Mental Health Awareness Month is an excellent time to evaluate whether you're making the most of daily self-care rituals. Whether you're a graduate student taking the summer off or just starting the Summer 2023 semester, balancing your health and well-being during the summer months may help you leap forward into a more productive fall term. Here are a few tips to boost your mindset and level up your self-care regime:
1. Keep a mood journal, gratitude journal, or a roses and thorns journal
Our current SPSP Student Committee Chair, Garam Lee, shared the "roses and thorns" icebreaker during one of our recent meetings, and you can even extend this concept into a daily "roses and thorns" journal exercise. I'd recommend combining the "three good things" daily practice into the "roses" section of the journal, as this may heighten your positive mood. There are countless benefits to keeping a gratitude journal and a mood journal as forms of autoethnography and writing therapy. Even having the journal open to your daily entries is a way to reinforce the behavior of using the tool, and it can also become a form of new self-expression and acceptance.
2. Allow yourself "permission to feel"
I find the Character Lab's playbooks helpful as quick reminders for positively balancing many aspects of our unique personalities and lives. The emotional intelligence playbook was insightful as it integrated Dr. Marc Brackett's "Permission to Feel" concepts of knowing that emotions matter and understanding differences between the emotional scientist versus the emotional judge. For example, you can utilize the Mood Meter from "Permission to Feel" to help organize your emotions on a daily basis and see if you can identify any areas that might be out of balance. Brackett's "Permission to Feel" focuses on seven key areas for success as good sleep hygiene, healthy nutrition, mindfulness and breathing, exercise, building and keeping positive relationships, engaging in positive self-talk, involvement in meaningful activities such as hobbies, and implementing self-compassion and acceptance.
The process involves continued reappraisal and visualization of this progress while continuing to problem-solve as needed. So, give yourself grace and feel through the emotions, as simply naming the emotions will help you tame them as well, according to Dan Siegel's theory. Shaun McNiff refers to the process of "spiritual composting" as an excellent way to process emotional discomfort, specifically through art or expressive writing, by connecting strongly to the emotions followed by a cathartic release after the experience. Even savoring bitter moments or emotions may help spiritually compost these and transform them into new positive pathways.
3. Savor the small successes as dreams accomplished
As graduate students, we face a plethora of deadlines—from minor ones to major milestones—on the journey toward accomplishing our long-term goals. Create new ways to celebrate every small and large win along the way. For example, I typically make a daily entry in my gratitude journal of all the tasks accomplished, especially academic duties. Cherish these small wins each day and add them to your gratitude pile. Start building momentum toward the next set of milestones and dreams.
4. Find your flow, increase creativity, and find inspiration
Carl Jung drew inspiration on the concept of flow by describing the iconic artist, Jackson Pollock's process, as painting in a trance unconsciously, through chaotic and powerful expressions of confused alchemy, resulting in artistic breakthroughs. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains further that conditions resulting in flow may happen spontaneously or by chance, perhaps due to potentially positive conditions, either environmentally or internally, and at times we must create our own pathways to achieve flow.
As graduate students, we can utilize these tactics to improve our daily flow and design creative strategies to innovate in our research, writing, creative, or academic pursuits. I encourage you to find flow while doing an activity you enjoy doing or when engaging in your hobby of choice.
5. Create a behavioral intervention to increase daily meditation time or reduce daily screen time
As a self-care resolution earlier this year, I created a quick behavioral intervention to help improve my daily work-life balance using iPhone alarm chimes. It helped improve my daily time management allowing me to refocus and increase daily meditation practice while balancing a sleep hygiene schedule.
I recommend designing a daily intervention to help you transform any undesirable behavior you want to change into positive results. For example, as a sleep hygiene tool, you might set an alarm at a certain time every night that reminds you to put your screen devices away at least 1-2 hours before bedtime. Utilize this time for extended meditation, creative journaling, or bibliotherapy tactics.
6. Increase mindfulness, meditation, and relaxation, through online tools or apps
One way to decompress after a stressful academic day that extends late into the evening is to use free UCLA meditations or other mental health apps to wind down and improve your nightly sleep hygiene. I've combined a group of free online worksheets that help with daily stressors to improve your work-life balance and well-being. These tools are also helpful to overcome negative automatic thoughts, identify emotions, and keep you on track toward your goals. These downloads are available here via the Open Science Framework.
It is also important to find time for meditation, internal mindfulness, and deep relaxation. Here's a list of some popular tools to help you start and maintain your daily practice:
- UCLA Guided Meditations: Free meditations.
- UCLA Mindful App: Free meditations.
- Headspace: Two-week free trial.
- Greater Good Science Center: Free YouTube series on mindfulness, emotional intelligence, happiness, and gratitude.
- Calm: Seven-day free trial, meditation, sleep, and relaxation app.
- Health Minds Program App: Free meditation and mindfulness skills.
- Stop, Breathe & Think: Free, for adults and youth.
- Insight Timer: Free library of meditations.
- 10% Happier: Seven days free trial.
- Sanvello: Coach and group app to manage stress and help in the treatment of anxiety and depression.
- Happify: Free content on stress reduction and strategies to reduce anxiety.
7. Expand your malleable or growth mindset
At times when things may not go your way as a graduate student, having a growth mindset with malleable qualities will allow you to excel in your change-ability factor and pivoting skills. If you find yourself stuck, quickly examine if your thoughts are based on fixed versus malleable intelligence. When experiencing failure, it might be easy to sit in the fixed mindset.
Transform your thinking to embrace new strategies after difficulty and become a defensive player against self-defeating ideologies. This effort is to transform fixed thinking into malleable and growth mindset tactics to overcome any difficulties or hurdles along the way.
8. Spend time in nature, take daily walks, or try gardening activities connecting you with the earth
Several years ago, I found the meditative practice of forest bathing or shinrin yoku and it transformed my morning rituals. Meta-analysis conducted suggests that allowing the sensory experience of the forest atmosphere and microclimates may reduce blood pressure and might significantly influence cortisol stress levels.
Take time for daily walks and appreciate the nature around you as a grounding self-care regimen. Some studies have also suggested that connecting with 30 minutes of indoor or outdoor gardening activities influenced a positive mood, so find time to create a container garden for herbs or an outdoor raised bed with seedlings as another form of self-care to boost your mood.
9. Use the expressive arts in your daily habits to improve well-being
In Csikszentmihalyi's Creativity, creativity is linked to positive mental activity requiring interaction between the individual and their environment, even expanding on certain personality types as personally creative that experience the world around them with fresh eyes and new perspectives. At times, our emotions take over all of our senses and it might be difficult to express them in words.
Tools such as the Scribble Technique that assist by connecting both hemispheres of the brain while processing difficult emotions. Listening to music and combining this with other self-care rituals will also help boost mood. Utilize movement or dance or spend an hour painting to reduce cortisol levels through visceral sensory experiences.
10. Practice increasing daily eudaimonia
As researchers-in-training, we understand that scientific progress takes a great deal of time, patience, and effort. In this same vein, increasing your daily eudaimonia level takes a significant amount of effort, intrinsic motivation, and desire to achieve. At times, it may be easier to sink into life's daily stressors. Alternatively, transform these impulses into positive motivators that help you leap into what I like to call happy change.
For many grad students, our furry companions bring us tremendous amounts of daily joy and well-being. This is another way that aims to reduce daily cortisol levels.
Send us a photo of your fur baby pets by completing the form below, and we'll post them in a future newsletter!
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Be well, stay grateful, and be inspired to improve your self-care strategies.
References
Brackett, M., & Elbertson, N. (2019). Emotional Intelligence. Character Lab Playbooks. https://doi.org/10.53776/playbooks-emotional-intelligence
Brackett, M. (2021). Mood Meter | Permission to Feel. MarcBrackett.com. Retrieved May 16, 2023, from https://www.marcbrackett.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Mood-Meter-Permission-To-Feel-2.pdf
Boyd, D. (2019, June 13). Mental Health Apps. The American Institute of Stress. https://www.stress.org/mental-health-apps
Caplan, E. (2021, December 7). 10 Mental Health Apps to Use in 2022. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/mental-health-apps
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2013). Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention. Harper Perennial.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2009). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper Collins.
Hill, D., & Sorensen, D. (2021). ACT Daily Journal ACT Daily Action Plan. New Harbinger Publications.
Ideno, Y., Hayashi, K., Abe, Y., Ueda, K., Iso, H., Noda, M., Lee, J. P., & Suzuki, S. (2017). Blood pressure-lowering effect of Shinrin-yoku (Forest bathing): a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-017-1912-z
Jung, C. (1968). Man and His Symbols. Dell Publishing, Random House.
McNamee, C. M. (2004). Using Both Sides of the Brain: Experiences that Integrate Art and Talk Therapy Through Scribble Drawings. Art Therapy, 21(3), 136–142. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421656.2004.10129495
McNiff, S. (2004). Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul. Shambhala Publications.
Peterson, C. (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology. Oxford University Press.
PositivePsychology.com. (2022, December 16). PositivePsychology.com - Helping You Help Others. https://positivepsychology.com/
Therapy worksheets, tools, and handouts | Therapist Aid. (n.d.). Therapist Aid. https://therapistaid.com/
The Best Mental Health Apps of 2022. (2022, April 6). Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/best-mental-health-apps-4692902
UCLA Free Guided Meditations. (2023). UCLA Health. https://www.uclahealth.org/programs/marc/free-guided-meditations/guided-meditations
Useful Wellness and Mental Health Apps. (2021, October 19). UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. https://psych.ucsf.edu/copingresources/apps
Van Den Berg AE, Custers MHG. Gardening Promotes Neuroendocrine and Affective Restoration from Stress. Journal of Health Psychology. 2011;16(1):3-11. doi:10.1177/1359105310365577
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