How To Reset Your Life
Did you know that with Saturday, there will only be a hundred days left for 2018! 100! If you are anything like me, I’m sure you are probably freaking out about how soon the year is ending. Or if you are very much like me, you probably also have your birthday in the last quarter of the year and you are freaking out about your age as well. Sometimes the freaking out gets the better of you and you go “OH GOD! I WISH I COULD HIT THE RESET BUTTON!”
This would be amazing, but unfortunately, we can’t. What we can do, however, is have a day to feel refreshed from the inside out, so that we can feel like a new person. To clear out the old stuff and get rid of the energy that won’t align with who we aimed to be by the end of the year, or to prepare ourselves to go enter 2019 with a fresh perspective. I used to do the following activities every Sunday when I was in my 9-5, now I do it about once every month or two. The point is to center yourself, do some things that can clear some negativity, and find the positives to feel a little more satisfied with your life. Here we go!
Step 1. Environmental
• Clean: Clean and organize your space. If you don’t have the time to clean your entire house, clear the space you spend the most of your time in, like the bedroom or your home office or your living room. Get rid of dust especially! Nothing is peskier and more negative to the mind than dust.
• If all that is a bit much, or you lack the time, clean something that you use every day. Example, your makeup brushes. You can’t hit a hard reset in your life, but you can have clean makeup brushes tomorrow morning when you do your makeup so that it doesn’t feel like you are in the same rut of makeup loaded brushes. You know that irk you feel every morning when you would look at the makeup loaded brushes and go “Ugh. I really need to get my shit together”? For that.
Step 2. Physical
• Exercise: Get some exercise, some yoga, go for a walk or some simple stretching at the very least. An hour would be optimal but if that’s hard, go for 15 minutes. I’m sure you have heard plenty about the positives of exercise, and if you still need more explanation or motivation, here it is: “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t kill their husbands. They just don’t.”
• Mask: This might seem a little trivial. It might even be the last thing you want to do when you feel pretty down, but I promise you, it’s helpful! Work from the outside in! I love to do this mask, as it feels like a hard reset for my face from all the makeup and pollutants that would be clogging it. Throw in a hair mask if you can!
• Shower: Take a nice long shower. Have a small jar of bath soak, or exfoliator or some nice smelling hotel soap just to feel a little luxurious, to have a little aromatherapy, and to make the shower feel different from the shower you take on other days. Take the time to be more mindful as you cleanse yourself. If you meditate, imagine washing a specific source of stress or worry away during your shower.
Step 3. Mental (also emotional and spiritual)
Now that the space you live in is refreshed and clean, and you are squeaky clean and refreshed, time to get rid of the junk in your mental space! Any of the following would be good, but if you can squeeze in all 3, that would be amazing too.
• Journal: I love to journal because it creates a physical distance between me and my problems. Writing them down feels like I’ve emptied my mind of all the clutter, and I feel a little better. You can even write something that was bothering you since 1999. The point is to get the incident out of your system, rather than to be reminded of it ever so often and ruminate about it.
• Meditation: This is simple, there has been plenty of research on what meditation does for your heart, your blood pressure, your mind, and your overall wellbeing. If sitting in a space and observing your breathing is too intimidating, have a seat and do the following. For the next 5 minutes, focus on the things you can see – the texture of the walls, the paint colour, etc. When that’s done, focus on the sounds you can hear. If an external thought pops in, like, “I can’t believe I have to go to work and see my boss tomorrow”, acknowledge it, and let it pass. Don’t let it grow by thinking why that would be sucky. When you have focused on the sounds, repeat with all your other senses – taste, smell, and feel. Meditation is a vacation for the mind.
• Detox your social media: So many of us chase curated images as the idea of happiness but what that actually does is to disrupt our sense of satisfaction with our own lives. Unfollow content that doesn’t agree with who you want to be, or if it makes you feel inferior. If you’re obliged to follow someone unpleasant because of circumstances (like a boss, or a relative), mute them!
Now that you have done all this, it would be good to try to maintain that freshness by doing some positive things, to feel a little motivated and inspired. A good way to do this, and the way I do this, again, would be to journal. Preferably in a different journal from the journal you just unloaded on, so that you can separate the emotions. In this case, if you are re-evaluating your 2018, take some time to jot down incidents and experiences that brought you happiness, that you are grateful for, that initially seemed, or were in fact, unpleasant but gave you some lessons or insight about yourself. Jot down the things you have done that you couldn’t have imagined yourself doing 5, 2, or even a year ago. Take a minute to read them back and acknowledge the growth in you. Sometimes you don’t have to look externally for inspiration, you just have to look within. If you want to, you can even set some goals for the upcoming quarter! You can take a look at this post for some inspiration on goals that you can squeeze in for such a short period of time! You can also find a feel-good movie, a book, or a TV show, so that you can have a little bit of escapism, and a little bit of positivity. And that’s it! This is how I used to “reset” my life, it has always worked for me, and I hope it gives you some ideas as well. If you have more suggestions, please do leave it in the comments below, so that we can all give it a shot! Until next time!
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