Sleep is pretty darn high up on my list of favourite things. Seriously. Is there anything better than the sensation of being so tired that your eyes are just willing you into the land of nod? Or sliding between fresh sheets in your favourite PJs? Nah.
This coming Monday is supposedly the most depressing day of the year (who makes these statistics?!), but I think it's safe to say that January can be a bit rough on all of us: Christmas is over, we're back to work, money's tight post Christmas and worst of all it's bloody freezing and dark outside All. The. Time. So, I thought I'd share my tips on how I'm nourishing myself that little bit extra this Jan to make sure my mood doesn't dip too low.
1.) Take a little pamper time out. For me this involves a good ol' pamper night. I whack on a face mask and hair mask, sit down with one of my favourite movies and take some time out. Doing a little extra than just my normal beauty routine really makes me feel good - my confidence is boosted which is super important for keeping us happy.
2.) Get your diet right. Now, by this I don't mean we all ought to ensure we're eating salads everyday, minimising calories and joining the nearest dieting group. We all over indulge a little over Christmas, and there's a lot of pressure on us to start a "new year new me" 2016 diet in the effort to lose a dress size, or git rid of a few pounds. But this diet mentality actually adds to our unhappiness I believe. We need to be maximising our nutritional intake with home cooked meals, and a shedding of toxic foods without making ourselves unhappy. Yes I love cheese, and yes going without it is hard, but treating myself in another way - perhaps with a fruit salad & yummy yoghurt after dinner is the better way forward than removing it and not replacing it.
3.) Don't believe that you can 'disappoint' yourself. Even if we don't all set New Years' resolutions, most of us at least ponder something we'd like to change. It can then be rather disheartening if we don't see the results we want, and feel as though we've let ourselves down to some extent. But, it's important to remind ourselves daily that human beings are not perfect. One of my goals was to do something blog related every day, and I've broken this more than once. But I can acknowledge that even though some days I've been too tired or too busy, having this goal in mind has allowed me to do a lot more than I otherwise would have done.
4.) Practice mindfulness. This is possibly the most important one for me at the moment. There are a tonne of really good books out there that can tell you exactly what mindfulness is all about, but for me mindfulness is about being in the present moment. We're all pretty aware that colouring books for adults became a massive market in the last year, and are aimed at helping us to enhance our mindfulness in a fairly easy and affordable manner, and I'm absolutely loving this craze at the moment. A little yoga routine every morning as soon as I get up, and a cheeky 15 minute colouring session in bed before I attempt to sleep has pretty much cured my horrible sleeping pattern (which brings me on to point 5)
5.) Get some zzzzzz's. Sleep is love, sleep is life is basically my daily mantra, but too much sleep can almost be as negative as too little. I was sleeping for at least 12 hours a day up until recently, which was not only super unproductive, but meant that I only sleep for about 2 hours' straight at any one point before waking up which was making me feel super tired even though it was the excess of sleep that was waking my body up (what a vicious cycle!. The establishment of a decent sleep routine has amazing benefits, and there's nothing better than actually feeling sleepy at night and awake in the morning because you've finally conditioned your body clock correctly.
What would your tips be?
