Wellness is a pretty popular topic these days.

What does wellness mean to you?

Ever wondered how wellness is connected to mindfulness and self-care?

At the Thriving Mindfully Academy, we believe wellness is your permission slip for creating your own health insurance plan because the choices you make and actions you take today can help insure your health tomorrow.

We define wellness as the act of becoming aware of and making healthy choices that support and strengthen your spiritual, emotional, mental, physical, and creative energy and well-being. 

The “becoming aware of” refers to mindfulness and reminds you that mindfulness is your birthright and a practice you can choose to be present to what’s happening inside and outside of ourselves. When you practice mindfulness, you are choosing to notice healthy choices that can create wellness in your life, career, and business. Go here to learn more about mindfulness.

The “making healthy choices” refers to self-care. Self-care is the act of nurturing your spirit, heart, mind, body, breath, and life in ways that uplift you. Self-care practices make wellness come alive in your life, career, and business. They help strengthen and support energy and well-being. Learn more about self-care here.

Digital Wellness & Digital Wellness Month

Digital Wellness is the use of technology in mindful, intentional, and healthy ways. Watch the video and go here to listen to Thriving Mindfully Podcast about digital wellness.

Digital Wellness Month is a new initiative that was created by the Thriving Mindfully Academy in response to the time many people are spending on technology to communicate in their lives, careers, businesses, and communities during COVID-19. It is celebrated in May. The purpose of Digital Wellness Month is to encourage and help people to practice tech life balance with small steps. Go here to listen to the Thriving Mindfully Podcast to learn more about Digital Wellness Month.

Becoming Mindful About Your Tech Use

Get your favorite pen, journal, or a piece of paper. Take a few minutes to answer each of the questions below. They will help you become aware of how you currently use technology. Your responses will help you identify what needs to be included in your Digital Wellness Intention.

Questions 

1. How much time do you currently spend online Monday through Friday and on the weekends?
2. Do you take breaks from using technology?
3. What stresses you out when you are online?
4. Does your body experience tension, tightness, or discomfort while you are online?
5. How do you take care of your body while you are online (the way you sit or stand, screens that protect your eyes, etc.)?
6. Do you sleep with your digital devices on or near your bed?

Being Intentional About Your Tech Use

Digital Wellness becomes a reality in your life, career, and business when you take time to slow down and to create a Digital Wellness Intention, a statement about the way you want to use technology and how you want to feel when you use technology. Use the sample (see below).

Sample Digital Wellness Intention

• I am mindful and intentional about the ways I use technology. I honor my spirit, heart, mind, and body with mindful self-care practices including breathing exercises, meditation, yoga, and mindful movement while I am online and offline. I take breaks, use time boundaries. and unplug to manage my tech consumption. I place my digital devices in my living room or kitchen at the end of the day.  The end result is a healthier me.

Digital Wellness Plan

A digital wellness plan is a gift you give yourself to help manage your time online with mindful self-care practices. You can create plan with the steps below:

• STEP 1 – Create An Intention (use the digital wellness intention above as a sample): Ask yourself how you want to use technology and how you want to feel in your mind, heart, and body when you use technology (remember digital wellness is the use of technology in mindful, intentional healthy ways).
• STEP 2 – Conduct A Tech Assessment: Be honest with yourself about how you are currently using technology and how your mind, heart, and body feel as you use technology. Use the questions mentioned above. Include the number of hours you spend online. Look at how you sit or stand when you are online. Are your eyes, jaw, neck, shoulders, arms, fingers, back, hips, knees, feet, and toes experiencing tension, tightness, discomfort and/or pain when you use use technology? Make a list about what’s getting in the way of your digital wellness and creating tech life balance in your life, career, and business.
• STEP 3 – Craft A Weekly Schedule with A Revised Intention: Use what you learn from your tech assessment in your revised intention. Map out one to three steps you can take to create tech life balance over the next 30, 60 or 90 days. Start small. Identify an accountability partner you can report to each week about your progress. Select a day of the week for reviewing your progress and celebrating your weekly digital wellness wins. Remember you are changing your habits. It takes time. It’s also a process. Be sure to take the Thriving Mindfully Academy’s“Big 5” mindful self-care vitamins of loving kindness, compassion, nonjudgment, patience, and forgiveness as you transform your tech habits. And HAVE FUN!

Tech Life Balance Tips

Mindful self-care practices are the foundation of tech life balance. They encourage to and help you slow down and become aware of how you spend your time online. Use the tips below to identify and take small steps towards having a healthier digital life in the next 30, 60 or 90 days.

• Make Your Breath Your BFF: Before you get out of bed, incorporate breathing exercises into your morning routine by taking 7 deep breaths. Place your hand on your heart as you inhale and exhale through your nose. Do the same thing before you go to bed.
• Enjoy A Mindful Moment: Take 1 deep breath before turning on your digital devices, answering your phone or responding to an email or text.
• Have Fun with A Mindful Movement Break: While you’re working during the day, step away from your digital devices and take a 3-5 minute break to breathe deeply and move your body.
• Take A Mindful Beverage Break: During your work day, take a 5-10 minute break from your digital devices to fix and sip your favorite beverage.
• Give Your Eyes A Screen Break: Leave your digital devices’ screens, unplug, and read a magazine or a book during your evening and/or weekend. Carve out 30 minutes or more for your screen break.
• Release Your Focus on Your Digital Devices When You Talk to People: Be present to people you are talking to (unless you are on a video chat – some of your focus will be on your digital device you are using for the video chat).
• Banish Your Digital Devices from Charging in Your Bedroom: Before you go to sleep at night, charge your digital devices in another room or far away from your bed (for folks with one room in their homes).
• Establish Time Boundaries with Email and Texting: Leave the emails and texting about work alone after you wrap up your work day and on the weekends. Set a time and commit to it. Let your colleagues know your communication preferences. When you have work emergencies that force you to break your digital wellness commitment, forgive yourself and do the best you can to get back on track in the coming days.
• Reduce News Consumption: Become aware of how much news you consume online each day. Notice what happens to your spirit, heart, mind, and body when you consume bad news each day. Make a choice to reduce the amount of time you spend consuming news. Set time boundaries for checking the news. Try slicing your news consumption into one or two news check-ins per day for 5-15 minutes. If you can move to an every other day schedule. Try to unplug during the weekends. See what works best for you as you take time to develop a new way of consuming news and using technology to stay informed in a healthy way.

Thriving Mindfully Podcast

Wanna know more? Go here to listen to the Thriving Mindfully Podcast episode on wellness.

Digital Wellness Month Podcast Interview

Go here to watch the replay video of my May 19th interview on Mindful Techie Tuesday LinkedIn LIVE with hosts, Meico Whitlock, founder of Mindful Techie, and Carlos Gonzalez, founder of CG Media. During the interview, we discussed digital wellness, Digital Wellness Month (May 1-31), and my new “baby”, the Thriving Mindfully Academy.