Using your Filofax to focus on self care

Apologies to those of you expecting to read your Saturday dose of Web Finds, as Steve is currently out of action, but thankfully is doing better. We all wish him a speedy recovery to full health and hope that he gets home soon. 

Following on from Laurie's post about keeping medical details in your Filofax, I thought that I'd write a little about tracking self care. It's not something that I've done much of in the past, but the last couple of years have been challenging, so I thought that it would be useful to have some reminders about this in my organiser.

The last section in my Kensington is my A to Z and I just keep a list under T called TLC. As I think of something, I'll add an idea and remind myself to look at it and pick one later.

Some examples:

• Have a bath
• Book a shiatsu massage (pre-lockdown)
• Read my book
• Do some jigsaw
• Go for a coffee alone (our household is still currently shielding, so currently I make coffee in my reusable cup and take my book and Filofax out onto the green outside our garden)
• Yoga Friday a.m.
• Play Diablo 3 (game on my Mac)
• Eat ice cream
• Skype with Meerkat (nickname for my best friend).

As you can see, it tends to be quite simple and normally free activities that I enjoy and are good for me (as long as there isn't to much ice cream!). Sometimes when life is busy or stressful, it can be easy for me to forget that I have these kind of things that are easy to do and really helpful for my mental health and overall well-being. As mentioned in my previous post about working from home, I'm very grateful to still have a job, but it's much busier than normal, so I have been making greater use of my TLC list. 

For those of you that might prefer more structure, these free downloads (voluntary contribution) from Blurt might be of interest:

• Self-Care Starter Kit
• An Utterly Useful Self-Care Planner
• The Self-Care Project Worksheets
• Habit Tracker
• 365 Days Of Self-Care Journal Prompts
• Making Space Worksheets
• Your Sensory Self Care Toolkit 
• Getting To Know You Workbook
• Blurt's Guide On How To Support Someone Who Has Depression
• Depression Symptom and Mood Tracker
• Crisis Plan
• Crisis Card

Blurt is 'a social enterprise dedicated to helping those affected by depression' and you can read more about them here.

I don't have any links with them, but am just a satisfied customer as I treated myself to one of their lovely Buddyboxes when I was going through a particularly stressful time.