Pebblepup's Writing Den

 Get a new notebook and open it to the first page. Write down “the most important person in my life is” and then name that person. Next, write down 4 questions you would ask them every morning or every day if you could. Now, I’m willing to bet most of you wrote down your children, your spouse, your parents. And left out one person. And that person is the most important person in your life.

When you get on an airplane, they go through safety procedures like what to do when the masks drop down. What they tell you to do first is to put the mask on yourself first. Why you first? Because if you’re not wearing your mask, you could be coming capacitated. Then you would be useless to anybody else. Including the person you named as the most important person in your life, if they were present. What they are telling you to do is to take care of yourself. 1st and anyone else second. So when you wrote down the most important person in your life, you left out yourself.

What this notebook is going to be to you is a Wellness journal. Now you can spend a lot of money and buy a Wellness journal from Amazon or any stationery store or whatever. You could do that if you wish, but you don’t have to. You can get a plain notebook at Walmart, Target, Meijer, even the dollar store. All you need is someplace to write words down. It could even be an app on your phone.

Now look at the questions that you broke down that you would ask your most important person. How would the questions change if the person that you were asking is you? I write down a morning check in every morning. I asked answer the question how were you feeling? You can dive deeper into that question by trying to figure out what makes you feel that way. Do you feel fatigued? Did you get enough sleep? Do you feel great? You might have gotten enough sleep and that’s what helps. Your family could be a factor. Write that down. The next thing I do is list three things that I’m grateful for. Sometimes the list is prosaic, like. Coffee. Sleep. Sometimes I have trouble coming up with a third one. I usually end up saying something like yoga or family. Either is something you can be grateful for.

I also signed up for a quote of the day type of thing at A at a website. It’s usually an inspirational quote. I read the quote and then I try to reword it in my own words. I usually end up either complementing it or disagreeing completely. That’s fine. You can note down whether you slept well. Try to figure out why you slept well or didn’t sleep well. The point is, you do this first thing in the morning. At the end of the day, I write down an evening reflection. This is where I note down how I feel, again. I also write down a few thoughts about what happened today. I do that in the minutes before I go to bed.

This is a bit simplistic, but a Wellness journal is a very good tool to help you get better at being well. Like the airplane safety talk says, you can’t help others if you are not well yourself. A Wellness journal can help you do that. It can make you feel so much better if you write down what bothers you. I wouldn’t put that in my Wellness journal though. I would put that on a different sheet of paper. Then I would burn the paper. It’s a symbolic way of getting rid of things that bother you. That you can’t do anything about. You don’t have to go to that extreme, you could write it down and get it out of your head. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

So think about the most important person in your life. It’s actually you. It is not selfish to take care of yourself first. You can’t really help anyone else if you need help yourself. So make sure you’re OK before you work on anyone else.