The Witch's Book of Self-Care: Magical Ways to Pamper, Soothe, and Care for Your Body and Spirit - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2018

Organization and Planning Help
Mental and Emotional Self-Care

One of the things that probably stresses you the most is how to break larger tasks down into manageable ones. Here’s a list of suggestions:

♦ Look at the due date of a task or deadline you are facing. List all the elements of the project that need to be addressed before then.

♦ Assign smaller due dates to smaller elements of the project. Start with the parts that later parts will be dependent on.

♦ Build wiggle room into your schedule to account for illness or other emergencies you may have to handle.

♦ Don’t procrastinate. Don’t let all the work fall on the shoulders of “Future You.” That’s an abuse of your own energy and disrespect of your future self.

♦ Use alarms, reminders, pretty sticky notes, a calendar grid with different colored markers to note various steps of your process—anything and everything that can help you stay on top of what needs to be done and when.

♦ There are also some magical things you can do to lessen the stress of planning and organizing, including making a special charm bag and keeping track of your self-care.

Planning and Organization Charm Bag

You can make a small charm bag or bottle to help you cope with keeping everything organized. Brown jasper, a kind of quartz, helps with long-term energy maintenance; mint helps with focus; and ylang-ylang and bergamot oils help with staying calm while still attentive.

What You Need:

♦ Small bowl for mixing

♦ 1 teaspoon dried mint

♦ 3 drops ylang-ylang essential oil

♦ 2 drops bergamot essential oil

♦ Brown jasper stone

♦ Small bag or sachet (color of your choice) or small glass bottle or jar

What to Do:

1. Start by cleansing/purifying your supplies as per your preferred method (see Chapter 1).

2. Center and ground.

3. Place the mint in the bowl, saying, “Mint, bring me focus so that I can keep my mind on my tasks.”

4. Add the drops of ylang-ylang essential oil to the mint, saying, “Ylang-ylang, bring me your peace and serenity so that I remain calm in the face of my schedule.”

5. Add the drops of bergamot essential oil, saying, “Bergamot, bring me clarity and confidence.”

6. Hold the brown jasper, and say, “I call on your energies of management and organization. Bring me long-term capability to schedule, plan, and manage my time.” Place it in the bowl.

7. Stir with your fingers, saying, “I am calm, I am focused, I manage my time confidently. So may it be!”

8. Pour or scoop the mix into the sachet or jar and tie it closed or put the lid on. Hang or place it next to your wall calendar, or carry it with your agenda or journal.

Tip:

♦ If you make a miniature version of this, it could be small enough to tie onto your agenda or journal as a charm or hang on your calendar.

Track Your Self-Care

If you struggle with a chronic condition or are overwhelmed by trying to organize your life, start by tracking only three or four of your self-care successes at once. Recognizing a success can give you the sense of accomplishment that helps support a positive mood.

Instead of writing on loose paper, you could use your self-care journal or start a separate small notebook for habit tracking.

What You Need:

♦ Paper or notebook

♦ Pen

What to Do:

1. For a simple self-care tracker covering the basics of self-care, draw a chart with a row for each day of the month, and four columns. Label the first column “Hours of Sleep,” the second “Ate Properly,” the third “Exercised” (if exercise is a trigger word for you, label it “Moved” instead), and the fourth “Something Kind I Did for Myself.” This covers self-care basics: adequate rest, adequate food and movement, and one act of self-care that doesn’t classify as belonging in one of the previous columns.

2. Write the hours of sleep you got in as soon as you wake up. At the end of each day, think back and mark off the other three columns, or mark them off as you accomplish them during the day.

3. The moving/exercise column can cover things like walking to the bus stop or to work from the subway, taking a 5-minute brisk walk at lunch, remembering to sit back and stretch regularly at work, doing the vacuuming, mowing the lawn—anything that gets you moving.

4. Over time, you’ll be able to see your patterns of sleep, movement, and self-nourishment. This will allow you to pat yourself on the back for the successes as well as target weak spots to focus on in order to improve your self-care.