Write
Sometimes the best way to understand ourselves is to write, especially about our thoughts, observations and emotions. There are many ways in which to do this, depending on the amount of time you wish to invest in this practice.
If you feel you don’t have time to really write much, you can get a “one-line-a-day” book – a dated book where you write a line every day, to record what happened in your life. It usually spans a year or longer.
If you feel you have more time to invest, consider getting a journal and write in it before bed, or when you wake up in the morning. It’ll be fun to look back over the years to see what you were doing in the past, how you felt about things, and so on. And, this year is especially important to be documenting your experience.
With so much happening and changing in real-time, and the weeks and months just blending together, keeping track of everything you’ve done or felt can be very grounding. It can definitely be difficult to keep up on, but if you can get yourself to write a couple of lines or for a couple of minutes a day at least, that is a major accomplishment!
And, if you really feel committed, get into some real in-depth writing. Whether this means writing your memoirs, writing about something you are passionate about or have studied, or that story you’ve always thought about – getting your thoughts, ideas and stories onto paper is a great way to express yourself. The key is to keep doing it.
Everyone experiences writers’ block, even if it’s writing about themselves. As long as you make time for your writing, no matter how long you spend on it, you can accomplish a lot. Commit to writing a certain number of lines a day, or for a set amount of time – even if it’s just to brainstorm, free-write, or get ideas out of your head. Don’t worry about structure or order. You can always go back and work your piece differently with fresh eyes, or add onto it later.
Don’t just document your life on social media – document some of it for yourself personally. Explore your ideas and the stories that you have in your head. Write that fanfiction. Write some poetry. Write about what you saw, felt or experienced today.
Whatever you feel compelled to write about – get that pen to paper or fingers to the keys, and get those thoughts out of that beautiful mind of yours!
Learn Something New Every Day
What are we here for, if not to at least learn and grow? And growth is important to your self-care regime. Being curious about the world and exploring it is important for our own health and development, as well as society’s health and development.
As we’ve seen during the pandemic, many people have taken the opportunity of extra time at home they might have had, and learned and developed new skills and knowledge. Gardening, sewing, baking bread, and everything you can think of – people were dabbling in new skills that they might never have thought about learning had it not been for the pandemic.
For some, it might have been something they were always curious about or wanted to get into but never had the time. For others, the thought may have never crossed their mind before, prompting them to explore the idea more.
In working to have growth within ourselves and our world, we must have a certain sense of wonder about it, and be actively learning about and exploring it. There is so much out there that we don’t know or haven’t been exposed to the idea of yet. Even if you’ve been to college, there is an infinite amount of knowledge to be learned out there. No one person is going to learn it all, but we should be striving to learn as much as possible.
No matter what your age, we are always learning and growing, and we should never think that we are ever done with doing either of those. Learn more about what you love. Learn more about what you dislike. Learn about what you don’t understand fully. Learn about something you had no idea about.
Take some time to wonder about what you don’t know a lot about, or perhaps something you’ve heard of but never looked into it, or to clarify something you were confused about. Be open to the idea of something new and learning about the unknowns in your life.
Look into topics to understand them better, from multiple areas of interest. Learn about science and history, about art and literature. Learn about the environment, and how everything interconnects. Learn about people and their experiences and their cultures. Learn about communication and sociology and psychology. Learn about politics and government, and civics and social issues, especially in your local and state governments.
All of that probably sounds daunting, and it can be if you start diving in and start seeing how deep everything goes and how much it all relates to other things. These topics can take years to understand, even at their basic levels. But, that shouldn’t stop us from being curious about topics therein those areas of interest.
It’s okay to be a “jack of all trades” in terms of information, knowing varying levels of different topics or issues. Doing this helps you to understand the world better, to discover something that might pique your interest and encourage you to dive deeper. You can dive into history or science at the surface level, and then find a specific stream within that topic to go down deeper into.
If you don’t know where to start and want to get some random new information, consider checking out this Reddit thread with that exact purpose, called “Today I Learned”. Or, go on Ecosia or Wikipedia, and ask a question or search up a topic.
Start with something you do know, and see what else you can learn about it. You’ll eventually work your way into areas that you don’t know as much about, and go from there as you ask more questions.
There is an endless amount of knowledge out there that is available to us, more than anyone has ever had access to in our history. Take advantage of this privilege of having it at your fingertips, and commit to learning something new every day.
