Thank you to Kathy Davis for sponsoring this post as part of their brand philosophy to create a life you love!
I was asked recently what I felt my biggest goal was with my businesses – my AnneTheRD private practice and my blog. My response? Sharing joy and helping others to create lives they love.
I talk a lot with my AnneTheRD clients about reducing stress and creating a life that energizes and inspires rather than drains them. Working to remove unnecessary physical and mental clutter is so important, and as you guys know I’m a big believer in working to embrace a more mindful and calming approach to life.
Given this, I was excited to hear that Kathy Davis’s philosophy as a brand is to help people to create a life they love through sharing joy with others, nurturing relationships, and celebrating life. Kathy Davis is sharing a fun giveaway with you guys today at the end of the post, but first: here are some of my best tips for finding joy in everyday moments and creating a life you love. Here’s to more calm and less stress, my friends!
1) Carve out time for yoga and/or meditation.
I talk about this all the time, but both yoga and meditation go a long way with keeping me sane. Just like how running has taught me that I am stronger than I think, yoga has taught me to be kind to myself. To slow down. To embrace the little things. That simply breathing in and out deeply can be amazingly calming when you are stressed out and need a break.
2) Spend more time in the great outdoors.
If you’re feeling stressed, one of the easiest ways to reset and refresh is to step outside. Even a short walk will do wonders for your mood – in a fact, research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that walking increases creativity! The Vitamin D boost from the sun won’t hurt, either. 🙂
3) Tidy up your workspace.
Make sure your workspace is organized and free of clutter, whether you work at home or in an office! In addition to making it hard to find items when we need them, a cluttered, untidy desk will also make it hard to focus – it’s basically competing for our attention. By cleaning up your workspace, you’ll be less distracted and irritable, more productive, and better able to process information. (source)
4) Create a home environment that relaxes and inspires you.
The same goes for your home as your office – you want to create an inviting space that rejuvenates and calms you. For me, part of this is reducing clutter on tables and tidying up a little bit everyday so that arriving home doesn’t immediately stress me out because our place is a mess. I also spend a couple minutes opening all the blinds in the house first thing in the morning – a lot of light is a big visual happiness booster for me – and I always make the bed, even if it just means quickly pulling up the comforter and arranging the pillows. Making the bed takes less than a minute and not having a messy unmade bed reduces a lot of the visual stress for me – it just makes me feel more organized and ready to tackle the day.
Making the bed has gotten even nicer than usual because we have a nice new comforter set to enjoy thanks to Kathy Davis! We love it – the calm but cheerful colors are perfect for our bedroom. I love that it is reversible as well to the stripes that you see folded down at the top and on the pillows.
Zara is a fan already, too. 🙂 Her favorite thing ever is to jump crazy high and chase around her wire toy on our bed – nice soft landing!
5) Learn to be okay with saying no.
It took me awhile (and I’m still not 100% there) to be okay with saying no to things that I didn’t feel would nourish me personally or professionally. A couple years ago, as a result, I found myself seriously overwhelmed and overcommitted, and decided it was time to take action. I started getting better at saying no to things that wouldn’t bring me joy, get me towards my personal or professional goals, or that I simply didn’t have time for, and I intentionally reduced my commitments by leaving a couple side jobs. It’s okay to not do everything. Repeat after me: it’s okay to not do everything.
6) Focus on positive self talk.
Working on actively changing negative self talk to positive self talk is something that I work with a lot of my AnneTheRD clients on and am always working on for myself, too, because it influences so much! Negative self talk is basically when you find yourself saying something mean to yourself – whether it’s “I can’t do this” or “I hate xxx part of my body” or “I am a failure because I ate xxxx or slept in and skipped my workout.” It’s unfortunately something that has become very typical for our society – in large part, I think, because of all the diet messaging and our go-go-go society that tells us we’re lazy or failures when we relax.
Here’s the thing – not only is negative self talk contagious when with others, but we will also really start to believe the negative things we say to ourselves and this will show in our actions. If you tell yourself that something sucks or is going to be terrible, it will be. If you tell yourself that you’re a failure/ruined everything for eating a cupcake, then you really believe that you are, and you’re likely to just eat the whole rest of the box because the rest of the day is ruined anyway, right?
Here’s the good news: we have the power to choose to talk to ourselves in a much more kind and positive way – and by not feeding into the negative self talk, you’ll inspire others around you to be more positive, too. The first step is to just start noticing when you’re negative self talking, whether internally or out loud. You might be surprised by how often it happens. Then, try to work to turn that around into something more positive. This can be hard at first, and it might be helpful to pretend you are talking to your best friend instead of yourself – we tend to be a lot kinder to others than we are to ourselves. The more you practice this, the easier and more natural it will become for your default self talk to be positive. We can’t change what happens to us, but we can change how we react to it.
7) If you don’t love your job, make a change.
I spent years in office jobs I didn’t love before getting the guts to finally go back to school and follow my dreams to become a Registered Dietitian. It took me nearly 4 years and a lot of loans but it was worth every minute and I haven’t regretted that decision for a second (well, maybe I did briefly while in biochem class, but it passed). I know it’s not always easy to make a change – but if you are unhappy and uninspired by what you are doing now, don’t be scared to follow your dreams, even if it will take awhile to get there! Life it too short to spend the majority of our time doing something that leaves us unhappy or unfulfilled. <3
And now – a giveaway, because the peace and beauty we bring to our surroundings can inspire how we live each day. In addition to their new bedding offerings, Kathy Davis makes beautiful cards, accessories, calendars, planners, and stationary, all with the aim of creating meaningful products that enrich the lives of those who use or gift them.
Enter below to win your own set of Kathy Davis bedding. Good luck and enjoy!
KATHY DAVIS™ & Fannetastic Food Bedding Giveaway
What are your best tips for creating a life you love and finding joy in everyday moments?
