Beat the blues: self-care challenge & gift guide

Hello there! As I type this, I am at home with a newborn and am trying to include some more self-care into my days myself! More generally, the winter months can feel a bit sad with their darker days. People can also find this season a bit overwhelming, between the run-up to Christmas and sometimes the disappointment of the New Year and/or Valentines Day not being as sparkly or magical as expected.

But fear not! Winter is a great time to look inward and give yourself a little love. This isn’t a waste of time or selfish at all, as when you’re happier and well-rested, you’ll also show up better for everyone and everything in your life! If you’re in the southern hemisphere, or reading this at another time of year, the self-care ideas I share would still work with a little tweaking on your part.

Beat the blues self-care challenge

Right, so how do we look inward and make our lives just that little bit more joyful and easier for ourselves? One way of doing this is by practicing mindfulness and focusing our five senses. You can ask yourself:

Each of these senses has activities associated with it. When you join the challenge, you’ll receive three suggested self-care activities per sense. Here’s the tricky part: only pick one activity at a time! Do it for a week, then see if you want to keep going. Each sense in turn will be the focus of a week of the challenge:

• Sight: week beginning on the 3rd of February.
• Hearing: week beginning on the 10th of February.
• Smell: week beginning on the 17th of February.
• Taste: week beginning on the 24th of February.
• Touch: week beginning on the 2nd of March.

Only once you reach the end of the challenge, can you go back through it and try another self-care activity for each sense.

How to take part in the challenge

If the questions above seem a bit strange and you are not sure where to start, please join me on a self-care journey this winter by signing up here. Every week you’ll receive prompts to explore caring for yourself by focusing on one of the senses. I’ll send you three simple and easily-applicable self-care activities to choose from.

If you’re already receiving my emails (with my blog posts and monthly emails), no need to do anything, you’ll be getting these self-care ideas in your inbox! If not, do sign up here and as a bonus you’ll get my free eight step guide to making time for what’s important… I would argue that taking care of yourself definitely is important!

What to do after the beat the blues challenge has ended

While February is a great month to focus on self-love and following the challenge “live” is a great way to transition from winter into spring, it is also totally possible to do these self-care activities at another time of year! Here you can get all the activities bundled together here after the live challenge is over!

If you’ve completed the challenge: maybe treat yourself to something nice from the ideas below!

Self-care gift ideas

Now, you don’t need to spend any money to take better care of yourself (or others). However, I’ve been inspired by the No Meat Athlete “Wellness Over Things” campaign. Their idea is to go against the clutter that often comes with gift-giving and rather gift things like subscriptions to meditation apps or memberships to yoga studios.

My take on it is that if you are going to buy gifts (including for yourself), you might as well get something that increases the recipient’s health and wellbeing. Here are my ideas of what you could buy for yourself or your loved ones, which would also tie in well with the ideas in the Beat the blues self-care challenge:

1 – Sunrise/sunset lamp
2 – One-sentence journal
3 – Daylight and mood lamp
4 – iPod Nano
5 – Shea sugar body scrub
6 – Essential oils diffuser
7 – Lavender massage oil
8 – Yoga mat
9 – Water bottle
10 – Slipper socks

(Note: some of those are affiliate links, which means that if you make a purchase, I may get a commission at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!)

Some of those would work well as alternatives to flowers and chocolates for that special someone on Valentine’s Day (or any day!) – not that there’s anything wrong with flowers and chocolates!

Right, what are you waiting for? Join us here and start filling your cup so you can pour out to others!

xxx

Jessica

Together, let’s:
😊 Find joy in the everyday;
✨ Reach our goals;
🌱 Make the world a better place!