The advent countdown to make you healthier and happier
It's the first day of December. Tonight, once our children are tucked up in bed, my husband and I will be sitting down with a glass of wine in hand to devise our own advent calendar for the weeks ahead. 'How nice!' you might be thinking - a couple of date nights perhaps? Actually, no. We're taking ourselves to task and deciding on a host of small actions to kick our health into gear before 2021 is out.
We make such a great fanfare of January and the shiny new year all the while hurtling through December like a fireball, burning ourselves out doing all of the things be it social engagements, preparing for the festivities or travel, creating magic for the kids, or getting final work deadlines done and dusted so we can enjoy the holidays. Why not claim some of this festive energy for ourselves? If I can buy gifts, write cards, decorate my house, select a felled pine tree, and make my children believe a benevolent stranger with a white beard visited our house through a chimney we don't have to bring them gifts, surely I've got the nous to make myself a little healthier by the end of December than when it started?
You see, this idea dawned on me just this morning as I was frenetically trying to decide what was going into our children's advent calendar. As I rinsed my shampoo, attempting to reach consciousness after yet another broken night of sleep with our teething 9-month old, my brain whirred and churned out lists of wholesome advent activities whilst going on a psychological hunt for our advent calendar (the fabric kind that you fill yourself, it seemed inspired at the time) which lay sad and boxed somewhere since our house move in June. As is common in the endurance sport of parenting, life and limb were not at stake but I was bracing to move mountains by lunchtime.
Yet also, as I cursed that my 3-year old had emptied my conditioner into some sort of potion, I was conscious of a multitude of small things that were sub-par in my own body. I could feel the nagging tug of a c-section scar which is usually a reminder I haven't done the simple job of drinking enough water; I remembered yet again a blood test I haven't had that was ordered weeks ago (despite accompanying my child to Sheffield Children's Hospital at least three times in the same period), I contemplated the long run I still haven't got back to postpartum because I am wantonly useless at keeping up with my marvellous physio-prescribed regime to build back strength or making time to get out for short runs. And I thought, well this simply won't do.
So here's the start of my slightly different advent countdown - an idea for each day, some days might have two, others none, some might be repeated on several days (I dislike rigid routine, can you tell?)...
Drink more water
Batch cook some easy meals
Gua sha my neck and shoulders (I do this while I'm sat on the bathroom floor with kids splashing in the bath)
Book my COVID booster and flu shot
Walk the dog in the woods & call a friend
Apply ear seeds and do some breathwork
Do some yoga (*i.e. reset the password for my languishing online membership and find the cable that connects my laptop to the TV, the two things that have tripped me up every time I have this intention)
Spend a day completely digital-free
Do my physio exercises (reminders so that if I've skipped too many, I get the prompt to do a bigger set)
Book a massage
Get some acupuncture (from someone else; self-treatment is great but another human doing the needling seems a real luxury)
Read the FT Weekend newspaper cover to cover, with a hot cup of tea, uninterrupted, on the weekend it was actually purchased
...to be completed with a glass of wine this evening. Some of these felt embarrassingly simple to note down - but in a way, that's the point: these tasks aren't hard, we simply forget to hold time for them on any given day, and those days pile up.
After a year 'that has gone by at a velocity unlike any other' (I read this somewhere and the phrase has really stuck with me as true), we all deserve to stop and give ourselves a minute. Take a pause, make things quiet, listen to your body and mind - what are they telling you?
What little reminders can you put in your advent calendar - what small things can you do for yourself in this most busy month to help you reach 2022 healthier and happier?
I'd love to hear what you'll be making time for.