096: Getting Started With Your Self-Help Journey

In todays episode Lucy talks about getting started with your self-help journey, including a simple process to help reduce the overwhelm and show you how to get started step by step.

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Getting Started With Your Self-Help Journey

In today’s episode, I’m going to talk about getting started with your self help journey. It can be really hard to know where to start and sometimes it can feel so overwhelming because we’ve heard so many different things from so many different people. Or maybe you’ve heard absolutely nothing at all and you don’t even know what self help is.

Start with a reflection

So I’m going to try and help you with just a few simple ways to get started. The first one is to reflect on how you’re feeling. Really think about how you’re feeling right now: What are the areas that you want to improve? Do you know that maybe you’re struggling with anxiety? Do you know that you’re having regular panic attacks? Do you know that you’re waking up feeling loads of dread? Do you know that you’re lacking confidence? How are you currently feeling?

Then think about how you want to feel instead. Do you know that you actually want to be able to manage your anxiety? Do you know that you want to learn how to calm these panic attacks? Do you want to know how to build your confidence? Do you want to know how to manage stress better? Think about all of those things and just write down as many ideas as you possibly can.

Write a list of your habits and tools

Next you’re going to write a list of any tools or habits that you’ve tried in the past. This could be things like mindfulness journaling, visualisation exercise, nutrition, talking therapies, cognitive behavioural therapy, the list goes on and on (I could literally do like a two hour episode talking about offer different types of self-help!)

Write down a list of all of the tools or habits that you’ve tried in the past and then make notes of if they helped, if you liked them or if they didn’t help and you didn’t like them. Then from that, you’ll be able to see which kind of ones you want to stick with going forward. From that list, I want you to pick out two or three that you want to continue it so pick out the ones that were your favourites, the ones that were the most useful and then begin to schedule them into your week.

Think about a time every single week, it may be for the first five minutes every morning in the last five minutes before you go to bed. It does not have to be a big amount of time. If anything, start small and do something that’s going to be completely achievable and realistic for you and your lifestyle at the moment.

Track your new habits

Then track them to really stay consistent with these new habits. So the thing when we’re getting started with self help is that we get all excited and think yes, yes, yes, I will do this, this and then we don’t track them so it’s hard to stay consistent. What you want to do is you want to do use some form of habit tracker where you write the list of all your habits and you tick them off once you’ve done them each day. Let’s say for example, you’re going to do mindfulness in the morning when you first wake up and then journaling in the evening before you go to bed and you’ll tick the box as you complete the two activities each day.

Now, obviously things may change over time. You may find that you’re loving it, feeling so much better and want to add something else into your. Or you want to add more time and do the habits for longer. When you get to that point, that is the time to increase it. Don’t try to increase it before you feel that feeling because it will probably be too soon, then you’ll go back to overwhelm and it not be realistic and achievable.

Join the Mental Wellness Club for extra support

Now if you are still thinking that’s all well and good reflect on how you’re feeling, think about how you want to feel instead write a list of tools schedule them into your week and track them stay consistent. But I’m still a bit lost. I still feel like I want extra support or I still don’t really know what to do. Then I would really suggest joining the Mental Wellness Club for these resources, for extra support and accountability to help you stay consistent and for mentorship from me along the way because it can feel really lonely.

Although self-help is helping yourself and looking after yourself, it doesn’t have to be a journey that you do on your own. Because it’s something that I’ve done myself, it’s a journey that I’ve been on, and it’s something that I can really help you with.

If you’d like to join you can click on this link and come and join us there. You’ll get access to so many resources to help you with all the different tools. You’ll get access to challenges which will support you with getting consistent with new habits, for example a 21 day anxiety challenge so you can go through the different tools, tick them off each day, that’s a great way to learn new tools and it’s a great way to get really consistent with doing something every day because it’s 21 day challenge that you do consecutively. You’ve also got the extra accountability to be able to track it within the group and to be able to go in and say I’ve done today’s habit, this is how it went and get extra motivation that way as well.

Click here to join the Mental Wellness Club