politics!

I am fascinated by the subject of astronomy. I follow news on this topic and find myself mesmerized by the breath-taking visuals that many space-crafts and telescopes send every day, bringing the vast space a bit closer to humankind. Astronomy fills my mind with wonder. It makes me realize that I am a part of a gloriously infinite and beautiful universe. I totally refrain from reading any kind of political or general news. It throws me into deeper gloom. I do not watch the news, neither do I read it. The world is better and kinder when you do not watch the daily news!

Journaling:

This is a new attempt from me and I have journaled only for few days till now. It helps me to clear my mind and brings to my notice, the things that I am probably doing wrong or ought to have done or should do. I like the ritual of writing down my thoughts about something positive. Since journaling does not come to me naturally, I search for prompts every day and am writing on them. So far so good. I hope to keep up this practice every evening. 

These are just some of the daily attempts I do to keep the mind calm. Some days I succeed, most of the days I fail. But the struggle is real, as they say, and so is my intention to pursue mental well-being. Hopefully someday I will reach that place of inner contentment and peace that I so seek. Until then, the journal is there, the mindful meditation is there and so are the books!