5 Amazing Tips For Creating A Wellness Toolbox

Guest Post | A wellness toolbox can mean many different things to many people, and the key is getting your needs met through a toolbox. Now it doesn’t have to be material things, although I will suggest some activities we need to undertake to improve our overall wellbeing.

I’ll go through the five essential things you need for your wellness toolbox, and none of them is expensive, so it is within easy reach for people to achieve.

I’ve discovered over the years that a wellness toolbox is of great importance, especially when I feel my mood dropping; it could also be helpful to you if you develop a low mood or a feeling of low self-confidence and self-esteem.

Journals for Your Wellness Toolbox

You may think I am greedy, but I have three journals in my toolbox, all with a particular purpose; the first journal is a gratitude journal, the second is a counselling journal, and the third is for bad thoughts, which I will end up destroying. So the latter one does not need to be pretty; just a functional one will suffice.

The journals each have a specific purpose, and the first one should be your most beautiful as it is where you will offer thanks for all the good things in your life. Your gratitude journal is key to your wellness toolbox and giving thanks increases confidence and self-esteem, and it banishes negative thinking.

The second journal is where you write all your thoughts down; I call it a counselling journal because you should be writing as though you are talking to another person. It helps to name them; you can even imagine what they look like and how they respond to you. But in effect, this journal is your sounding board and potentially where you will discover ideas and be inspired to make changes.

The third journal is possibly the liveliest, you will write down all your negative thoughts and then when the time is right, and you’ve entirely put everything down you can think off, you tear it up, shred it, or in my case, I have been known to burn these journals. It symbolises your negativity being destroyed, and it makes room for positivity.

Aromatherapy

I love essential oils, and the reason they are in my wellness toolbox because they work on changing my mood. I discovered this many moons ago, and they can do the same for you. There are some essential aromatherapy oils you should use, especially if you want to liven yourself up or if you want to calm yourself down.

To instil activity, choose citrus and patchouli. I love the collections of roll-on essential oils you can get, but you can make your own with almond oil and a few drops of pure essential oil.

To calm your mind and body, the favourite is and always will be lavender, but also a tiny touch of vanilla with this goes well, I find. Once again, you can make your blends, but make sure you choose top-quality oils and forget about buying synthetic stuff. You want pure organic oil. Nothing fake as it won’t help you, and they smell atrocious.

I like to massage them into the underside of my wrists, neck, and the temples of my forehead. The act of massage will relax you, and then you inhale the aroma deeply and either feel alive or relaxed, depending on what you have chosen from your wellness toolbox.

Meditation to Clear the Mind

Our minds can get extremely busy; you may find you have to turn to your wellness toolbox to stop your mind from racing. One thing which helps combat a highly stressed mind is meditation, and the beauty is you can do it anywhere, and it doesn’t cost you a penny.

You can search out videos on Youtube to be guided in meditation, although be wary of ones with adverts that may interject halfway through your session; this will do more harm than good.

Once you have found your guided meditation, listen and follow the instructions. If you want an app for it, there are countless ones you can use. It is hit and miss and first until you discover the perfect one for you, but in general, a guided meditation should leave you with peace in your heart and mind.

If you are already meditating and want to take things up a notch, I suggest shamanic meditation to add to your toolbox. You can either listen to the shamanic drums or be guided through. However, these usually have a small fee attached, but they are worth it; plus, if you are spiritual, they may take you to areas of your mind and life you never thought possible.

Mindfulness

Much like meditation, mindfulness in everyday life is essential to the wellness toolbox and should be considered a top priority to achieving balance in your life.

It is not easy, and I would be lying to you if I said it was, but you can practice it anytime and anywhere once you have got the hang of it. Even just five minutes of mindfulness per day will reap benefits in the days to come.

I practice as often as possible during the day; I switch my phone off, make sure I am not disturbed by visitors and outside noises; I sometimes do this with a pillow over my head if it is particularly noisy outside.

Once again, you can find videos and apps to help you with mindfulness, but the easiest one I find to do is this one:

Sit comfortably and make sure you are not too hot nor cold—breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Any thought which comes into your mind, accept it and push it to the back of your head, give it to a higher power to deal with. You don’t want that thought anymore. Keep doing this until no more thoughts come into your mind, sit and be still and notice the sensations your body is feeling, allow the sensations to happen, your chest rising and falling when you breathe, the feeling of the clothes on your skin, the faint wafts of air on your face, sit and be still, live in that one precious moment of time.

Anxiety Buster

If you suffer from anxiety, finding the ability to do the last two suggestions may seem impossible, but they are worth a try but should you not be able to. Then it would help if you got yourself moving to release the energy surging through your body. I have two things in my wellness toolbox for when anxiety strikes, and they may surprise you, but one is a skipping rope, and the other is a hula hoop.

When we are anxious, our body produces many chemicals to use for either fight or take flight; you’ve probably heard of this before. But in our modern society, we often do neither, and we let these chemicals overrule our body, which can cause anxiety.

The hula hoop and skipping rope allow you to diminish those chemicals by taking up physical activity. You can also go for a walk or a run to release your mind or body, but sometimes it is not practical, whereas a few goes on the hula hoop will help you concentrate and release feel-good endorphins, which will combat the fight and flight chemicals.

A few minutes each day spent hula hooping or skipping will help reduce your anxiety and help you get back on track.

I hope these suggestions will be helpful to you in developing your wellness toolbox, and you can add more to it, as it is best to personalise your kit to suit yourself. The main thing is you have a toolbox that you can fall back on in times of need; think of it as a best friend.

Lou Farrell is a holistic mental health coach and mental health blog writer. She has a website dedicated to mental health issues and wellness, covering meditation to mental illness. She writes from the perspective of experiencing mental health problems and shares her knowledge to help others. You can find her at her website, Twitter and Pinterest.

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