A Week of Mental Health Challenge

Do you ever feel completely run-down, stressed, overwhelmed with emotions? That's been me over the past month. I've found myself in a terrible mood and unmotivated towards any sort of activities that would usually stimulate me. My acne has gotten really bad and without much school work I have been staying up much too late for things that don't matter. After the past 31 days of this, I've had enough. 

In this first week of February I am challenging myself to a week where I treat myself like the queen I know I am. The first order of business was a bit of retail therapy. 

1. I've ordered 3 books by my favorite "queen" Eleanor Roosevelt on Amazon and have my copy of Gloria Steinem's "Life on the Road" coming in the mail tomorrow. I hope that reading these women that I admire will help me to feel empowered myself. 
2. In the past when I had these times when I felt this way I used a gratitude journal to help focus on the positives rather than the negatives in my life. If you know me than you know one of my mottos is every negative is a chance to grow. This journal is structured with 2 sections per page with room for the date. It makes the area large enough to challenge me too fill it but not too big that I'm stretching things just to fill the space for the day. Sometimes we just have a bad day and making it through that is enough to be thankful for on its own.
3. "Dance as though no one is watching. Love as though you've never been hurt. Sing as though no one can hear you. Love as though heaven is on earth." This is what is across the front of what I am going to call my "little black book." I chose a second journal to buy for extra thoughts and emotions I felt I needed to write down.
4. An adult coloring book filled with places around the world and some new colored pencils. 
5. A charcoal facemask, which I need to go wash off right now as I write this. Thumsb up by the way to Yes to Tomatos for their afforable and equally as effective charcoal mask.  

Now here's where all of these things come into play, my daily routine. I'm a firm believer in sleep and that's the stem of all this. On a general day I get home from school around 4:30 and my goal now is to be in bed to go to sleep by 9. That gives me a solid four and a half hours of "free time" which right now looks a lot like get in bed, social media for a while, nap for 2 hours, eat dinner, do a little homework, social media some more, shower, social media, put down phone, pick it back up and repeat until it's too late for my liking. I'm sick of it. 

Here's the new plan for my week of mental health:

1. Get home
2. Eat a healthy snack or smoothie
3. Work-out for at least 20 minutes
4. Do homework
5. Shower/dinner time
6. Free time for Netflix, social media, or YouTube until 8 p.m.
7. At 8 p.m. set alaram and plug in phone (and all other technology) for the night not to be touched until the morning.
8. After all technology is away take the hour to enjoy soothing music, color, write in gratitude and regular journal, and/or read. 
9. At 9 p.m. lights out.
10. Wake-up in the morning feeling well rested. 

I don't think this is going to be something easy for me but I am fully committed to this in order to improve my quality of living which seems to be lacking at this point. Come back tomorrow to see how my first day went.

XOXO

Gretchen