Life is busy and we are exposed to stress almost all day long, especially during the busiest time of year, Christmas and New Years! So it’s a top priority for me to create space to manage it!
Want to know how I create space and reduce stress? I focus on peaceful evenings to create vibrant mornings. Here are my top tips for creating a peaceful evening routine so I wake up with more energy to own the day!
Exercise
20 – 30 minutes dedicated to moving your body, it can be a walk, run, gym session, yoga, tai chi, dance, anything. After working all day, make time to move your body, create space within your joints to release tension, soreness, and stress.
Cook dinner
Cooking dinner isn’t everyone’s idea of fun, but cooking a healthy meal naturally makes us feel good and makes our bodies feel good too when we eat it. Cook enough so you have lunch for the next day sorted too.
Turn off technology 1 – 2 hours before bed
Use this time to reconnect with yourself and/or your partner, read, stretch, write, take a bath, prep for tomorrow, study. Disconnect from social media, TV or Netflix and savour the silence and peace. This will help your body recognise that it’s getting tired and allows it to start slowing down and prepare for sleep.
Meditate
I use Headspace which is a great app with so many different meditation options. Meditating before bed also promotes the mind to slow down and clear everything from the day. You will also find that you’ll fall asleep during the meditation, which is totally cool too!
Journal
Sometimes this is a 10min exercise for me if I feel too tired to write a lot. If you’re just starting out with journaling, simple is good – these are my go-to prompts, I write 3 things for each:
+ I am grateful for…
+ I am letting go of…
+ I am welcoming in…
Start small when you’re creating a new practice, overwhelming ourselves with trying to do too much and creating a perfect practice will usually have the opposite effect to what we’re trying to achieve. When I first started creating my evening practice, I started with switching off technology 30mins before bed. I noticed that it helped me fall asleep faster, so I pushed it to an hour, then 1.5 hours then 2 hours. It doesn’t happen every night, but now I know how amazing it feels when I do do it, so it encourages me to do it more often.
Starting small is the best thing to do. Be patient with yourself. The goal is to create a bit more space so you can slow down, relax and promote a restful and deep sleep. Which will promote more resilience and more energy to deal with stressful situations and help you stabilise emotions and reactions so you can feel like you’re really owning your day!
Find a non-negotiable
During the two craziest weeks of this year with late night meetings and trying to manage redundancies, I needed to focus on the things that were my saving grace. For me, that’s meditation and getting to sleep on time. If I don’t meditate or I cut into my sleeping hours, I feel the pinch.
Finding a non-negotiable is important. It’s the one thing you know that you can always come back to when the times are tough. It’s also the one thing you will feel less inclined to compromise on because it will always help you feel better, no matter how much time you might be able to spend on it.
It can be getting fresh air, meditating, journaling, going for a walk, it can be anything that promotes giving you space among the stress and busyness of life.
I hope these tips help you create a practice that is right for you and allows you to bring a bit more space into your every day. We don’t realise how little space we have around us until we take notice of how we feel and live and we start to prioritise creating a bit more.
If you’d like to get in touch, please do! I’d love to hear from you. If you have any thoughts, please pop a comment below or flick me a message! You can follow more of my thoughts and tips on Instagram as well 🙂
You can also sign up to my monthly letter here. I share more tips on creating and living a fantastic life through intention, space, and self-care.
Best,
TashTastic xx
This post was originally published on Be More You as a guest post by Tash Pieterse.