After experiencing a chaotic period of time in my life I went into a depressive state for several months. Yoga was the one habit that pulled me out of that rut and set me on a path to a balanced life.
According to numerous sources (including Healthline) a regular yoga practice has been found to improve mental health, decrease stress, and even help with burnout. It also has countless physical health benefits.
Doing yoga daily has no doubt improved my awareness of the power and energy my body has and I’ve gotten to the point where if I skip it for even a day I begin to feel blocks in the flow of energy. It is shocking to think about how blocked up, tight, inflamed, and stressed I had been before.
The best thing about yoga may be the fact that it is so accessible. There are many online Yogis on YouTube. The teacher that I am following now is Adriene Mishler of Yoga with Adriene. Every month she posts calendars that link to daily videos following a theme.
This January I invite you to do the 30 Day Yoga Journey with me. Maybe you can make it your 2023 New Year’s resolution. See if a daily practice can turn into a beautiful and essential lifelong habit.
Since 2019 I’ve been exploring how to use different planners and journaling systems and I’ve (finally) decided on what planners and journals will be a part of my routine in 2023. Here is the lineup, going from smallest to largest:
This cute little notebook is what I use for a simple desk task list. I set it right under my monitor so I can see what tasks I have to do for the day and easily add/edit/mark off what I’ve done.
Using To-Do lists have many benefits, such as reducing anxiety and giving structure to the day so you can use your mental energy on bigger and more important things than keeping track of every little thing in the day.
When I saw this lovely little pocket notebook in the bookstore I couldn’t help myself. It is a simple planner with a week spread on one page and a botanical illustration on the other.
This neat little book is from a friends Redbubble store – when you’re able, support local artists! There isn’t anything particularly special about the inside, but I figured that having a completely blank page gives me more room for my thoughts and feelings that may come up during therapy.
This cute notebook is what I use for my notes from studying tarot & for journaling about my tarot readings. A ritual that I’ve found great for connecting to my intuition via journaling is a daily tarot reading. All of my thoughts and findings are logged in this journal. I look forward to filling these pages!
My main journal is this cute A5 genuine leather notebook. Here there are no rules except to put the date on the top line of whatever I’ll be writing or drawing.
It is no secret that journaling can help with mental health by managing anxiety, reducing stress, and coping with depression. Adding daily journaling to your routine can bring more awareness to what is and isn’t working for you in your life and therefore make way for positive change. 🌅
I’ll be making posts on the Hobonichi & all of the other journals so if you’re interested in tips on wellness, productivity, and creativity follow my blog and subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Tarot may seem like some mystical way of telling the future, but it is in fact a tool to understand and confirm your own intuition. In this post I’d like to share a daily ritual that invites you to let your intuition guide you and deepen the connection to your soul.
In the past year I went through a terrible state of burnout and depression and I need to find myself – my purpose – again. I began to explore meditation and begin a daily practice of yoga which helped make my mind and body more aligned, but I was still missing something to tether my spirit to the present.
I’m not sure what drew me to tarot – perhaps the very cute display at my favorite shop in Brooklyn – but when I bought the cards and began to read Guided Tarot for Seamless Readings by Stefanie Caponi I knew that this was a path that would finally let me get in touch with my spiritual side. After studying the history, uses, and cards in the tarot deck I began a simple practice of daily readings.
Set up a comfortable space that gives you positive or calming energy.
Cleanse the deck’s energy by hovering over incense or candle smoke (you may also use a clear quartz crystal).
Take deep breaths as you shuffle the deck with your hand of action (your dominant hand) and ask yourself “What does the universe need to tell me today?”
Once you find that your energy is fluid with the deck, draw one card using your hand of intuition (your non-dominant hand)
Take in the imagery of the card. Even if you don’t know the traditional meaning, observe what first comes to mind. Then look up the meaning if you are not familiar.
Write a journal entry using the card as a prompt.
After doing this consistently for a few weeks I noticed that I was much more mindful about the issues that my subconscious was lingering on. Some days you may draw a card that can seem completely random too – in these cases it can bring to light things that have been long forgotten or rarely touched upon. This practice also has the added bonus of reviewing the meaning of cards every day so that you hone your tarot skill even further.
My journey with tarot has just begun and I will be posting about it on my blog. Please follow me if you have any interest in improving your life through tarot, wellness, creativity, and productivity. Also feel free to comment about insights you’ve had or questions.
In this blog post I will explain the four laws of habit creation from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. To see the video version of this post, watch the video below!
Law #1: Make the Habit Obvious
The first law of creating a habit is to make it obvious. The first way you can do this is to create an implementation intention. Simply fill out this statement:
“I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].”
One of the first habits I strive to do daily is reading, so my implementation intention for my reading habit looks like this: “I will read at 8:30 AM in bed.” Next, you can use habit stacking to keep the momentum going:
“After I [CURRENT HABIT] I will [NEXT HABIT].”
My ideal day also starts with a session of yoga, so my habit stacking looks like this” “After I read, I will do yoga.”
One of the most important steps in this law is to set up your environment for success. Make the habits you’d like to do as easy to reach as possible and those you’d like to break as far away as possible. It is natural for us to take the path of least resistance, which is why we can easily find ourselves scrolling through social media for hours on end – because it is easier to do that than to get what you need to get done. So, do the work to make sure that path of least resistance the is the one you actually want to go down.
Law #2: Make the Habit Attractive
One of the most popular ways of making a habit more attractive is to reward yourself with something after you have completed it. If you’d like you can even create another statement to clearly define the reward:
“After I [HABIT] I will [REWARD].”
Continuing with my ideal morning, I will only drink coffee once I have already read and finished some yoga.
You can also join a culture or group where your target habit is a normal practice. Even having a single accountability partner can help you with that, but in larger groups you may learn more and be inspired about what you are trying to make a regular practice.
If one of your habits happens to be journaling (especially using a Hobonichi) check out my Facebook Group which has discussions on journaling, productivity, creativity, and habits.
One final way you can make your habit more attractive is to create a motivation ritual. It can be drinking a cup of coffee, doing a stretch, listening to a certain song – anything that gets you pumped and ready to get to it. Personally, I love going on walks with my dog. The combination of sunlight and exercise energizes me and simply makes me happy (can I get a hell yeah for Spring finally arriving?).
Law #3: Make the Habit Easy
Again, environment plays a key role in this law. Make sure that you can get to your good habits in as few steps as possible and try to make your environment bad habit-free. An excellent way to do this is to simply not buy things that feed into certain habits or to download software to lock you out of certain programs during an allocated time. You may think that these steps sound excessive, but humans underestimate how little self-control we actually have.
Try to automate habits that you can as well. You can’t do this for every habit of course, but for every habit that is automatically done there is another that you can focus on.
If you are having trouble actually sitting down to do your habit, try out the 2-minute rule. This is when you only plan to do 2 minutes of whatever habit it is you want to do. The reality is that once the timer goes off, the majority of people will want to continue. Sitting down and getting started is the biggest battle there is when it comes to habits.
Law #4: Make the Habit Satisfying
Again, it is important to give yourself some positive reinforcement after you complete a habit. Give yourself a small reward each time you complete a habit so that you equate that habit with positive emotion.
A great way to make a habit super satisfying is to keep track of it in a habit tracker. I am pleasantly surprised with how full mine has been lately after I became serious about following the advice from Atomic Habits.
While all of these tips have been helpful to me, it is also important to know that this is not something that comes easily. Sometimes you will have weeks where you are on a roll and being super productive, and others where the habit tracker is left completely blank. This is normal and it is super important to be kind to yourself. If you drop off (like I did for 2 months straight when the pandemic began) just know that in time you will breathe, relax, re-envision, and plan how to bounce back.
If you enjoyed this post, consider following my blog and subscribing to my YouTube channel. Of course, if you would like to learn more about habits, check out Atomic Habits by James Clear – I’ve only scratched the surface in this post.
What tip did you find most helpful? Are there any habits that you are having trouble maintaining that you might have a plan to change? Leave a comment below!
Emma Lao 