Motivation Monday: Values

One of the key components of happiness is living within your values. The first step is understanding what are the values you hold most important at this time of life. The link provided (https://www.actmindfully.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Values_Checklist_-_Russ_Harris.pdf ) is a list of values you can look through to identify which values are the most important for you.

Once you identify the most important values for yourself, the next step is to identify how you can incorporate them more into your life. Below is an example to help you get started:

VALUES WITH EXAMPLES:

• ADVENTURE: You can incorporate more adventure into your life by trying a new hobby, crossing things off your bucket list, trying new activities, etc. Make it a point to try out a new adventure every season!

• GRATITUDE: This can be incorporated by recognizing the things in your life that you feel are going good. An exercise I like to do with gratitude is asking myself these questions at the end of the day:

  • What is a positive from today?

  • What is something I am looking forward to?

  • What is something I like about myself?

  • What is something that I am proud of myself for?

  • What is something that I am grateful for?

    *For this exercise, you don’t have to come up with monumental things. It can be very simple!

• INDUSTRY: With this value, I like to make it a point to look at what I am doing for my career. I like to focus on acknowledging the education I am engaging in, the research of different interventions, the productivity of doing my notes and billing…

I encourage you to take a look at the list of values. Journal about the values you identify as the most important to you and the ways you can implement them more in your life!

Motivation Monday: Hobbies

I consider my hobby being a hobby jumper. I love trying out new hobbies and seeing what does and does not keep my interest. Hobbies are great for getting us out of our routines and getting us engaged. Being active in a hobby can help reduce stress, inspire creativity, get us more socialization, and boost self-confidence.

The most recent hobbies I have tried the past 2 years have been learning to speak Russian (tried and failed lol), embroidery, learning ASL, reading, making pottery, gardening, redecorating my house, making friendship bracelets and creating this short series blog.

Here are some other ideas of hobbies you might be interested in:

• Joining a sport (like Pickelball)

• Joining a book club

• Painting/drawing

• Learning an instrument

• Cooking or Baking

• Volunteering

• Dancing

What are some hobbies you would like to try?

Motivation Monday: Self-Reflection

A great way to work on improving your mental health is by self-reflecting. Looking at what you like/love about yourself can be a great motivator and help boost your mental health. Often times, we tend to focus on the things we feel we lack or are not doing correctly. By putting focus on what we like about ourselves, it not only helps promote positive thinking but it also brings acknowledgment to what you feel you are doing well. So the first task I recommend for this self-reflection exercise is the following:

• I am (insert positive characteristic) because (reason).

  Example: I am reliable because I follow through on what I promise.

*I recommend googling a list of positive characteristics to choose from.

The second part of this reflection can be to look at what you want to improve on. Doing this can help foster confidence by actively working on things we are insecure about and wanting to improve on. This can be shown by the following example:

• I want to increase my (insert positive characteristic) by (how you will work on positive characteristic).

  Example: I want to increase my productiveness by making a schedule and sticking to it.

I recommend doing this as a check in at least once a month to help boost confidence and reassurance. Good luck!

Motivation Monday: Gardening

Mixture of different types of tomatoes, flowers, lettuce and lemon balm

I love trying out new hobbies. Hobbies can help increase our interest in our every day lives and can promote happiness and enjoyment. For this month, I decided to try gardening. Have I ever kept a plant alive? No. Did I go buy a raised garden bed and plant a bunch of plants anyway? Yes.

Below is why this can be beneficial for my (and your) mental health:

• For starters, it gets you time outside. Whether you live in an apartment and are starting off with one plant or you have a backyard where you can plant several, it gets you outside in the sun. Being in the sun can be helpful for our mental health because you get Vitamin D which can help your physical health but it can also boost your serotonin levels (can boost your mood and increase feelings of calmness and focus).

• Gardening can give you something safe to focus on and help split your focus from things that might be stressing you out or making you feel sad. If you are new to gardening, it can also give you something new to look forward to and can help you feel like you are accomplishing something.

• If your gardening is successful, then you also get to enjoy what you planted. For me, I planted a mixture of flowers and vegetables. The lettuce I planted is already starting to grow which I am very excited about! If your gardening is not successful, it can promote you to think of ways to make it successful which in turn can also motivate you to think of other ideas for your mental health.

Good luck with your gardening endeavors and stay tuned for more posts on different things you can try to improve your mental health.