#293
It’s easy to remember to brush our teeth, take showers, feed our body and get rest when we’re tired. There are physical symptoms that give us reminders when it’s time to perform an act of maintenance or nourishment.
Similarly, we can understand we’ve overworked the mind when we experience brain fog or start to make mistakes. So we take a break.
But when it comes to emotions, often it can be impossible to tell if we’re doing too much or not doing enough.
Here are a few examples of bad emotional hygiene:
spending your entire day or going to bed angry (at something or someone)
being unable to cry and release the tension when you’re really sad
holding grudges and blame for something that happened many years ago (whether the blame is towards you or someone else)
Emotional hygiene helps us to be more present, more balanced and more able to spot the many opportunities for growth, connection and joy that appear before us daily.
Sometimes the only thing you need to remember is that life’s short and none of the trivial things we obsess over really matters in the long run.
The gift of emotions is to feel them, to experience the whole spectrum: from pain and sorrow to peace and love!
If you’re feeling pain right now or another heavy emotion, consider yourself lucky. You get to experience one of the core human emotions and be aware to the point of not only recognising it, but also understanding that it’s okay to feel it.
Giving yourself permission to feel your emotions is the first step of good emotional hygiene.
