As we come to the end of Wellbeing Week, we thought we’d offer you a quick list of all the things the HorseBack team does to help physical and mental wellbeing. This is not comprehensive, but more a collection of our greatest hits. We hope it will send you into the weekend with a smile.
1. Stay connected to your friends. Give them a ring; send them a message; get on that glitchy old Zoom. Connect, connect, connect.
2. Get a decent amount of sleep. This one sounds so simple and so obvious, and sometimes is hard to do. It does make a huge, huge difference.
3. Process difficult emotions as you have them. If you are feeling fearful or anxious or angry, step into the uncomfortable feelings, and ask yourself what the root of them is. Write them down or talk to a trusted loved one about them. (The key is to get them out of your head.) Then give yourself a choice: you absolutely can sit in the fear or the fury, or you can let them go. This takes a bit of practice, but it’s a gloriously powerful mental tool. The more you do it, the better you get at it. We humans can’t avoid painful emotions, but we can refuse to let them wreck us.
4. Do one joyful thing every single day. It can be anything, as long as it makes your heart sing. We find a lot of joy with our animals. We know one woman who was mourning the death of a dear friend and she scheduled in fifteen minutes of Graham Norton every day. All his programmes are on YouTube, and he is so funny and goodhearted that he lifted her broken spirits. She knew she could not avoid the pain of loss, but she did not want it to take over her every waking hour. So, Graham helped get her through the grief. It was a slightly eccentric approach, but it really helped her
5. Do something for someone else. We believe that you absolutely have to attend to your own state of mind, but sometimes it’s incredibly helpful to forget yourself for a moment and do something thoughtful or generous for somebody else.
6. Be careful about the news. A lot of the news at the moment is about things which are beyond our human control. If you get too lost in the headlines, you can find yourself feeling impotent or overwhelmed. It can give your poor, overworked adrenal glands a rest if you allow yourself a news holiday.
7. Try to eat well. This is often not easy, but it is a lovely part of caring for yourself. Nourishing and warming soups and stews are simple to make and wonderfully satisfying. And they are not just food, but potent symbols of the fact that you think you are worth cooking well for.
8. Give yourself a purpose. A purpose does not have to be huge, like saving the polar bears or inventing world peace with your own bare hands. But all humans crave meaning. They want to think that their lives are worth something. So, every day, see if you can find a sense of purpose, so that you go to bed with a sense of achievement. It might be something as simple as listening to a friend in need, or tidying a kitchen cupboard, or writing a letter. Make someone laugh. Plan an adventure for when all this is over. Climb a hill. Seriously. Anything which means something to you and to those you love will do it.
9. Exercise your mind. We love learning new things. We are always trying to learn more about horses and horsemanship, and we are students of the human psyche too, because we need all the knowledge we can gather to help the veterans we work with. Learning is a brilliant way of keeping your mind active, of returning to the glorious curiosity we all had as children, of not falling into rigid thinking or set-in-stone opinions. Question and learn, every chance you get.
10. Be kind. This one is important not just because it is good for the other people in your life. It’s cheering for you too, because you get to be your best self. When times are tough, it’s tempting to fall into judgment and criticism. This can bring short-term relief to a stressed spirit. But it leaves you feeling a bit grubby afterwards. If you have the choice, and we believe all of us always have the choice, choose kindness.
