My Rewards
From midnight tonight, residents of England face the winter lockdown many of us have been dreading. It coincides with dropping temperatures and declining daylight hours, as well as a dizzying news cycle, replete with the US elections, coronavirus, terrorism and Brexit. Social media is abuzz with furious vitriol from all sides. Everywhere we look we’re met with messages of urgency and panic, heralding us to take action when all that most of us can do is stay at home and try to keep ourselves afloat.
If the next four weeks seem like a battle to be won, we invite you to rearrange your thinking and instead choose the path of least resistance. In the heady days of March, when the national mood was more optimistic and the weather more energising, self-improvement activities made sense. People were anxious, but had high hopes for new exercise regimes, ambitious DIY projects and creative endeavours to make use of that nervous energy.
Hunker down with lush green varieties to keep your spirits up.
Though seismic shifts and immense challenges face us as a global population, it is not your personal responsibility to keep abreast of every bit of news or grieve for every family who has lost loved ones. Lockdowns, financial insecurity and coronavirus are very real problems, but they are made much worse by the disproportionate amount of attention we pay them and accompanying anxiety. The fact is, unless you’re working in a lab or for Public Health England, there isn’t much you can do to limit these issues, which we are facing as a global population. You aren’t a bad person if, instead of doom scrolling through social media, you make some comfort food and watch Emily in Paris!
More so than in any other time in our lives, this winter we’re able to go with our natural impulse to burrow down and take life more slowly. If you’re exhausted by 7pm, there’s no shame in lying down under a blanket in front of the TV or settling in with a good book. If your body’s telling you it needs 9 hours of sleep, you can honour that feeling. Now is not the time to overexert yourself or worry that you’re doing the ‘wrong thing.’ Trust that time will pass and endeavour to tune into what your mind and body need - is it a phone call to a friend? A walk to your local park? Is it a nourishing dinner or a bowl of ice cream?
The world around us has presented enough barriers and demands. You shouldn’t be putting yourself under additional strain by setting unrealistic goals or being glued to current affairs. Over the next four weeks, slow down where you can, ask yourself what you need in the here and now, and give it to yourself. Now’s the time to focus on surviving - striving can wait!
Hunker down with lush green varieties to keep your spirits up.
