5 Ways to Spring Clean Your Life
5 Ways to Spring Clean Your Life
With spring just around the corner, many of us are eager to start fresh! We clean our homes top-to-bottom, give our gardens some TLC, and some of us start focusing on taking better care of our bodies as the weather gets nicer. What many of us don’t do, however, is tackle a little internal spring cleaning – the best kind of tidying up!
Here are a few ways to spring clean your mind, body, and spirit:
1. Re-define your core values. While it’s great to have an infinite supply of values that you strive to uphold, it’s even better to have several that you hold near and dear and use as guiding principles as you navigate through life. If you feel like certain aspects of your life and your values don’t line up, ask yourself what you can do to change this.
2. Weed-out bad relationships. Friendships and relationships are paramount to human happiness, but only if they’re healthy. Don’t be afraid to walk away from people who take advantage of you or don’t treat you well. You deserve to be surrounded only by people who truly appreciate you.
3. Practice self-love. A good rule of thumb for practicing self-love is to ask yourself the question, “if someone spoke to me the way that I speak to myself, would I want them as a friend?” If your answer is no, cut yourself some slack. Most of us are our own worst critics, but much too much self-criticism hurts self-esteem!
4. Make a change. Consider this a second shot at your New Year’s resolution: choose something you’d like to change about your life and set out to make it happen. You can make small changes, like trying a different Starbucks coffee, or big changes like building a new group of friends. Whatever the change, choose something that will make you happier in the long run.
5. Clean out your emotional closet. Maybe you need to learn to say “no” when your boss asks you to take on extra projects, or maybe you’re caught in the middle between two friends who are having a disagreement. Either way, if there’s something (or someone) in your life that is sucking your emotional piggy bank dry and causing you to feel unhappy or stressed, scale back! Keep tabs on your emotional bank account. Don’t overdraft.
Happy spring cleaning, and remember to take care of yourself before you take care of others!
