How to Spring Clean Your Body & Mind
A time of renewal and growth, spring is the perfect opportunity not only to clear out your closets, but also spring clean your body and mind! Like tackling a seasonal overhaul of your clothing, physical and mental spring cleaning yields best results when approached with some simple organization. Let’s get started!
1. Identify Your Goals
In household cleaning terms, do you have the intention to revitalize a small shelving unit or are you set on reorganizing your entire bedroom storage system? Translated into wellness choices, consider whether your intention is to action a micro targeted clear out, “I want to eat less junk food at lunch” or whether a general overhaul - “I want to be more mindful in all aspects of life” is your main goal.
2. Become Mindful
Whether you’re making decisions that impact your physical or mental health, being mindful about what you consume is a great way to start spring cleaning both your body and mind. When you look at your consumption, consider, “how will this support my health?” and take action accordingly.
Let's look at your body (a.k.a your physical health) first, while considering the closet analogy.
Taking stock of your closet, you might notice an accumulation of items lacking in purpose. Perhaps purchased on a whim, they’re taking up space and not adding benefit. Those items are ideal candidates to get the chop! Similarly, poor food choices like consuming processed junk foods that are devoid of nutritional value do not add benefit to your health. With spring cleaning in mind, now is your chance to be ruthless and get rid of those space suckers!
Make the majority of your food choices nutritious and then leave room for fun. Just like building a capsule wardrobe around a few key pieces you love, your dietary choices should reflect key players like whole foods and quality supplements. But be gentle with yourself – it's okay to indulge in food for pure enjoyment and pleasure from time to time!
When you scroll social media, turn on the news, and engage with people around you, you also absorb energy. Perhaps you’d like to place more of a focus on valuing your worth and decide what you will and will not accept when it comes to energetic exchange. Interactions that don’t meet your standards will be up for elimination!
3. Create a Strategy
Making a strategic action plan should determine what your task will require, a realistic timeline, as well as necessary supplies - including identifying the need for external support for your mission.
To use the household spring cleaning analogy, you might decide that your closet clear out will take place next Saturday afternoon over the course of four hours, and that you will need garbage bags and a pal to help take clothing donations to Goodwill.
In our mind-body scenario, you could look at physical spring cleaning from the perspective of switching from drive-through breakfasts to homemade healthy options and start with a week as your timeline. You’ll require groceries and meal prep as well as some reusable containers to store your healthy eats.
If your focus is on spring cleaning your exercise habits, you might have a longer timeline like a month in mind. You could look at enlisting the help of an online yoga teacher/subscription service or investing in a pair or running shoes or resistance bands to meet your movement goals.
When it comes to your mental health, it’s time to let go of whatever no longer serves you. When we hold on to habits, stories and relationships that do not serve us, they take up energetic space. When we release them, we clear out negativity, creating room for an influx of positive energy to fill our being.
Remember our awareness of our energetic consumption? Now we can create a plan to protect our energy! If your intention is to spring clean your mind of clutter you could set a month-long goal to avoid reading the news within minutes of opening your eyes in the a.m. Instead, ground yourself with a healthy morning routine and then choose to inform and educate yourself at your own pace. Perhaps you’ll need a yoga mat or a meditation app to meet this goal. You might also feel that your mental health will benefit from a social media cleanse. Target an hour on the weekend to identify accounts that might be making you feel bad about yourself and simply unfollow them.
4. Don’t Overthink It
Even best laid plans and intentions are only going to yield their worth if you actually do them! You can only plan so much before you need to start taking action. Decide when you’re going to activate and make a commitment to yourself. It may be helpful to write out an accountability statement at this point as well. If you’re active on social media, share it online or write a note to yourself and place it on your refrigerator or bathroom mirror so it’s clearly visible to you every day.
Celebrate Your Effort & Success
Arguably the best part of spring cleaning is getting to enjoy your handwork! A neatly organized closet might inspire you to invite some friends over to share your space, and spring cleaning your mind and body is cause for celebration too. This might be a wonderful opportunity to invite an inspiring friend over for a chat, take a nature walk or treat yourself to a new journal. Any way you look at it, spring is the perfect time for prioritizing your mental and physical health!
