7 Self Care Tips You Can Do Right Now From Your Desk

[Image description: An avid worker types away happily as the phone rings, chat bubbles fly by and time ticks away. You can tell from the smile on their face that they’re just about ready for a self-care break.]

If you needed a sign to take a work break, here it is! If you’re already taking a work break here are some ideas to try giving your brain a refresh so you can be more focused, productive, and efficient with the rest of your day.

1. Draw a picture of a cat with your non-dominant hand

Using your non-dominant hand can help activate your brain in a new way, getting you unstuck from wherever you are. If you’re seeing this post it’s time for a little break! Go draw a cat, have a goofy time, and as your brain struggles to make your hand create something sensical, remember that life is play.

2. Write down the thoughts lingering in the back of your mind

This one is simple, if you're holding task in your brain, you're experiencing stress. Perhaps it's a low level of stress, but if you have a lot of tasks, it's gonna be a pretty high level of stress. You know this already. Today take action on it! Right now set a 3 minutes timer and write down or type up any tasks lingering on your brain.

3. Schedule yourself one hour this week to get organized

You know that spacious feeling of finally having cleaned your room? This week it's time to get that feeling with your email inbox and task list. Each week I take about an hour to empty my inbox and update my task list so I can enter the next week fresh and ready to rock.

Do you use email to organize your tasks? Or perhaps a digital or paper task management system? Either way I challenge you to get your ship, well...ship-shape, but blocking off an hour on your calendar right now to make sure it gets done.

That's self-care. Literally, your future self will look back and say, "Thanks past self for caring for me! You effing rock."

4. Order your favorite food

You deserve your favorite food right now. Today is that kind of day. I invite you to try on these wonder questions as you consider today’s invitation:

• Am I willing to give myself things I want without justifying them?

• Am I willing to celebrate that I regularly nourish myself?

• Am I willing to live a life where treating and celebrating myself is normal?

Insight moment: this isn’t just a generosity practice for what you’re willing to do for you. It’s also a practice of what you’re willing to do for your team, clients, community, and close ones.

5. Belt out one of your favorite songs

I've learned from my days training in public speaking that singing 15mins before you get on stage will really warm up your voice. Singing, for me, is also a way to fill my emotional energy pool, because as songs are such a great way to connect to our joys, sorrows, and every nuance of emotion in between.

It's important to tap in to your emotional energy pool each day. Especially when you work for yourself. Why? Because no one's going to do it for you or even tell you to do it! Somewhere along the line as business owners we get the idea that we need to rush and hustle, become hard and cold and powerful, lose touch with our emotional side, and push through if we want to be taken seriously. This applies especially for womxn and folks of color who often have the experience of having to toughen up to prove themselves in fields dominated by white men.

It's not our job to toughen up, it's our job to realize the strength and inherent confidence in being intimate with our emotions. That's what being genuinely tough means. You need look no further than the drag queens who have taught us for decades how to paint our exteriors with bold vulnerability. All this to say, take a break to sing something you love.

6. Call up a friend to appreciate them

Appreciation is fuel. It starts a virtuous cycle. In spiritual groups we hear a lot about practicing gratitude, but less so in the business world. Practicing gratitude is something we should NEVER do because we think we “should”.

It must be genuine otherwise it’s manipulation, fake, and people can tell. But when it’s genuine it’s so good, and stimulates the transition from surviving to thriving. Start with someone easy to appreciate. Get your virtuous cycle going! We text so much these days that a direct phone call cuts through the clutter.

7. Put on a song you love to listen to

Today’s self-care practice is about letting the music into your heart. How often are you thinking about a song while listening to it? Well I’d you’re coming right off of work, usually your mind is spinning and you’re deep in one thought or another. This time, lie down, put on a song you love, and try to listen free from thought. Give yourself the pleasure of totally absorbing yourself in receiving. You deserve a break.

We’ve recently given you a ton of new self-care tips to recenter yourself. Let us know what you think and what has worked for you!