My emergency toolkit for periods of change and uncertainty
Photo by Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash
Most of you are here to build your toolkit for personal and professional development. Most of you have also experienced periods of change and uncertainty when habits may have suffered (or disappeared all together) and perhaps you felt yourself under more stress than usual. Well, as a coach and a human in the midst of one of these moments, allow me to share my emergency toolkit.
A simple list of the activities I do to help keep me grounded when going through periods of change and uncertainty. None of these are new or groundbreaking. However, I find that repetition often helps to plant and nourish the seeds of an idea that may eventually grow into a helpful practice. Take what is helpful, leave the rest, and return whenever you like:
Movement! Anything that makes me sweat and breathe a little harder helps manage the anxiety that can arise in uncertain times. If I notice myself starting to spiral down an unhelpful mental path, exercise is the most effective way I have found to get myself back into my body and bring things back into perspective.
Journaling. Every morning for me, even if it’s only for a couple of minutes. This allows me to:
Get out all the busy thoughts and feelings in an unfiltered and uncensored way. Talking to people is super helpful, but sometimes it’s nice to express myself fully and freely without thinking about how someone else will respond or react to that.
Keep a record of this time that I can come back to in the future — reviewing journal entries from past periods of change helps to put things in perspective. What was I worried about then? How did things play out?
Get mental to-dos and fears out of my head and onto the paper. This may be unique to me. Underneath my regular journal entry, I keep a list of all the random things that I need to do that have been taking up mental space. They tend to rush to the surface when I sit down to journal, so it’s a good way to clear space for the day and have a list to come back to when I have time.
Community time. These days, this looks like walks or dinners with nearby friends and family, scheduled phone catch ups with long-distance folks, and going to local events (it’s summertime, so there’s always something going on) to get that serotonin hit from a casual conversation with a stranger.
Coaching and Therapy. Yes, I’m a coach. Are coaches good at coaching themselves? In some ways yes. But every human can benefit the support of other compassionate, unbiased professionals. During “normal” times as well as times of change, I partner with a peer coach to offer this support to one another. AND, particularly in times of change, I lean on the compassionate presence of a therapist.
Free newsletter subscribers get a link to the Guide to Finding a Therapist (including worksheets that I have personally used in my own therapist search)
While leaning on my professional support system, I find my hardest days are when I haven’t got enough of (1) or (3) in a while. Journaling is now an automatic part of my day and is rarely missed. I’ll add that when I can get movement out in nature, it offers an extra boost, provided I’m truly present and not listening to podcasts.
Photo by Andreas Dress on Unsplash
You’ll notice I didn’t add anything about meditation, cold plunges, supplements, or any of the dozens of other practices you’ll find in my Stress Management Practices Guide (which could be re-named “Guide to Surviving Big Life Changes”). Become a free subscriber of the newsletter to get the link to the Stress Management Guide.
It’s not to say that I don’t enjoy and employ many of these practices. But I believe it’s important to have an emergency toolkit of 3-5 practices that you know will help under almost any challenging circumstance. The things that you know have an outsized impact on your well-being. These 4 practices are my emergency toolkit. There are currently 36 different practices listed in the guide above, and while it is pretty comprehensive, there are still others that you may have tried that work best for you.
If you don’t know which practices work best for you, I highly recommend taking some time to experiment with some options now. Start with that guide. Go through the practices, click on the links and take some of them for a test drive. In order to pick a top 3, you’ll want to pay attention to a couple of key questions as you go:
Before and after impact—on a scale of 1–10, how stressed/anxious/scattered, etc. did you feel before the practice vs after?
How much effort did it take?
How did the impact compare to the effort?
You’re looking for practices with the highest impact to effort ratio.
So tell me - which practices are in your emergency toolkit? Comment below or shoot me an email at community@katyjwellness.com.
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