Start Your Day With You

The majority of healthcare workers I've assisted over the years have one thing in common, connecting with and caring for patients is what brought them into the profession. However, this deep caring often leaves less for oneself. In order to remain resilient and limit potentially negative consequences such as emotional exhaustion, we need to take better moments for ourselves.

It is important to set aside time in the morning to begin to build the habit of starting the day with yourself. Many cultural and religious traditions have historically done this but we now have the science to support why. There are a number of reasons I suggest people (especially those in healthcare) have a morning ritual focused on themselves:

1. We can ask how we're doing today
2. This leads us to ask how we need to best take care of ourselves today
3. When we start each day checking in with our physical self, emotional self, and thinking self we are better prepared to respond to what the day brings us in a more thoughtful way.

Self-awareness

Self-awareness is the ability to identify your own thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and physiology. Increasing your self-awareness is the first essential step in building resiliency. Most importantly, the goal is to develop a better understanding of what your needs are in any given moment.

Today's Challenge:

Name 1-3 moments throughout your day that you choose distraction instead of being with yourself.

Think about what a brief plan might be on how to replace these with just being more present either:

• Outwardly
• With yourself
• With others

Noticing Your Self

After you increase your ability to be present with the outside world, we can begin to move inward. There are three different components of self that we'll need to develop a better relationship with.

• Your Physical Self
• Your Emotional Self
• Your Thinking Self

Try to develop a practice this week of taking time (if only a minute) to get in the habit of noticing one of these, and ultimately all of these.

Noticing Your Physical Self

Our bodies and internal physical world hold a wealth of untapped information. This is one of the most important takeaways from this course. It's also often the most uncomfortable for many. Developing the ability to scan our body and internal experience is essential for deepening your resiliency. For today, we're just noticing.

Download: Appendix Sensations PDF (PDF)

Noticing Your Emotional Self

First, let's get rid of the assumption that we are only feeling one emotion at a time. It's important to sit with ourselves to better uncover the variety, sometimes conflicting, emotions we can be experiencing in any given moment. By starting the day reviewing our emotions, we can better understand what our needs and capacity for that day might be. For today, we're just noticing.

Download: Appendix Emotions PDF (PDF)

Noticing Your Thinking Self

When most people think of mindfulness, tracking our thoughts. It's important to not only be able to notice our thoughts but to understand the quality and themes in these. For today, we're just noticing.

Extended Activity for Today

Think about 3 times during your workday to pause for 1-2 minutes and review each of the following:

• Physical Self
• Emotional Self
• Thinking Self

Often setting a reminder on a calendar is very helpful. I might encourage you to have that be the same time for each the rest of this week. Maybe further.

Turn to your workbook to further outline the specifics of this plan.

To Take a Deeper Dive

This is far from the definitive book written on mediation. However, what this does offer is its accessibility. This was written by the founder of Headspace, Andy Puddicome, a meditation app and pairs well with use of the app. If you feel like an outsider or in any way intimidated regarding meditation, this read won't make you feel bad about it and is there to help overcome that.

View this book on Amazon

Download: Session 2 (PDF)