If it’s Thursday then it must be time for my weekly round-up of tips for better mental health! Each week I share a handful of things I’ve come across that I find interesting, intriguing and inspirational, plus I tell you about anything interesting that’s coming up on my weekly podcast, Let’s Talk About Mental Health, or just generally in terms of my work. So… let’s talk!
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Hello Talkers! 👋🗣😃
Well, after a week or so of feeling horrendous with COVID (the body pains! the fever!) I am at about 85-90% now and feeling much, much better… hooray!
I’m someone who used to block out nearly every single minute of my calendar, thinking it made me more efficient, but it turns out that the opposite is true; maybe it’s because I work for myself now, but the more ‘white space’ I have in my schedule the more I feel cool, calm and collected. I also make a point of working on things at least a week or two in advance, and so that was incredibly helpful last week when my health went downhill overnight and I had to clear out my schedule so I could just rest. Sure, I’ve been playing a bit of catch-up this week, but the reality is that having that flexibility in my diary allowed me to focus on taking time for myself to rest and recuperate, rather than freaking out about all the things that needed to be done.
So my question for you this week is: how do you create space and flexibility in your routine? Let me know in the comments!
Now, without any further ado… greetings and salutations, and a very warm welcome to another newsletter. I hope you enjoy my quick snapshot of my favourite things this week — hopefully at least one of them will make you smile/feel inspired. Have a fantastic week!
Jeremy 🙂
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😊 My Favourite Inspiring Posts Recently:
💯 My absolute favourite thing this week:
Simple advice to start your day off right!
💬 My favourite quote this week:
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
Maya Angelou
😁 My favourite posts from my channels this week:
🤗 My Latest Podcast Episode:
🎥 My Latest Video:
Thanks for reading and have a fantastic week. Talk to you next time! JG 🙂
Did you read this from a link or have it forwarded to you? Join my mailing list to have it sent to your inbox each Thursday, along with the new episode of Let’s Talk About Mental Health every Sunday.
© 2023 Jeremy Godwin
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Jeremy, good morning 😉 Wow you really do get your message across and get me to really think about my mental health and wellbeing. As your email just popped up, I’d just done a crazy task brought on by an acquaintance complaining that I had not responded to her text and phone call yesterday. I told her it’s because I think I deal with about 60 messages a day. So I sat down out of interest and took a count. Yesterday alone I sent/received 327 text messages, 12 phone calls, 5 emails. I am a wife, mother of 2 teenage girls, secretary/chair to 2 different groups who I’m actively involved with and carrying out functions for them, I’m a staff member for an organisation, an owner and instructor of a driving school and friend to a few. I work 24/7/365 (even responding at 3am to clients if they text at that time, and yes they do). I drive on average 90km per day, am driven for perhaps 50 a day, listen to you over and over while I drive, and since I have run out of your episodes, also listen to about 5 other podcasts regularly. I do lots of googling for various things, am busy with a budget of about 5 million rand (not sure about Australian conversion and too tired to google now). It’s only me who drives at home and by the time I get to work I have dropped my husband at work, gone back for and dropped off my 2 daughters at different high schools about 5km apart through horrible traffic (accidents, loadshedding of electricity up to 8 hours a day sometimes, (so 4 way stops at all affected robots) and in South Africa we drive with about 20 minibus taxi’s to 1 car on the road. The guys are hustling so traffic is chaotic, lane changes unannounced, flashing lights behind pushing you out the way. So husband and 2 daughters dropped off, a couple of errands run and up to 2.5 hours later I finally arrive at my office job 25km from home. I am the sole admin person at a student Roman Catholic scholasticate and residence. Our water was disconnected by the municipality on our farm in July last year as, between the 4 farms in the area, and illegal connections, damaged underground pipes etc, we owe about R800,000. At home we have been living without water since 1 Feb. Despite payment and about 100 requests (slight exaggeration) we still have not been reconnected. So at home and at work we have to locate and collect water, at home for 6 people and at work, 15,000 litres every day for roughly 40 people. I work 3 days a week at the organisation and 4 days a week, including public and religious holidays for myself. Often before and after my normal admin work day and fetching an carrying family and some staff I have up to a 1.5 hour lesson before and an hour and a half hour after work to fit in with other peoples needs. I have to do it. I’m the almost sole provider at home for 6 of us. Never mind needy friends, stroppy, rude and fighting teens, homework and my own take home work, grocery shopping as needed and cooking when I can bare it, there’s also my elderly mom who is seriously ill and extremely needy and depressed, my one daughter has a mood disorder, both have ADHD and so do I. My husband is stressed out trying to do his masters and is largely absent at home and when he is, he’s stressed out and either ignoring us or shouting. I wake up at 6am, sleep sometimes between midnight and 2am. In between that there’s my own depression and anxiety and some kind of undiagnosed medical condition which can have me out of society for 2 or 3 days at a time. PS, I also over eat but between illness and stress and long covid (and an eating disorder resulting from covid) I’ve lost 20kgs in 2 years, sometimes up to 4kg at a time in a week. My weight fluctuates so I have probably lost and gained, perhaps having lost double what I’m mentioning. Did I mention I have chronic osteoarthritis and shoulders are practically non-existent but I just have to keep going despite the pain. Shucks, I cannot believe just your heading of today’s message inspired such a purge … I’m sorry for leaving you here with a transcript and not just a comment. I have just had this time to reflect and realise my life is WAY out of control even WORSE than I even realised. Please forgive me for such a long message. Hope I don’t get a bill. Love you but hate your damn yellow cars which I still count daily despite all my best efforts to unfocus on them. Have a good, quiet and restful week. Kindest regards for Jane in South Africa.
WOW. I’m tired just reading that Jane, so I can only imagine how you feel! I hope that ended up being a good opportunity for you to reflect on why you feel out of control, and it sounds like it was a helpful purge. Now, however, you need to do something about it. Will that be easy? No, probably not. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s necessary. Take some time to sit with everything you’re feeling then, when you feel ready to approach it calmly and rationally, start looking at what you can do to create space for yourself (which will include talking with your family about how they can support you)… even if those discussions are tough, they are still necessary. Wishing you all the very best and I could not help but laugh about the yellow cars (still!) at the end, lol!!! Take care and make some space for yourself. Jeremy 🙂
PS: Not sure if you’re aware but the comment you submitted is publicly visible, if you’d like it removed just let me know otherwise I’ll leave it up because I’m sure a lot of people can relate!
Good morning Jeremy
Thank you so much for your reply to my comment. I’m very happy for you to leave it up. I’m happy for the possibility that that purge of mine might get people curious about what the do in a typical day. I honestly really did not realise just how bad my load was until I started that reflection.
My problem now is I cannot actually find my comment (despite it being public… I was wondering whether you could send me a copy of my comment please. I want to print it and re-read it. Sorry for my cluelessness 😳.
Kind regards
Jane
I’m so glad, I was hoping you’d say that! And yes I’ll send it to you in another comment 🙂
Here it is!
Jeremy, good morning 😉 Wow you really do get your message across and get me to really think about my mental health and wellbeing. As your email just popped up, I’d just done a crazy task brought on by an acquaintance complaining that I had not responded to her text and phone call yesterday. I told her it’s because I think I deal with about 60 messages a day. So I sat down out of interest and took a count. Yesterday alone I sent/received 327 text messages, 12 phone calls, 5 emails. I am a wife, mother of 2 teenage girls, secretary/chair to 2 different groups who I’m actively involved with and carrying out functions for them, I’m a staff member for an organisation, an owner and instructor of a driving school and friend to a few. I work 24/7/365 (even responding at 3am to clients if they text at that time, and yes they do). I drive on average 90km per day, am driven for perhaps 50 a day, listen to you over and over while I drive, and since I have run out of your episodes, also listen to about 5 other podcasts regularly. I do lots of googling for various things, am busy with a budget of about 5 million rand (not sure about Australian conversion and too tired to google now). It’s only me who drives at home and by the time I get to work I have dropped my husband at work, gone back for and dropped off my 2 daughters at different high schools about 5km apart through horrible traffic (accidents, loadshedding of electricity up to 8 hours a day sometimes, (so 4 way stops at all affected robots) and in South Africa we drive with about 20 minibus taxi’s to 1 car on the road. The guys are hustling so traffic is chaotic, lane changes unannounced, flashing lights behind pushing you out the way. So husband and 2 daughters dropped off, a couple of errands run and up to 2.5 hours later I finally arrive at my office job 25km from home. I am the sole admin person at a student Roman Catholic scholasticate and residence. Our water was disconnected by the municipality on our farm in July last year as, between the 4 farms in the area, and illegal connections, damaged underground pipes etc, we owe about R800,000. At home we have been living without water since 1 Feb. Despite payment and about 100 requests (slight exaggeration) we still have not been reconnected. So at home and at work we have to locate and collect water, at home for 6 people and at work, 15,000 litres every day for roughly 40 people. I work 3 days a week at the organisation and 4 days a week, including public and religious holidays for myself. Often before and after my normal admin work day and fetching an carrying family and some staff I have up to a 1.5 hour lesson before and an hour and a half hour after work to fit in with other peoples needs. I have to do it. I’m the almost sole provider at home for 6 of us. Never mind needy friends, stroppy, rude and fighting teens, homework and my own take home work, grocery shopping as needed and cooking when I can bare it, there’s also my elderly mom who is seriously ill and extremely needy and depressed, my one daughter has a mood disorder, both have ADHD and so do I. My husband is stressed out trying to do his masters and is largely absent at home and when he is, he’s stressed out and either ignoring us or shouting. I wake up at 6am, sleep sometimes between midnight and 2am. In between that there’s my own depression and anxiety and some kind of undiagnosed medical condition which can have me out of society for 2 or 3 days at a time. PS, I also over eat but between illness and stress and long covid (and an eating disorder resulting from covid) I’ve lost 20kgs in 2 years, sometimes up to 4kg at a time in a week. My weight fluctuates so I have probably lost and gained, perhaps having lost double what I’m mentioning. Did I mention I have chronic osteoarthritis and shoulders are practically non-existent but I just have to keep going despite the pain. Shucks, I cannot believe just your heading of today’s message inspired such a purge … I’m sorry for leaving you here with a transcript and not just a comment. I have just had this time to reflect and realise my life is WAY out of control even WORSE than I even realised. Please forgive me for such a long message. Hope I don’t get a bill. Love you but hate your damn yellow cars which I still count daily despite all my best efforts to unfocus on them. Have a good, quiet and restful week. Kindest regards for Jane in South Africa.