Surviving the dark months in lockdown (tips from a thriver)

 I have experienced well over my own fair share of mental health problems and, over years of training and working in Social Work, senior leadership, Transactional Analysis psychotherapy and Coaching I have learned robust and everlasting resilience. I manage my own mental health with all of these and I urge you to move toward adopting some of the practices I mention in this article for your own sake.

You are important and until you can take care of yourself as well as you deserve, you will not be able to function as well as I know you want and intend to in our world.

In this article, I distil my own tried and tested ways of thriving and building resilience in the hope it will support you to manage and thrive as we move into the darkest, statistically most depressing time of our year in the Northern hemisphere. 

We are all, to one degree or another, in pandemic management lockdown measures, living lives of restricted movement and freedoms as we move into 2021 with hope for a better, freer year. Creating ways to survive and indeed to thrive will boost our immunity and create a fallback position of resilience. Here’s what I have for you:

 Exercise 

I’m not a huge exerciser at this time in my life. I run an ever present intention to increase it. I have a peloton (currently used as a clothes airer) and a bike for outside (currently under cover) but I am blessed (in so many ways) with my dog, Dobby. 

Dobby takes me outside EVERY day for a walk, he prefers mid day, when I am on a break from the Zoom calls which pack my day from beginning to end. We have habitualised this.

Walking in the height of the daily sunlight fills our cells with the stuff which makes vitamin D, and although the sunlight is weak in the UK, too weak for much, we still experience an increase of endorphins and our mood consequently rises. Movement keeps our musculoskeletal bits  limber and our respiratory and circulatory systems happy. 

Also, walk, stretch and stand while working where you can. It all counts.

For added goodness, as you walk, I invite you to look up and check out the treetops, the sky, birds and your dreams.

 Nourish

We are what we eat. Our clever bodies have brilliant ways to clear out the crap we put in them. I am not suggesting you cut all of that out.  I have struck an unspoken agreement with mine to pump it with an exuberant amount of good stuff to counter the mince pies and stollen bites, the pizzas and takeaways. I start each day with a smoothie or a juice and I salad or soup some more treasures in at lunch time. I take supplements and I drink kombucha, if I am going to drink alcohol, I only touch the very good stuff (this keeps me from habitualising drinking and the hangovers at bay!).

You deserve all goodness.

 Under think

So many of us formed an over-thinking  habit when we were small as a way of surviving and managing the complexities which childhood always brings. We leaned into thinking because the alternative is either feeling or doing and for some of us, these were disallowed or prohibited. 

Over thinking causes sleeplessness, anxiety, perfectionism, exhaustion, restlessness, attention deficit and also it distracts and keeps us from feeling and from taking action.

We need sleep, peace, rest and to account our feelings during this oddest of times. I invite you to stop overthinking by getting firmly into the here and now. I do this by using the 54321 exercise. Here it is:

Stop for a moment, breathe deeply and look around you. Notice 5 things you can see, name them silently, then 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can touch, 2 things you can smell and 1 you can taste.

Once you have moved through this exercise, you’ll be present, grounded, here and now and while you are in this good place, you can not overthink.

Set goals

At the end of 2019, I ran events called ‘2020 Visioning’. They were year planning, intention setting, accountability building events which were, in the end, more useful than one would think. The people who attended have reported back to me that despite all we have lived through in 2020 which was outside of their control, they were glad to have set their goals. Goals give us all something to aim for and to focus on. We get what we focus on. This is supported by neuroscience and also the more woowoo law of attraction. Personally, I prefer Beckwith’s law of resonance where he says we don’t get what we want, we get who we are.

Goals give something for our reticular activating system to hang its hat on. Goals help us to tune into who to be to attract what we want.

 So, what do you want for yourself?

Name this and write it down. Goals are 100% more likely to happen when we account what we want.

Talk

I was named within my family of origin as ‘big gob’; talkative and seemingly showily extrovert. This was all wrong on many levels. I was indeed performative as a way of deflecting others from seeing  who I really was. I am not and never was an extrovert. I was determined not to be seen since I knew deep inside that I wasn't OK, wasn't good enough or loveable. I had learned this as a baby.  I used over-talking as a defence. It’s effective, it keeps people from getting close.  

Since I found psychotherapy and coaching, I have learned to trust myself and other people, I have learned to be real, true and to share this, to share me, with other people. 

Over the last 12 years, talking with trusted others in a space I feel safe has literally saved my life. I have emerged into my truth and beauty. I have become more of who I am and I am consistently and persistently becoming.

I want you to talk. Truthfully, in the raw, from your real, from your pain, glory, aches, joy and sadness. I want you to talk and I invite you to do so as soon as you are able.

You are important and you deserve to be seen and to be heard.

If it's worth doing…

Perfectionism is one of the blights of our time. It is basically anxiety in motion and it runs through us like the words in a stick of rock. It’s baked into our way of being because we decided when we were tiny that the only way we could be allowed to exist is if we did so perfectly.

 The big con is that you are already perfect! You were born perfect. Your overthinking, hard on yourself, critical voiced way of being, your playing it small and not stepping into your power or your beauty and the glory of  your existence is something you have chosen and as such, it is something you can re-decide if you want to.

In the dark and dreary winter and in lockdown in particular, perfectionism could be your undoing. Be gentle with yourself. You don’t have to emerge from this with a seven figure business and a body an athlete would be proud of!

And the end of the permission I have for you today is this, ‘... it’s worth doing badly’. Yes, if it’s worth doing, JFDI, do it badly!

Live. As best you can and not perfectly.

Celebrate 

Small wins are wins nonetheless. You deserve to stop, pause and reflect on what you have done well. Firstly, you are still here aren't you? You survived this far and you’ve done pretty well. Celebrate this. Celebrate who you are.

Develop a gratitude attitude

Before we leave each other, right here and now, I invite you to start to build gratitude into your way of being. I do this twice every day, in the morning and last thing at night and I honestly believe it is the most important part of my resilience battalion.

Name three things you are grateful for.

Do it now, and then before you sleep and as you wake. It’s OK if they’re always the same things. It’s OK if you mix it up a bit. It’s all because when all is said and done, YOU are OK. You always were and you always will be. 

And so I will leave you by naming one thing I am grateful for right now and it is this:

YOU.

If you are ready to make changes inside which will help you to re-design the landscape of your life, contact me at [email protected], I am ready for you.