Using the Healthy Mind Platter to Improve Mental Wellness [Transcript]
Today I’m going to talk to you about the Healthy Mind Platter that was created by Dr. Dan Siegel. The Healthy Mind Platter falls under one of the eight dimensions of holistic wellness. It falls under mental wellness. As a psychotherapist, I often think about emotions when it comes to mental wellness. The Healthy Mind Platter is also hitting on a different part of mental wellness. It’s all about recharging your brain and giving it the fuel it needs to work at its best. This allows you to be able to focus as well as recharge and reboot. It’s an opportunity to create connections so you can expand, grow, and be the abundant person that you are.
Focus Time
Focus Time is the time where you are doing your goal-oriented tasks for the day. This includes responsibilities in your personal life or responsibilities at work. Before you even start doing your work for the day, I often recommend writing out a list of must-do tasks. Once you do this, you can prioritize your list from most important to least. Next to that, write an estimated time of how long you need for each item to get done. Then you have an estimated time so you know when to take a break. This allows your brain to focus on the activity, instead of feeling like the workday is never ending.
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Connecting Time
Maybe after those five minutes of focusing on a task, check in with yourself and see how you’re connecting with your work and how you’re connecting with your day. During Connecting Time, it’s really important that we’re making connections with our authentic selves, with our relationships, or even with the world around us. One thing I really liked to do during Connecting Time is to go outside on a walk and talk to a friend on the phone. Since it’s always great to have an actual in-person connection, you can even ask the friend to come with you on a walk. During that time, you are connecting with your friend, you’re connecting with yourself, and you’re connecting with the world around you. And that’s exactly what Connecting Time is.
Play Time
This is my favorite. Play Time is when we are just reconnecting with our younger selves and doing things that we enjoy, just because we enjoy it. We want to engage in playful behavior, be silly, and be creative. So maybe as a child, you loved to draw or paint. That’s a beautiful activity for Play Time. Anything that creates a sense of joy and fulfillment in your life recharges your brain.
Physical Time
Physical Time is when we’re releasing energy, especially after Focus Time. So this could look like taking a few minutes just to do jumping jacks. You could also move your body in yoga or go out and exercise in the gym. This literally could just be a minute long — anything to exchange, recharge, and expel the energy from the long day. This actually leads into our next step, which is Sleep Time. It is really important that we have Physical Time to exude the energy from the day, which will make it a little bit easier at night to fall asleep.
Sleep Time
During Sleep Time, your brain is recharging. This allows you to make connections from the day and integrate what you were learning all day or taking in. My clients have shared that it can be really hard to fall asleep or wake up feeling recharged. That’s why I always emphasize to have a bedtime routine. Knowing when you will fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning is really important. In Sleep Time, we also want to have a good bedtime routine. That means putting all electronics away. And this leads into our next realm, which is Down Time.
Down Time
It is so important to have Down Time, either before bed or throughout your day. In Down Time, we just want to relax. We want to let our minds wander. We want to allow ourselves to daydream and see where our mind takes us. Again, the goal of the Healthy Mind Platter is recharging your brain. Sometimes throughout the day, and especially at night, we just need to turn it off so it can recharge. And you’re allowed to do that! You have my full permission to allow yourself to relax throughout your day — in between Focus Time, after Play Time, and in between Physical Time. Just allow your brain to turn off and let your mind to wander.
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Time In
Time In reminds me of the idea of emotional wellness which I mentioned earlier. During Time In, it’s kind of like introspection time. We want to make sure that we are feeling good and we are grounding ourselves. This is a time to connect with yourself so that you can check in on how you’re feeling and see if you need anything for self-care to get you through your day. Put simply, this is just time where we can feel really grounded. One activity that I really suggest to my clients is to journal. Journaling is a great way to express those emotions and lean into ourselves so we can have some Time In.
Creating Your Healthy Mind Platter
Before you go, I just want to leave you with a few reminders. The first is that everyone’s Healthy Mind Platter is going to look different. Even yours could look different on a day-to-day basis, depending on what you need, what your day looks like, and where you’re located in your life. That’s why it’s really important that we take time to check in with ourselves (Time In) and connect with our authentic self (Connecting Time) on a daily basis. We want to make sure that we are vocalizing and being real with our needs and expectations. That way, you can take actionable steps to reboot your brain so it can thrive. One idea I share with my clients is to create a menu of all the different activities that could be on your Healthy Mind Platter. So for example, during Sleep Time, you can list all the different types of actionable steps and activities that you could take to leave yourself feeling good.
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What are some activities on your healthy mind platter? Join the conversation in the comments below!
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