Happy festivities. I hope your intentions for December are materialising. It can be a super intense part of the year, where people feel tired out, low because of the weather, and burning the candle at both ends with parties and celebrations a-plenty. So my first note this week is a reminder to self-care. Remember to have an early night at some point, re-charge your batteries if and where possible.
Now, onto the snowballs…
I have realised, that when I feel a little down about something, perhaps a piece of work that isn’t going so well, or I’ve got an injury and can’t move about very easily, or my cat is a bit down in the dumps, I very quickly start to think that everything is going wrong.
I catastrophize. I let that one negative feeling permeate my whole existence for a while. I connect to a challenging feeling relating to one small area of my life, and then see everything else from that place of heaviness.
I caught myself doing this recently, and in response, I decided to give myself some perspective. ‘The down feeling is just related to this one thing, Hannah, everything else is solid’, I slightly embarrassingly said out loud (not uncommon for me if I’m really honest!) and hearing it back, reinforced the message. I remembered that this one challenging thing was just one challenging thing, and so prevented myself thinking the whole world was going to end.
I know I’m not alone in this experience, it’s a common human trait and one that can leave many of us feeling low, unenergised or unmotivated. Simply naming what’s going on for yourself, and reminding yourself that there are still other good things going on in your life, can really help to shift the way you feel.
We don’t need to let the one negative feeling snowball and transcend across everything, we can acknowledge it, and keep it the size it should be.
With love as ever, Hannah and Team Bird
Ps. This will be our final blog of the year, we’ll be back in your inbox on 2nd January 2020!
Pps. We are fully booked for January but if you’d like to discuss resilience workshops or coaching for your staff from February onwards please get in touch.
Photo by Courtney Chestnut on Unsplash