I just LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the new year. I know, I know… it’s just like any other day and we shouldn’t “wait” to start improving ourselves, but I just get so much MoJo on January 1rst! And, honestly, I let my normally disciplined-self slack a bit in the last two weeks of the year. You know the drill… over-eat, over-drink, and generally slack on all my “goals”.. with the knowledge I’ll be super-motivated in the New Year to get back to my healthy habits!
One of those healthy habits that I’ve developed in the past couple of years is walking regularly, often while listening to inspiring podcasts. One of those podcasts is Optimal Living Daily where it was announced that 15 lucky people would receive a free OLD workbook for talking about self-care practices that have worked. I’m supposed to respond via Vibely, which is a fun app that offers challenges to the community, but.. this would be too long to type in an app! I’ll just send a link!
I’ve figured out that living a meaningful life is not just about where we physically go or what we do, but what is occupying our minds. We only have a finite number of days on this earth and I want to spend those days wisely by making intentional decisions about how I’m spending my time and who I’m spending it with. When I’m alone, my brain is still thinking and I want those to be POSITIVE thoughts!
By listening to Podcasts about positive life-style habits (such as Optimal Living Daily) and participating in various positive communities (such as those offered at Vibely) I’m regularly feeding my mind with positive ideas! I subscribe to positive newsletters, have taken 4 different really interesting courses about the Science of Happiness, have great self-help apps on my phone, and regularly interact with people who feed my soul.
Vibely, also, is fun, for people like me who love prompts and challenges! There’s an OLD (as in Optimal Living Daily.. not “senior”) community that you can find on Vibely and participating is just a really fun way to virtually meet like-minded people and follow through on your goals! My only feedback for this is that I wish there were a version for my laptop. I much prefer communicating with a full-size keyboard rather than the tiny keyboard on my (very small) phone.
All of this has changed my overall mindset to one which is much happier. Though I’ve heard it’s natural for our brains to first see the negative in the events of our day, these practices have helped me train my brain to naturally see the positive in each event… even things that in the past would have made me feel upset, I view as a challenge to find the positive. When I get criticism, it doesn’t feel good, but I now am much more able to be grateful rather than defensive about the feedback.
By the way, this isn’t the first time I’ve given a shout-out to the Optimal Living Daily podcast! It was also the spark that I needed to start my own podcast, Carpe Diem Connections!
What positive self-care habits do you have?
