During the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve struggled with tech-life balance. That means I was overusing technology … spending way too much time online looking at my smartphone, tablet, and laptop screens. My eyes, ears, and mind consumed an incredible amount of information and news. It all overwhelmed me. It cost me sleep. It disturbed my normal zen attitude.
In May, I realized I needed to transform my relationship with social media and technology. So I took a summer vacation from social media. When I returned in September, I decided I needed digital wellness support for my own well-being. I also wanted to get more digital wellness training to strengthen the mindful technology work I do through the Thriving Mindfully Academy.
I found support and training in the Digital Wellness Collective‘s Digital Wellness Institute (DWI) Fall 2020 Certificate Training Program. It was exactly what I needed! Today, I completed the program and have become a certified digital wellness educator. Learn more about the program here.
Special thanks to the Nina Hersher, Amy Blankson, Shaunelle Curry, the DWI faculty, DWC team, and my fellow DWI Fall 2020 classmates!
Tonight, head over to Black Doctor’s Facebook Live at 6 p.m. ET for The Doctor Is In conversation on opting into self-care for 2021. I am talking with Dr. Monique Gary and Ricki Fairley of TOUCH The Black Breast Cancer Alliance. Go here to watch tonight’s Black Doctor’s Facebook Live.
Need more help opting into self-care? Sign up for the Thriving Mindfully Academy’s Come Home to Yourself Retreat on December 20th (option #1) or December 27th (option #2).
Birthdays are some of my favorite celebrations. I love mine so much that I celebrate it monthly. I use my monthly birthday to slow down, reflect on, and celebrate my small. medium, and big wins. This year, I used many of my monthly birthdays as a personal retreat due to my emotional struggles with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on my life, career, and business.
During my personal retreats, I looked at my full self in a mirror and came face-to-face with my vulnerabilities, challenges, wins, and losses. As a result, I gained new insights, brainstormed innovative solutions, participated in women’s healing circles, read inspirational books and magazines, and spent more time walking in nature. I also decided to change my pescatarian diet to a vegan diet, get more sleep, seek support from a therapist, join a virtual meditation community, deepen my study and practice of digital wellness, and move my body with more dance, Barre 3, yoga, walking, and bike riding. All of these efforts helped me set intentions and create shifts in how I choose to show up in my life, relationships, and career. They prepared me to walk into my fantabulous 56th year later this month and 2021 with a new mantra and intention: SOAR.
The best thing about a personal retreat is you get to choose how long it will last and what you will focus on. Over the past several years, I have used several formats for my personal retreats. Here are several examples.
A week: one to three hours per day starting on a Sunday and ending on a Saturday)
A three-day weekend: several hours per day beginning on Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday
A full-day: two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, and one hour in the evening
A half-day: two or three hours
What changes occurred in your life and career this year?
Have you embraced or resisted the changes?
Do you need a personal retreat before 2020 ends?
Do you need help getting started on your personal retreat?
Join me for the Thriving Mindfully Academy’s Come Home to Yourself Retreat on December 20th or December 27th from 2-4:30 p.m. ET via Zoom.
The Come Home to Yourself Retreat will be offered twice. You can choose to attend the virtual retreat on December 20th or December 27th.Consider giving the Come Home to Yourself Retreat as a holiday gift to your loved ones, friends, and colleagues. Register here for the December 20th retreat. Go here for the December 27th retreat.
During the virtual retreat, you will:
Practice mindful self-care with deep breathing, meditation, affirmations, and gentle chair yoga
Reflect on and journal about who you have been and the lessons you learned in 2020
Identify who or what’s been getting in your way in 2020
Release and practice forgiveness
Explore who you want to be and how you want to show up in 2021
Set intentions and identify the resources, action steps, and accountability support you need to manifest the person you want to be in 2021
Create a self-celebration plan to appreciate your small, medium, and big wins in 2021
A Zoom video link will be emailed to you once you register for the online retreat.
If you need more support with a personal retreat, join me for the Come Home to Yourself Retreat on December 20th or December 27th at 2-4:30 p.m. via Zoom. Use the links below to purchase tickets. Feel free to get holiday gift tickets for colleagues, family, and friends.
In times of great change, I have often engaged in an internal boxing match where I resist and struggle with accepting my normal life has been altered. That struggle is a boxing match I always lose. Why? Because change is inevitable. It’s always going to happen. In 2016, I gave a talk on how I used mindfulness to embrace change in the midst of career reinvention at the Nonprofit Technology Network’s annual conference in San Jose, California.
During my talk, I shared the four lessons I learned:
Lesson #1: Ask for help.
Lesson #2: Take great care of yourself.
Lesson #3: Be a lifelong learner.
Lesson #4: Be open to possibilities.
This year, I almost forgot these lessons as I struggled to deal with changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, social justice movements, economic instability, fake news, politics, and the national and local elections. I tried to ignore the changes by filling my time with serving others through the Thriving Mindfully Academy. That strategy lasted for about three months until I realized I was burning out in May. So I stepped back from many of my obligations, took a social media summer vacation, and changed the way I practiced self-care. I began giving myself more time and space for do-it yourself (DIY) personal retreats. My DIY personal retreats helped me recharge, reflect, and reconnect with my authentic self.
During my personal retreats, I looked at my full self in a mirror and came face-to-face with my vulnerabilities, challenges, wins, and losses. As a result, I gained new insights, brainstormed innovative solutions, participated in women’s healing circles, read inspirational books and magazines, and spent more time walking in nature. I also decided to change my pescatarian diet to a vegan diet, get more sleep, seek support from a therapist, join a virtual meditation community, deepen my study and practice of digital wellness, and move my body with more dance, Barre 3, yoga, walking, and bike riding. All of these efforts helped me set intentions and create shifts in how I choose to show up in my life, relationships, and career.
More on personal retreats …
The best thing about a personal retreat is you get to choose how long it will last and what you will focus on. Over the past several years, I have used several formats for my personal retreats. Here are several examples.
A week: one to three hours per day starting on a Sunday and ending on a Saturday)
A three-day weekend: several hours per day beginning on Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday
A full-day: two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, and one hour in the evening
A half-day: two or three hours
What changes occurred in your life and career this year?
Have you embraced or resisted the changes?
Do you need a personal retreat before 2020 ends?
Do you need help getting started on your personal retreat?
Join me for the Thriving Mindfully Academy’s Come Home to Yourself Retreat on December 20th or December 27th from 2-4:30 p.m. ET via Zoom.
The Come Home to Yourself Retreat will be offered twice. You can choose to attend the virtual retreat on December 20th or December 27th.Consider giving the Come Home to Yourself Retreat as a holiday gift to your loved ones, friends, and colleagues. Register here for the December 20th retreat. Go here for the December 27th retreat.
During the virtual retreat, you will:
Practice mindful self-care with deep breathing, meditation, affirmations, and gentle chair yoga
Reflect on and journal about who you have been and the lessons you learned in 2020
Identify who or what’s been getting in your way in 2020
Release and practice forgiveness
Explore who you want to be and how you want to show up in 2021
Set intentions and identify the resources, action steps, and accountability support you need to manifest the person you want to be in 2021
Create a self-celebration plan to appreciate your small, medium, and big wins in 2021
A Zoom video link will be emailed to you once you register for the online retreat.
The COVID-19 global pandemic has changed how we connect with each other and our holiday celebrations. Many of us are unable to see, touch, and show affection towards our loved ones in person. Most of us have to follow mask and social distancing guidelines when we spend time with them. Living this way has left so many of us starving for physical touch.
Physical touch is a basic human need. Going without it for long periods can impact our emotional, mental, and physical well-being. Giving ourselves daily hugs is one mindful self-care practice we can use to strengthen our well-being.
Hugging yourself is a FREE self-care practice that requires less than five minutes of your time. It offers you an opportunity to practice loving kindness and strengthen your resiliency. A self-hug is also available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. All you have to do is decide and set an intention to give yourself a hug or hugs on a daily basis. Once you set your intention, take action and watch how your self-hugs turn into acts of self-love and self-empowerment.
Did you know that when you hug yourself, your body releases the hormone, oxytocin, the “love hormone”? Oxytocin helps reduce stress and tension by lowering cortisol (stress hormone) levels in the body. It also lowers blood pressure, slows the heart rate, and improves moods.
Hugging yourself for 20 seconds or more is a serotonin booster. Serotonin is known as the “feel good” hormone that is produced and spread by neurons in the brain. It helps you feel happy, calm, and confident.
Consider following the advice of family therapist Virginia Satir who is famous for saying,“We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.”
In an effort to help you navigate the 2020 COVID-19 holiday season, theThriving Mindfully Academy has created the Self-Hug Challenge. It is rooted in our HUG3 self-care practice. HUG3 is an acronym that stands for:
H: Hold space for yourself with
U: Unconditional Love
G3: Grace, Growth, and Gratitude
May it inspire you to take better care of yourself with a daily hug!
Self-Hug Challenge Tips: To help you get started with the Self-Hug Challenge, we have included tips to support you.
30-Day Self-Hugs: Try 1 hug for 20 seconds per day. Consider giving yourself a hug in the morning before you get out of bed. If the morning doesn’t work, take a mid-day hug break or end your day with a hug before you go to sleep.
60-Day Self-Hugs: Try 4 or more hugs that last 1 minute or more per day. Notice how the increase in hugs makes you feel. If it feels good, add more hugs to your day.
90-Day Self-Hugs: Make hugging a self-care maintenance practice with 8 or more hugs per day.
120-Day Self-Hugs: Take your hug life to the next level of growth with 12 or more hugs per day.
I think we all need to slow down and celebrate World Kindness Day on November 13th given everything that has happened to us in 2020. World Kindness Day has become one of my favorite days to recommit to my loving kindness practices. It was launched in 1998 by the World Kindness Movement, a coalition of nations’ kindness nongovernmental organizations to highlight good deeds in the community that focus on the positive power of making kindness the norm and bringing people together to celebrate our common humanity.
I believe kindness starts in our hearts with an understanding and acceptance that we deserve it. When we claim and accept our own kindness and treat ourselves with gentleness, nonjudgment, patience, and tolerance FIRST, we strengthen our ability to be kind to our loved ones and others. That’s what I call taking a step in the direction of kindness!
May we all be inspired on World Kindness Day to take a step in the direction of kindness. May the Thriving Mindfully Academy’s Loving Kindness Month resources below help you in your kindness journey.
Yesterday, I cried when I heard the U.S. Election 2020 news that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won. My tears were intense and filled with deep gratitude and relief. I rode my bike down to Black Lives Matter Plaza to celebrate with the DC community. Seeing the diverse group of people celebrate and being a part of that celebration filled my heart with unspeakable joy and left me speechless. Check out my photo slideshow.
My tears and emotions were a wake up call. They reminded me of the heaviness I have been carrying during the Election 2020 season. So I decided to do an Election 2020 Self-Care Check-In this week that focuses on loving kindness practices to nourish myself.
This morning, I slowed down with some deep breaths and became still as I reflected on how tough the Election 2020 season has been. I recognized I have experienced many moments of stress and anxiety. My stress and anxiety have been caused by worrying about what is happening to BIPOC, LGBTQ, elderly, and disabled communities. I have overdosed on way too much news and social media. I lost sleep being concerned about the impact of COVID-19 on everyone’s spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical health; relationships; finances; and jobs. Worrying about police brutality against BIPOC communities and the safety, security, and education of myself, family, friends, students, teachers, and frontline, healthcare, and service industry workers has also concerned me.
My inner critic Broomie (a nickname for Broomhilda) wants me to get over it and woman up. Broomie judges me harshly at times. She tries to shame me too. Today, I had a heart-to-heart with her. I told her I was womaning up by nurturing myself with loving kindness practices this week, the rest of November which is Loving Kindness Month, December, and 2021!
Loving kindness is the act of befriending yourself with gentleness and nonjudgment in all you feel, think, say, and do. We all deserve it. It is one of the best ways to practice self-care. Go here to learn more about it and Loving Kindness Month.
If you have experienced stress, anxiety, fear, and/or trauma as a result of the Election 2020 season, COVID-19, police brutality, racial injustice, or economic instability, I invite you to use this week and the rest of the month to focus on practicing self-care with loving kindness for yourself. Use the resources below.
RESOURCES
Loving Kindness Practices for Self
Start and/or end your day with a loving kindness moment. All you need are a few minutes (1-5 minutes; take more time if you want to). Begin with three to seven deep breaths. Allow yourself to become still as you breathe. Notice how your body feels. Pay attention to any physical sensations. Become aware of your breath. Observe any sounds and smells around you. Shift your attention to any thoughts in the mind. Just witness the thoughts. Don’t try to push them away or address them. Continue to breathe at your body’s natural rhythm. Start with an intention such as “my intention is to open my heart and offer myself loving kindness.” Use the Loving Kindness Month affirmation and practice above.
MEDITATION CLASS ON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9TH AT 7-7:30 PM ET VIA ZOOM
2020 has been a year like no other. So many things have happened to us as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic instability, divisive politics, fake news, and the constant acts of injustice, oppression, and violence against indigenous and people of color, women, children, the elderly, the disabled, and LGBTQ communities. In an effort to provide support to everyone, I am using the Thriving Mindfully Academy’s platform to launch Loving Kindness Month this month to remind us all of the power we have to slow down and take better care of ourselves with gentleness and nonjudgment.
Hi Friends! I am taking a summer self-care social media break. I’ll return on Sept 8th. In the meantime, sign up for my email updates (will send several this summer).
Ananda Leeke 