I had a virtual appointment with my doctor today (yay, global pandemic, but on the other hand, yay not having to travel to the office) and he confirmed that a lot of people are feeling extra stress right now due to the various effects of the pandemic.
No surprise there. I am one of those people and have been experiencing a lot more stress over the last few months. My doctor advised me that to stay stress-free and healthy, that it was important to keep the following five “tanks” full or as close to full as possible:
- Exercise (4)
- Diet regime (5)
- Sleep hygiene (6)
- Social relationships (6)
- Hobbies (3)
I have offered a number beside each tank to indicate how full they are, with 0 being empty and 10 being full to overflowing.
As you can see, there are no 10s. I’m averaging what would be the grade equivalent of a C or D. This is not optimal. It is bad.
My doctor suggested focusing on a few to start, setting goals for improving each, and making the goals at least 70% achievable. This means starting out with something I think I can reasonably complete, and if I can’t, I simply scale back until I can. Easy peasy-ish.
Since I’ve all but stopped running, I’m going to start there and try sticking to my previous goal of 30 minutes of exercise per day while also insuring that three of those days are runs outside (or on the treadmill if it’s snowing/raining molten rock).
The next I’m going to improve is the one I’m doing right now–writing! But more of a fictional variety. I also have a few drawing ideas I want to pursue and now is a good time to set modest goals to pursue them.
We’ll see how it goes. I have a lot of room for improvement, but I have challenged myself to complete seemingly impossible tasks in the past and succeeded.
Next post: Discussing the other three tanks and my success or lack thereof in keeping them full.