How Well are You Supporting Yourself?

In our recent Anxiety Slayer discussions, we've talked a lot about auditing out the things in your life that feel negative or drain your energy. In this podcast I want to share a simple exercise that can help you get more specific.

It's important in our lives in general to be able to distinguish between the things are contributing to our overall sense of wellbeing, and the things are detracting from it. It's even more important when we're struggling with stress and anxiety. As we've discussed before, anxiety can make your thinking confused and muddy, so it's helpful to practice noticing where you are putting your attention.

Are you making healthy choices in what supports you? Or are you freewheeling and letting negative influences creep in?

Here's a simple exercise to help you clear your mind and see how you can build more peace and self-support into your day.

Writing for Clarity and Self-Care

In this exercise we're going to draw up a support sheet to help you get clear on where your attention and energy are being drawn. The support sheet is simply a piece of paper where you draw a line down the middle and title the left column: "unsupportive - things to avoid."

It's here that you can note your observations about things that:

- you feel don't support you

- don't make you feel comfortable

- drain your energy

This is the column where you log the naysayers, energy vampires and buzz kills.

Title the right column: "supportive things to embrace"

This is the place to note the things that:

- make you feel good / positive / energised

- the things that help you feel relaxed

- the things that you notice do help you manage your stress and anxiety

- things that help feel more comfortable or more confident

This is the column where you log the people, places, reading material, audio support, or anything else that you notice has a supportive, positive impact on you.

You can do this exercise as often as you like, sometimes it's interesting to do it as a weekly process, perhaps you could have a Sunday morning support review where you look back over your week and see what's helped you and what hasn't, and really take few minutes to engage with your findings; let your intelligence and emotions react fully to what you're seeing on the paper in front of you. Have a think about it and use it to set your sails for the week ahead, starting again on Monday morning and encouraging yourself to make choices that feel fully supportive.

Or you may choose to do this as a daily exercise, where before you settle down to sleep you jot down a few thoughts in the left and right hand column of your page and respectfully acknowledge what you've learnt and what you might like to adjust tomorrow.

If you've had a day where you're aware that you've made really good choices and you have honoured and supported yourself - be sure to acknowledge that too, and give yourself a bit more support with a pat on the back.

Listen here. If you find this podcast helpful, please share it with your friends.

photo by Anna Gay