Time for a (Mental Health) Spring Cleanse

The sun is out! For all of us on the East Coast, we can now exit our caves and begin to feel hopeful again. Now, while that may sound extreme; seasonal depression is very real and it affects many people over the course of winter time. While this Boston winter wasn't the snowiest or the coldest, it felt like it lasted forever. Literally, we had a snow storm on April 1 (no joke) so getting back into the swing of living a happier life with mentally healthier lifestyle choices has had its challenges for all of us thus far in 2017. Now that spring appears to have arrived (the sun it out!) for now, its really important to prioritize getting out and being active, and partipating in self-care activies that not only bring you joy but renew your energy for the upcoming year, which most of us can sometimes have stalled given challenging weather conditions which can often affect our motivation. The best thing you can do is create small achievable goals for yourself; once a week, get out and get moving, in any activity of your choice that you enjoy!

Go for the walk. Take a weekend trip. Visit a museum or outdoor garden. Check out free events taking place in your area and try to be outside; the sunshine will literally make you feel better, even if its just for 30 minutes. Self-care is always important, but now that we have the weather more on our side this creates more opportunies to take care of ourselves and cleanse our minds of all the winter challeges we faced, and being able to start fresh as spring is finally here. 

The Importance of Self-Care

This may or may not seem obvious, however, for the majority of people when life gets busy or stressful, the time they take for themselves is unfortunately the first thing that goes out the window. Why does this happen? We need fuel to run our engine, so to speak, so why is it when we are over scheduled or running on empty we neglect to fuel our tank? I'll quit it with the fuel to tank analogy, however, I use it to explain this point that we often overwork ourselves way past capacity and somehow don't feel we have enough time in the week to perform self-care tasks. 

Whether you are a full time student or working full time at your job, we more often than not have some sort of schedule that we need to adhere to. We schedule in our 9-5 job, our classes, personal commitments, social outings, family responsibilities, or anything else that could be considered a task to complete related to others. After all of these thing that make up our lives, we leave little to no room for personal time to ourselves. Some may prefer it that way, to be constantly surrounded by responsibilities or others, and there isn't anything wrong with that per se', however, if it is somehow detrimental to your daily functioning then a line needs to be drawn.

Self-care can really be anything and is so loosely defined. It's very person specific, we all have different things that we enjoy doing to relax, calm ourselves, or to take a break from reality (from everything) and take a breath. We live in a busy world and are constantly inundated with information, technology, and the busyness of people while maneuvering interpersonal relationships, that sometimes the most important relationship we need to manage gets left behind; the relationship we have with ourselves. 

The amount of time you take for self-care can be as little or as much as you need. Whether its 20-30 minutes a week where you take a break, shut off your phone, and allow yourself to focus on your own thoughts and what is going on directly around you, or taking a long weekend from school or work to have a stay-cation or a trip somewhere can be very helpful for a person's self-care. Daily tasks even if they are just 5-10 minutes of mindful moments or listening to a song can do so much more than they are given credit for. 

As much as we prioritize all the things that make up our lives outside of ourselves (work, school, family, relationships), we need to make these changes to be sure we are prioritizing ourselves in the mix of all of these things. If we can't take care of ourselves, it will be that much more of a challenge to take care of others. So, be selfish, turn the phone off for a bit, take a long weekend and make it all about you. Give yourself that, for once!